A Suitable Boy

  L.N. Agarwal, who had told the DSP that he should handle the matter on his own and that he should not ring up the Home Minister for every petty disturbance, was finally persuaded by a phone call from his colleague the Proctor to come to the scene. Most unwillingly, he did so. He found himself utterly out of sympathy with the unruly mob. Students did not realize how privileged they were in comparison to the rest of their countrymen. They chose deliberately to be ignorant of how little they themselves paid for their education, how two-thirds of it was subsidized by the government. They were a cosseted bunch, and he deplored the concessions that they received for what was, after all, mere entertainment. But since the concessions existed, he was forced to tell the manager that he would have to accede to the students’ demands.

  As a result, the offending employees were dismissed; the manager submitted a letter of apology to the Proctor expressing his regret over the incident and assuring the students of his ‘best service at all times’; two hundred rupees was paid to each of the injured students; and the manager agreed to screen a slide of his letter of apology at all the cinema halls of Brahmpur.

  The students’ union calmed the crowd down. The students melted away. The police retired. And L.N. Agarwal returned to his two rooms in the MLAs’ hostel, furious at having had to act on behalf of the rowdy mob. Even when he had emerged from the manager’s office, some of the students had jeered him. One went so far as to rhyme his surname with the Hindi word for pimp. For puerility, selfishness and ingratitude, thought the Home Minister, they were hard to beat. And tomorrow again, no doubt, their propensity for violence would come to the fore. Well, the police would be ready if they overstepped the line between propensity and action.

  12.22

  The next day, L.N. Agarwal’s fears or hopes were fulfilled. The march began peacefully when it set out from a primary school. The girls (Malati among them) marched in front so as to foil any police action, and the boys marched behind them. They shouted slogans against the government and in support of the primary schoolteachers, some of whom were marching with them. People looked out at the procession from the windows of their houses, or from the open fronts of their shops, or down from their roofs. Some of them encouraged the students, others complained about the disruption to their business. The primary schools had gone on another day’s strike, and many children waved at teachers whom they recognized. The teachers sometimes waved back. It was a clear morning, and only a few puddles remained of the previous night’s rain.

  A couple of banners protested the action of the university that sought to make membership in the students’ union voluntary. Yet others protested growing unemployment. But most of them protested the plight of the primary schoolteachers and expressed their solidarity with them.

  When the crowd got to within a hundred yards of the Secretariat, they found their path blocked by a large contingent of policemen armed with lathis. The students stopped. The police advanced until they were within five yards of each other. On the instructions of the DSP an Inspector told the students to either disperse or return. They refused. They had been shouting slogans all the while, but these now became more and more insulting, and embraced not only the government but the police. The police, who were the lackeys of the British, had now become the lackeys of the Congress-wallahs; they should be wearing dhotis, not shorts; and so on.

  The policemen became restive. They wanted to get at the loudest slogan-mongers in the crowd. But with a cordon of girls—some wearing burqas—surrounding the boys, it was difficult for them to do anything but brandish their lathis threateningly. The students, for their part, could see that for all L.N. Agarwal’s threats, the police were carrying sticks, not firearms, and this made them bolder.

  Some of them, recalling the Home Minister’s devious behind-the-scenes style, started to bait him personally; apart from rhyming his name with ‘dalal’ as they had the previous night, they invented a number of new couplets, such as:

  ‘Maananiya Mantri, kya hain aap?

  Aadha maanav, aadha saanp.’

  Minister, what form do you take?

  Half a human, half a snake.

  Some challenged his manhood in more direct ways. Rasheed and another office-bearer of the students’ union attempted to keep the students calm and their slogans to the purpose, but to little avail. For one thing, some of the protesters belonged to student federations over whom the newly elected Socialist Party students’ union had no real control. For another, a certain intoxication had seized hold of the assembly. The high-minded banners now contrasted pathetically with the low-minded mockery.

  Finding that the protest that he had helped organize was getting completely out of hand, Rasheed now tried to persuade at least his immediate neighbours to calm down. They did, but others did not follow. Indeed, by then, loud jeers and insults had broken out in several other groups. He tried to shout that this was not what their march or their platform was all about, but found himself becoming a subsidiary butt of their indignation. One young man from the medical college, full of wit and zeal, told him: ‘Just now you were All India Radio, now you’re a little squirrel squeaking in Agarwal’s pocket. First you try to whip us up, then you try to cool us down. We aren’t clockwork toys.’ And as if to prove his independence of the office-bearers, the boy now made his way through the protective cordon of girls and continued his pejorative peltings, retreating whenever the police advanced. His friends laughed, but Rasheed, frightened now as he looked at the faces of the police, and disgusted by what this principled march had degenerated into, turned away—and, despite the heckling of some other students, turned back. What the boy had said had had enough truth in it to make him feel sick at heart.

  It was only small groups that concentrated on the worst kind of unwitty taunt. But these taunts began to antagonize most of the girls and some others in the crowd, including many teachers. They began to leave. L.N. Agarwal, who had been looking down from his office in the Secretariat, noticed with satisfaction that the protective cordon was becoming thinner, and sent a message down that the remaining students should be dispersed. ‘Teach them that lessons can be taught outside the classroom as well as inside,’ were his words to the DSP who came to him for instructions.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said the DSP, almost gratefully.

  After the insults to the police, the DSP would fulfil his instructions with little regret.

  He ordered the Inspectors, Sub-Inspectors and constables to teach the students a good lesson, and this they did with a vengeance. The lathi charge was savage and sudden. Several students were badly beaten. A certain amount of blood mixed with the previous night’s rain in the puddles, and stained the surface of the road. Many of the blows were severe. Some young men suffered broken bones: ribs, or legs, or arms which they had lifted in order to protect their heads from injury. The policemen pulled them off the road, sometimes by the feet, their heads bouncing or dragging along the road surface, towards the police vans. They were too incensed to use stretchers.

  One boy lay in a van at the point of death, with an injury to the skull. He was the student from the medical college.

  12.23

  When S.S. Sharma returned that afternoon he found a dangerous situation on his hands. What had begun as a protest march had now upset and unnerved the whole town. Regardless of their political affiliations, the students closed ranks against the brutality, some said criminality, of the police. A vigil began near the medical college, where (once the police realized how serious his injuries were) the student had been unloaded. Several thousand students sat outside the medical college, waiting for news of the boy’s health. Needless to say, there were no classes anywhere in the university that day, nor would there be for a while.

  The Home Minister, fearing the worst if the boy died, advised the Chief Minister to call out the army, and if necessary to impose martial law. He himself had already imposed a police curfew, which was due to take effect that evening.

  S.S. Sharma listened in silence. Then he said
: ‘Agarwal, why is it that I cannot leave town for two days without you presenting me with some problem? If you are tired of your portfolio, I will give you something else.’

  But L.N. Agarwal enjoyed the power that went along with being Home Minister, and he knew that it was not a portfolio that could be given to anyone else, especially now that it was an open secret that Mahesh Kapoor was about to announce his resignation from the Congress Party and the government. He said: ‘I have done my best. One cannot run a state by kindness.’

  ‘So you suggest calling out the army?’

  ‘I do, Sharmaji.’

  S.S. Sharma looked tired. He said, ‘That will be good neither for the army nor for the people of Brahmpur. As for the students, it will inflame them as little else can.’ His head began to shake slightly. ‘I feel they are like my children. This is a wrong thing we have done.’

  L.N. Agarwal smiled somewhat contemptuously at the Chief Minister’s sentimentality. But he was relieved to notice the collective ‘we’.

  ‘I believe, Sharmaji, that no matter what we do, the students will be inflamed when that student dies.’

  ‘When, you say, not if? There is no hope for him, then?’

  ‘I don’t believe so. But it is difficult to get at facts in this situation. It is true, people exaggerate. Still, it is best to be prepared.’ L.N. Agarwal’s tone was cold, and not defensive.

  The Chief Minister sighed, then continued in his slightly nasal voice: ‘Because of this curfew, whatever happens to the student, we will have a problem this evening. What if the students do not disperse? Do you suggest we start firing at them?’

  The Home Minister remained silent.

  ‘And when the boy dies, I tell you that the funeral will become uncontrollable. They will want to cremate him by the Ganga, probably near that other unfortunate pyre.’

  The Home Minister refused to flinch at this needless reference. When one did one’s duty properly, one could face reproof without being inwardly shaken. He had no doubt that the Pul Mela Inquiry Commission, which had begun its sittings a week ago, would absolve him.

  ‘That will be impossible,’ he said. ‘They will have to do it at a ghat or somewhere else. The sands on this side of the river are already under water.’

  S.S. Sharma was about to say something, then thought better of it. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, embattled though he was in his own party, had once again asked him to come to the centre to join his Cabinet. It was getting difficult to refuse. But now, with the imminent resignation of Mahesh Kapoor, Sharma’s departure would almost certainly result in L.N. Agarwal becoming Chief Minister. And Sharma felt that he could not in conscience hand his state over to this shrewd and rigid man who, for all his intelligence, lacked any human touch. Sharma in his philosophical moments felt like a father towards those in his protection. Sometimes this led to unnecessary conciliation or avoidable compromise, but he believed these were preferable to Agarwal’s alternative. Needless to say, a state could not be run on kindness alone. But he dreaded to think of one run on nothing but discipline and fear.

  ‘Agarwal, I am taking over this problem from you. Kindly issue no further instructions in this matter,’ said the Chief Minister. ‘But do not undo any instructions you have already issued. Let the curfew stand.’

  The Chief Minister then looked at his watch, and told his personal assistant to get the Superintendent of the medical college on the telephone. He picked up the day’s newspaper, and ignored Agarwal. When the PA got through to the Superintendent, he said: ‘The Chief Minister would like to speak to you, Sir,’ and handed the phone to the Chief Minister.

  ‘This is Sharma speaking,’ said the Chief Minister. ‘I wish to come to the medical college immediately. . . . No, no police, no police escort at all. Just one assistant. . . . Yes. . . . I am sorry to hear about the boy. . . . Yes, well, my safety is my concern. I will avoid the students on vigil. . . . What do you mean, impossible? Surely there must be a side gate or something. A private gate to your house? Yes, I’ll use that. If you would kindly meet me there. . . . Good, in fifteen minutes then. Do not mention this to anyone, or I will face the kind of reception committee I can do without. . . . No, he won’t be with me—no, definitely not.’

  Not looking at L.N. Agarwal but at a glass paperweight on his desk, the Chief Minister said: ‘I must go to the medical college and see what I can do. I think it best if you don’t come with me. If you remain here in my office, I will be able to get in touch with you immediately if there are developments, and my staff will be at your service.’

  L.N. Agarwal passed his hand restlessly through the horseshoe of hair around his head.

  ‘I would prefer to come with you,’ he said. ‘Or at least to give you a police escort.’

  ‘I do not think that would be for the best.’

  ‘You need protection. Those students—’

  ‘Agarwal, you are not Chief Minister yet,’ said S.S. Sharma quietly, but with a rather unhappy smile. L.N. Agarwal frowned, but did not say another word.

  12.24

  When he got to the room where the injured boy was lying, the Chief Minister, hardened though he had been by the deaths and injuries caused by British lathi charges and firings, shook his head for a minute in pity and disbelief. He glanced through the window at the students sitting on the lawn and the road and tried to imagine their feelings of shock and anger. It was as well that they did not know he was in the college. The Superintendent was saying something to him, something about the impossibility of resuming classes. The Chief Minister’s attention, however, had wandered to an old man in typical Congress garb, who was sitting quietly in a corner and had not stood up to greet him. He appeared to be lost in his own world, as he himself was.

  ‘And who are you?’ asked the Chief Minister.

  ‘I am the father of this unfortunate boy,’ said the man.

  The Chief Minister bowed his head.

  ‘You must come with me,’ he said. ‘We can settle the issues later. But you and I have to sort out the immediate problem immediately. In a private room, not with so many people around.’

  ‘I cannot leave this room. My son does not have long to live, I understand.’

  The Chief Minister looked around the room and asked everyone to leave except for one doctor. Then he said to the old man:

  ‘I am guilty of letting this happen. I accept the responsibility for it. But I need your help. You see how it is. Only you can save the situation. If you do not, there will be many more unfortunate boys and many more grief-stricken fathers.’

  ‘What can I do?’ The old man spoke calmly, as if nothing much mattered to him any more.

  ‘The students are inflamed. When your son dies, they will want to take out a procession. It is bound to be an emotional event, and will get out of hand. If that occurs, and it is almost inevitable, who can answer for what will happen?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Speak to the students. Tell them to condole with you, tell them to attend the funeral. It will take place wherever you wish it to; I will not allow any police to be present. But please advise them not to take out a procession. That will have an uncontainable effect.’

  The old man began to weep. After a while he controlled himself and, looking at his son, whose head was covered almost entirely in bandages, he said in the same calm voice as before: ‘I will do as you say.’

  Then, to himself, he added: ‘So he will have died for nothing?’

  The Chief Minister caught the remark, though it was uttered in a low voice. He said: ‘Indeed, I will make sure that he will not have. I will try to defuse the situation in my own way. But nothing I do can have the chastening effect of a few words from you. Your act will have prevented more grief than most people can prevent in their lives.’

  The Chief Minister returned, as he had come, incognito. Once back in his office he asked L.N. Agarwal to cancel the curfew and to release all the students who had been arrested in the demonstration earlier. ‘And send
for the President of the students’ union,’ he added.

  Over L.N. Agarwal’s protest that it was a march instigated by the union that had been the genesis of this problem in the first place, the Chief Minister met the young man, who seemed less self-assured but more determined than before. He had wanted to bring Rasheed with him—one Hindu, one Muslim, to emphasize the secularism of the socialists—but Rasheed had looked so ill with distress and guilt that he had changed his mind. Now the young man was here alone, face to face with the Chief Minister and the Home Minister, and he was patently nervous.

  The Chief Minister said: ‘I agree to your terms, but I want the movement to be called off. Are you prepared to do that? Do you have the courage to avoid further bloodshed?’

  ‘The question of membership of the students’ unions?’ said the young man.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Chief Minister. L.N. Agarwal stood tight-lipped nearby, and could not trust himself to utter a word. His silence, he knew, implied consent, and it was a difficult silence to maintain.

  ‘The primary schoolteachers’ salaries?’

  ‘We will go into the question, and we will improve the salaries, but we do not know if the extent of the improvement will satisfy you completely. The resources of the state are limited. Still, we will try.’

  Thus they went down the list of demands one by one.

  ‘What I can offer,’ said the young man, ‘is a temporary withdrawal. I have your promise, and you have mine—assuming I can persuade the others. But if the demands are not in fact met, this understanding will no longer hold.’