India by V. S. Naipaul Read Free Book Online Page B

Even after he had been appointed area leader of the Sena – that appointment had come three years before – he still did that kind of social work. When we had arrived, for instance, there was a lady in the kitchen with his mother. She had come to complain about a water-connection. She had paid somebody 1000 rupees for the connection, and so far she had had no connection and no water. The area leader had to interest himself in the problems of the people; it was good for the party politically.
    Did his blood still boil? Or had he become calmer, with the success of the Sena, and his own position as area leader?
    His blood still boiled. ‘There is a place called Bhiwandi, about 25 kilometres from here. When India lost a cricket match to Pakistan, they used to let off crackers in the marketplace, the Muslims there. When I was small I could do nothing about it. But now I can’t bear it. There used to be groups of Muslims who used to come over from Bhiwandi to Thane here. The local people were so full of resentment against those Muslims that they had clashes with them in 1982, and they broke open the Muslim shops and sold the goods to the people. They sold towels for two rupees. The Muslim shops have come back now, but they live in fear. The Shiv Sena is very powerful. I will tell you: the Muslims even give donations to the Shiv Sena.’
    Nikhil said on his own, ‘But isn’t this extortion?’
    Mr Patil didn’t think so.
    I wanted to know – thinking of his adoration for Ganpati – what was more important for him: religion or politics? In Nikhil’s Marathi translation this came out as:
dharma
or
rajnithi?
    Mr Patil said, ‘Dharma.’ Religion. But this wasn’t the personalfaith in Ganpati he had talked about. With the Sena’s success and growth, the Sena’s ideas had grown bigger: the religion that Mr Patil meant was Hinduism itself. ‘There is a plot to wipe Hinduism off the face of the earth.’ It was a Muslim plot, and that was why it was vital to keep Hinduism alive.
    Two more thin Indian cats or kittens had come into the sitting room – a tabby, and another ginger-coloured cat – and they were walking about inquiringly. Some friends or relations of the Patils had also dropped in, to listen to what Mr Patil had to say to his visitors.
    I asked whether Hinduism could be kept alive, if Indian business and industry kept on growing as it had been growing.
    He didn’t see any contradiction. ‘If you want to survive, you have to make money.’
    ‘That isn’t the Gandhian attitude.’
    ‘I have contempt for Gandhi. He believed in turning the other cheek. I believe that if someone slaps you, you must have the power to ask him why he slapped you, or you must slap him back. I hate the idea of non-violence.’
    This was in keping with his Maratha warrior pride. I wondered how much of Maratha history he knew. What ideas of history were afloat in this locality, in all these narow lanes? Did he know Shivaji’s dates?
    He did. He said, ‘1630 to 1680. I know all that. Shivaji saved the Maharashtrians from atrocities. But then the English came, and they committed atrocities on everybody else.’
    I could understand the larger communal mood here, the conflict between Hindus and Muslims. But I wondered about the meaning caste would have in an industrial area like this, where people lived so close together. What were the Sena’s relations with the Dalits? From the little I had seen, the Dalits had developed the beginnings of that self-confidence, the
atma-vishwas
, which had been part of Ganpati’s gift to Mr Patil. Did that touch some chord in him? Did his concern for Hinduism lead him to some fellow feeling for them?
    He was rigid. ‘We have no differences with them. They don’t consider themselves Maharashtrians or Hindus. They are Buddhists.’
    Hadn’t they been driven out of Hinduism by caste prejudice? Was there no sympathy for them? When he was a boy, his blood had boiled when he had heard his leader speak of