"I did not offer you my advice, Sandip. I wish you, too, would refrain from giving me yours. Besides, it is useless. And there is another thing I want to tell you. You and your followers have been secretly worrying and oppressing my tenantry. I cannot allow that any longer. So I must ask you to leave my territory."
"For fear of the Mussulmans, or is there any other fear you have to threaten me with?"
"There are fears the want of which is cowardice. In the name of those fears, I tell you, Sandip, you must go. In five days I shall be starting for Calcutta. I want you to accompany me. You may of course stay in my house there--to that there is no objection."
"All right, I have still five day"s time then. Meanwhile, Queen Bee, let me hum to you my song of parting from your honey-hive.
Ah! you poet of modern Bengal! Throw open your doors and let me plunder your words. The theft is really yours, for it is my song which you have made your own--let the name be yours by all means, but the song is mine." With this Sandip struck up in a deep, husky voice, which threatened to be out of tune, a song in the Bhairavi mode:
"In the springtime of your kingdom, my Queen, Meetings and partings chase each other in their endless hide and seek, And flowers blossom in the wake of those that droop and die in the shade.
In the springtime of your kingdom, my Queen, My meeting with you had its own songs, But has not also my leave-taking any gift to offer you?
That gift is my secret hope, which I keep hidden in the shadows of your flower garden, That the rains of July may sweetly temper your fiery June."
His boldness was immense--boldness which had no veil, but was naked as fire. One finds no time to stop it: it is like trying to resist a thunderbolt: the lightning flashes: it laughs at all resistance.
I left the room. As I was pa.s.sing along the verandah towards the inner apartments, Amulya suddenly made his appearance and came and stood before me.
"Fear nothing, Sister Rani," he said. "I am off tonight and shall not return unsuccessful."
"Amulya," said I, looking straight into his earnest, youthful face, "I fear nothing for myself, but may I never cease to fear for you."
Amulya turned to go, but before he was out of sight I called him back and asked: "Have you a mother, Amulya?"
"I have."
"A sister?"
"No, I am the only child of my mother. My father died when I was quite little."
"Then go back to your mother, Amulya."
"But, Sister Rani, I have now both mother and sister."
"Then, Amulya, before you leave tonight, come and have your dinner here."
"There won"t be time for that. Let me take some food for the journey, consecrated with your touch."
"What do you specially like, Amulya?"
"If I had been with my mother I should have had lots of Poush cakes. Make some for me with your own hands, Sister Rani!"
25. Of the __Ramayana__. The story of his devotion to his elder brother Rama and his brother"s wife Sita, has become a byword.
Chapter Ten
Nikhil"s Story
XII
I LEARNT from my master that Sandip had joined forces with Harish Kundu, and there was to be a grand celebration of the worship of the demon-destroying G.o.ddess. Harish Kundu was extorting the expenses from his tenantry. Pandits Kaviratna and Vidyavagish had been commissioned to compose a hymn with a double meaning.
My master has just had a pa.s.sage at arms with Sandip over this.
"Evolution is at work amongst the G.o.ds as well," says Sandip.
"The grandson has to remodel the G.o.ds created by the grandfather to suit his own taste, or else he is left an atheist. It is my mission to modernize the ancient deities. I am born the saviour of the G.o.ds, to emanc.i.p.ate them from the thraldom of the past."
I have seen from our boyhood what a juggler with ideas is Sandip.
He has no interest in discovering truth, but to make a quizzical display of it rejoices his heart. Had he been born in the wilds of Africa he would have spent a glorious time inventing argument after argument to prove that cannibalism is the best means of promoting true communion between man and man. But those who deal in delusion end by deluding themselves, and I fully believe that, each time Sandip creates a new fallacy, he persuades himself that he has found the truth, however contradictory his creations may be to one another.
However, I shall not give a helping hand to establish a liquor distillery in my country. The young men, who are ready to offer their services for their country"s cause, must not fall into this habit of getting intoxicated. The people who want to exact work by drugging methods set more value on the excitement than on the minds they intoxicate.
I had to tell Sandip, in Bimala"s presence, that he must go.
Perhaps both will impute to me the wrong motive. But I must free myself also from all fear of being misunderstood. Let even Bimala misunderstand me ...
A number of Mahomedan preachers are being sent over from Dacca.
The Mussulmans in my territory had come to have almost as much of an aversion to the killing of cows as the Hindus. But now cases of cow-killing are cropping up here and there. I had the news first from some of my Mussulman tenants with expressions of their disapproval. Here was a situation which I could see would be difficult to meet. At the bottom was a pretence of fanaticism, which would cease to be a pretence if obstructed. That is just where the ingenuity of the move came in!
I sent for some of my princ.i.p.al Hindu tenants and tried to get them to see the matter in its proper light. "We can be staunch in our own convictions," I said, "but we have no control over those of others. For all that many of us are Vaishnavas, those of us who are Shaktas go on with their animal sacrifices just the same. That cannot be helped. We must, in the same way, let the Mussulmans do as they think best. So please refrain from all disturbance."
"Maharaja," they replied, "these outrages have been unknown for so long."
"That was so," I said, "because such was their spontaneous desire. Let us behave in such a way that the same may become true, over again. But a breach of the peace is not the way to bring this about."
"No, Maharaja," they insisted, "those good old days are gone.
This will never stop unless you put it down with a strong hand."
"Oppression," I replied, "will not only not prevent cow-killing, it may lead to the killing of men as well."
One of them had had an English education. He had learnt to repeat the phrases of the day. "It is not only a question of orthodoxy," he argued. "Our country is mainly agricultural, and cows are ..."
"Buffaloes in this country," I interrupted, "likewise give milk and are used for ploughing. And therefore, so long as we dance frantic dances on our temple pavements, smeared with their blood, their severed heads carried on our shoulders, religion will only laugh at us if we quarrel with Mussulmans in her name, and nothing but the quarrel itself will remain true. If the cow alone is to be held sacred from slaughter, and not the buffalo, then that is bigotry, not religion."
"But are you not aware, sir, of what is behind all this?"
pursued the English-knowing tenant. "This has only become possible because the Mussulman is a.s.sured of safety, even if he breaks the law. Have you not heard of the Pachur case?"
"Why is it possible," I asked, "to use the Mussulmans thus, as tools against us? Is it not because we have fashioned them into such with our own intolerance? That is how Providence punishes us. Our acc.u.mulated sins are being visited on our own heads."
"Oh, well, if that be so, let them be visited on us. But we shall have our revenge. We have undermined what was the greatest strength of the authorities, their devotion to their own laws.
Once they were truly kings, dispensing justice; now they themselves will become law-breakers, and so no better than robbers. This may not go down to history, but we shall carry it in our hearts for all time ..."
The evil reports about me which are spreading from paper to paper are making me notorious. News comes that my effigy has been burnt at the river-side burning-ground of the Chakravartis, with due ceremony and enthusiasm; and other insults are in contemplation. The trouble was that they had come to ask me to take shares in a Cotton Mill they wanted to start. I had to tell them that I did not so much mind the loss of my own money, but I would not be a party to causing a loss to so many poor shareholders.
"Are we to understand, Maharaja," said my visitors, "that the prosperity of the country does not interest you?"