Then, realizing that anger would be counter-productive, he went on in a calm voice: ‘Typical, my friends, typical. We light these elections under this sort of disadvantage and in this sort of shadow. The whole state machinery is in the hands of the Congress Party. The Prime Minister flies around in a plane at state expense. The DMs and SDOs jump to the Congress tune. They hire hecklers to disrupt our meetings. But we must rise above all this and teach them that they can shout themselves hoarse, and we will still not be cowed. This is not some two-anna party they are dealing with, this is the Socialist Party, the party of Jayaprakash Narayan, of Acharya Narendra Deva, of fearless patriots, not venal goons. We will put our ballot papers in the box marked with the symbol of the – of the banyan, the true representation of the Socialist Party. This is the strong tree, the spreading tree, the tree that is neither hollow nor rotten, the tree that is symbolic of the strength and generosity and beauty and glory of this country of ours – the land of Buddha and Gandhi, of Kabir and Nanak, of Akbar and Ashoka, the land of the Himalayas and the Ganga, the land that belongs equally to all of us, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians alike, about which it was truly said, in the undying words of Iqbal,
Better than all the world is this our Hindustan.
We are its nightingales, it is our rose-garden.’
Ramlal Sinha, overcome by his rhetoric, coughed twice, and drank half a glass of water.
‘Does the nightingale have any policies of its own, or does it merely want to smear the Congress statue from on high?’ shouted a voice.
Get out of my class! Ramlal Sinha felt like shouting. Instead, he kept calm and said: ‘I am delighted that the brainless buffalo from the back has asked that question. It comes very fittingly from one whose symbol ought, more appropriately, to consist of two water-buffaloes rather than two bullocks yoked together. Everyone can see how the Minister of Revenue has yoked himself to the biggest landlord in the whole of this district. If there was ever need for proof of collusion between the Congress Party and the zamindars, here it is. See them working together like the two wheels of a bicycle! See the zamindars grow still richer and fatter on the compensation that the government dispenses to them. Why is the Nawab Sahib not here to face the people? Is he afraid of their indignation? Or is he too proud, like those of his class – or too ashamed of the money of the poor, the public largesse that will soon be clinging to his hands? You ask me what are our policies. Let me tell you if you will allow me to. The Socialist Party has given the agrarian problem far more thought than any other party. We are not, like the KMPP, a mere discontented tail of the Congress Party. We are not a doctrinaire tool of foreigners, like the communists. No, good people, we have our own independent views, our own policies.’
As he ticked off his points on his fingers, he winched up his voice in tandem: ‘No peasant family will be allowed to possess land more than three times the size of an economic holding. No one who does not personally participate in cultivation will be allowed to possess land. The land will belong to the tiller. No one – not a Nawab, not a Maharaja, not a waqf or a temple trust – will be compensated for more than a hundred acres of appropriated land. The Right to Property in the Constitution will have to go: it is a barrier to just distribution of wealth. To the workers we promise Social Security which will include protection against disability, sickness, unemployment, and old age. To women we guarantee equal pay for equal work, effective universal education, and a civil code that will grant them equal rights.’
‘Do you want to take our women out of purdah?’ demanded an indignant voice.
‘Let me finish; don’t shoot your cannon before it’s loaded. Listen to what I have to say, then I will happily answer any and all of your questions. To the minorities, let me say: we guarantee full protection, I repeat, full protection for your language, your script and your culture. And we must break our last ties with the British. We cannot remain in the anglophile Nehru’s beloved colonialist and imperialist Commonwealth, in the name of whose head, King George, he himself was so often arrested, and whose boots he now desires to lick. Let us finish off with the old ways once and for all. Let us burn to ash once and for all the party of greed and favouritism, the Congress, that has brought the country to the edge of disaster. Take your ghee and sandalwood, my friends, if you can still afford it, or just bring yourselves and your families, and come to the cremation ground on the 30th of January, the day of the poll in this constituency, and let the corpse of the demon party be cremated there once and for all. Jai Hind.’