The Great Indian Novel book excerpt: Renunciation— the Bed of Arrows

Editor’s note: The Great Indian Novel (1989) is Shashi Tharoo’s debut work of fiction in which he deftly combines his adulation for the great Indian epics – Mahabharata and Ramayana – along with the freedom movement, to come up with a work that is high on satire and rich in history. His exploration of the relevance of the ancient Hindu concepts of dharma & karma in the present-day world is fascinating and the play of words to describe is political satire is extraordinary. The following is an excerpt from The Eleventh Book: Renunciation—or, the Bed of Arrows of the book, The Great Indian Novel: ‘Gentlemen,’ announced Viscount Drewpad, ‘I have summoned you here today to tell you that His Majesty’s Government—in other words, I— have had enough.’ He looked around the table at the representatives of the three parties the British had chosen to deal with: the Kauravas (Dhritarashtra, the ebullient Mohammed Rafi and myself), the Sikhs (Sardar Khushkismat Singh, whose stock of jokes about his community was rivalled only by other people’s anecdotes about him) and the Muslim Group (Karna, a robed mullah in a hennaed beard and a surrogate for the Gaga Shah, who was himself already out of the country arranging his post-Independence future abroad). We all looked back at the Viceroy, but none of us spoke: with this superficial and supercilious man even Karna was at a loss for words. ‘Whitehall has formulated, and successive Cabinet missions have presented, a number of plans to you all relating to a possible transfer of power from British rule to Indian self-government,’ he went on. ‘Each and every one of them has foundered on the intractable opposition of one or other of you.’ To avoid giving gratuitous offence with those words he fixed his gaze directly on the Sardar, who had, in fact, cheerfully given his assent to each and every variant of the Independence formulae thus far proposed. But he might as well have looked at Karna, because we had tried to bend as far as we could to accommodate him, and each time he had balked. [caption id=“attachment_2334826” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Book Cover[/caption] Various schemes had been drawn up, grouping the Muslim provinces separately, proposing ‘lists’ of states in a weak confederation, devising elaborate guarantees of minority rights and communal representation. Each had foundered on the rocks of Karna’s intransigence. At one point Gangaji—who no longer came himself to these negotiations, saying he preferred to give us moral guidance from outside—suggested that as the price of keeping India united we should simply offer Mohammed Ali Karna the premiership of all India. So central was Karna’s personal ambition to his political stand that it might even have worked, but this time it was Dhritarashtra who refused to countenance the suggestion. Drewpad was really speaking for all of us as he went on: ‘We cannot, with the best will in the world, go on indefinitely like this.’ Karna glowered at him. ‘We have not come here, Viceroy, to be lectured at like errant schoolchildren,’ he snapped.’ ‘I have not finished.’ Drewpad fixed him with an amiable gaze. ‘I wish to tell you today that I, for my part, have decided to wash my hands of your squabbling. You all agree on one thing: that in the end you want the British out. Very well, we shall proceed on that basis. Whether you agree on anything else or not, the British will pull out—on August the fifteenth, 1947.’ To say that the seven of us around the table gasped in astonishment might seem a cliché, but like most clichés this too was true. ‘But that’s barely eight months away!’ Karna, as usual, was the quickest to recover. ‘What made you choose such a date?’ ‘It’s my wedding anniversary,’ Drewpad responded innocently. ‘This is preposterous!’ Rafi was shouting. ‘You can’t do this!’ Lord Drewpad picked up his papers and drew his chair back. ‘Oh, yes? As our American cousins say, Mr Rafi, can’t I just!’ And before we knew it he was striding out of the room. The deadline was impossible. ‘Leave us,’ Gangaji had written to Drewpad’s predecessor when he was jailed for his Quit India call. ‘Leave us to God or to anarchy.’ It had sounded good at the time; but now, when the British seemed to be about to do precisely that, we felt sick to the pits of our stomachs. We met the Kaurava Working Committee, at the Mahaguru’s feet the next day. It was one of his days of silence, which meant that he would listen sagely to what we were saying, then scrawl a few words on the back of an envelope that Sarah-behn would read aloud to the rest of us. ‘One hell of a way to chair a meeting,’ Rafi breathed in an aside to me as we sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘Especially the most important meeting of our lives.’ But of course, Gangaji wasn’t chairing it at all; Rafi was the President of the party. Yet everyone knew whose view mattered the most in our conclaves. ‘The first thing to be sure of is, does he mean what he says?’ someone asked. ‘From what I have seen of Drewpad,’ responded Dhritarashtra wearily, and without irony—you know how he was forever speaking in visual images— he strikes me as the kind of person who always means what he says.’ ‘In that case we have our backs against the wall.’ This was Rafi. ‘All that Karna and his cohorts have to do is to stick obstinately to their demand for a separate state. With the British scheduled to leave for certain by a specific date, they know that sooner or later we’ll have to give in.’ It was a difficult thing for Rafi to say, because as a Kaurava Muslim he was amongst the party’s strongest opponents of the demand for Karnistan. If a separate Muslim state came into being it would, after all, leave him and his co-religionists in the Kaurava camp isolated, on both sides of the communal divide. A hubbub of comment followed, largely tending to agree with the President. Gangaji raised his hand. We were all silent as he traced words on to a scrap of paper in his spiky pencilled hand. ‘You must never give in,’ Sarah-behn read, ‘to the demand to dismember the country.’ ‘Gangaji, we understand how you feel,’ Dhritarashtra said. ‘We have fought by your side for our freedom, all these years. We have imbibed your principles and convictions. You have led us to the brink of victory.’ He paused, and his voice became softer. ‘But now, the time has come for us to apply our principles in the face of the acid test of reality. Rafi is right: Karna and his friends will simply dig in their heels. Separation or chaos, they will say; and on Direct Action Day last year they showed us they can create chaos. How much worse will it be without the British forces here? Might it not be better to agree in advance to a—the words stick in my throat, Gangaji—civilized Partition, than to resist and risk destroying everything?’ The Mahaguru had already started writing before Dhritarashtra had finished. ‘If you agree to break the country, you will break my heart,’ he wrote. ‘It will break many hearts, Gangaji,’ his chosen heir said sadly. ‘Mine, and all of ours, included. But we may have no choice.’ ‘Then I must leave you now,’ Sarah-behn read in a quavering voice. ‘I cannot be party to such a decision. God bless you, my sons.’ The Mahaguru waited until the last word was read, then nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly like a painful lump in his throat. He slowly got up and, with one hand on Sarah-behn’s shoulder, hobbled out of the room. Nobody spoke; and nobody tried to stop him. His departure, as we had all known it would, made the rest of the meeting much easier. Misgivings were voiced on all sides, but we had struggled too long for freedom to want to tarnish it when it was within our grasp. It was better to give Karna what he wanted and build the India of our dreams in peace and freedom without him. That evening, the Working Committee of the Kaurava Party resolved unanimously to accept in principle the partition of the country. It was the first time we had ever gone against the expressed wishes of Gangaji. His era was over.