The Kanpur Road
He sat there in his
doorway like some great idol. A sad, benign smile-a smile of pleasure, not
necessity-on that strong brown face heightened the impression. But his
stiff white beard, parted and curled away from the middle, wide shoulders
that bore their years lightly, the shining medals strung across a mighty
chest, all showed a fighter.
"Sardar",
for I saw that such was his rank, "do you know the Kanpur Road?"
"Aye, baba
(my son). I have a scar for every mile of the way."
"You fought in
the Mutiny?"
"A
little".
"No, I know better.
Tell me about it. Please!"
"Nay, there is
nothing to tell. We held the enemy while the main body retreated. Yes, even
as you say, it was there I earned this star. How? There was little to do.
The heart ached more than the arm after it was done. A rebel cut down the
brigadier as he and I were reconnoitring one night. I fought and killed
that rebel with this same worn sword. I carried the brigadier to his own
men. It was not very hard. What has the heart to do with it? It was my own
brother that I killed. It could not have been otherwise. Had I not eaten
British salt? Had I not given my word to defend them against whatsoever
enemy? Were they not, at least then, out- numbered, without hope? Then
could I, a Sikh, have done otherwise? But I buried my brother first with
his sword in his hand. And I would not dress the wound that he gave me on
the cheek. So, it festered. Now the left side of my face cannot smile, nor
show any emotion at all. The star I wear, not to show others my glory, but
to remind myself of my grief. But I digress..."
He never did show me
the Kanpur Road. But he did tell a great deal about himself to the
wide-eyed youngster before him. He had campaigned in Abyssinia with Napier,
entered Kabul and Kandahar with Roberts, fought in almost every outpost of
the desert, mountains, swamp, and wilderness that mark India's savage
frontier. His choice was ever the desperate enterprise, the forlorn hope,
the lonely task. When, at the end of each campaign, the inevitable medal
came to be pinned upon his chest, his thoughts always went back to his
first decoration, the award for fratricidal loyalty. Then the great, livid
scar began to hurt again, his face tightened up more than ever into a
frozen bronze mask. The coldness with which his extraordinary commissions
were carried out, the lack of warmth with which he received the medals, the
chill stare with which he met all praise, caused acute discomfort to his
officers which made them transfer him from division to division. Thus it
was that his sword opened the first secure path for the grimy civilisation
of Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield in many an unhappy comer of the
world. When, finally, the time came for retirement, he accepted from the
Government, as a reward for the loyalty that he had ever shown to the salt
that he had eaten, a gift of land near Kanpur; far away from his native
Punjab, but as near as possible to his brother's unmarked grave.
As I listened to
him, I forgot the parched earth, the dull haze that seemed the smoke of an
all-consuming fire. I forgot the pain of hunger, the terror in my green
young soul at the unknown future that was in store for me even if I managed
to reach the city of Kanpur. The dispirited peasantry, drifting aimlessly
in the background between the repellent poles of a countryside squeezed out
by famine and the newly opened factories at Kanpur glutted with cheap
labour, no longer numbed me with the fright that came from the sharp
consciousness that I, too, was one of them. After all, I thought, I can
always find the road to Kanpur, but where could I meet another such as
Sardar Govind Singh, as honourable a man as ever obeyed his code? He was
worthy to have gazed upon those pure-souled heros and demi-gods of our
mythological antiquity who fought their superhuman battles with mysterious
weapons to turn back the forces of darkness from the rule of this world. He
was worthy to have stood with King Pauravas on that fateful day when the
tricky manoeuvres of Yavana invaders prevailed against simple bravery. Our
village school teacher, now dead of starvation and cholera, had told me the
story. The invaders did not fight man to man; one could not come to grips
with them. A sudden Hank attack by their cavalry wiped out the Indian
chariots, upset the elephants. Before order could be restored, there
appeared on the plain a fearful engine of destruction, the Macedonian
phalanx: sixteen thousand men locked into a precise, compact formation by
their enormous twenty-one-foot spears. The shattering impact of their
charge swept away the rabble. Yet dauntless king Pauravas held out with a
loyal handful on a lonely knoll by the riverside till it became clear that
all was indeed lost. The bravery of his defence, the matchless dignity of
his surrender, wrung words of admiration from the youthful conqueror;
Alexander converted a noble foe into a loyal friend by restoring his lands
and adding to them. Even, so, thought I, had Govind Singh come by tokens of
appreciation and a gift of land from our modern conquerors.
But it was not he
who showed me the road to Kanpur.
I repassed this
scene of a childhood memory in 1938 and thought it symbolic that the Sardar
never did guide me to my destination. The way I had travelled through the
intervening years would never have been his way. My struggles, too, had
been in many lands, but chiefly in classrooms, laboratories, factories. I
did volunteer for the Republican army in Spain) only to reach Franco's
prison without being able to fire a single effective round on the actual
field of battle. I had neither medals nor land. My scars had been seared
into my mind by the turmoil of social upheavals. The first of these scars
was earned on Boston Common the night they electrocuted Sacco and Vanzetti.
In fact, what had brought me again to Kanpur was a gigantic strike, and I
knew that it was not our leadership, nor the heroic efforts of the workers
that had been the decisive factor in our victory. We won primarily because
the capital and capitalists ranged against us were foreign, not Indian. [My
reward, which came soon afterwards when leading a strike against our own
millowners at Ahmedabad, turned out to be jail and tuberculosis.]
The peasants of that
region recalled the grim Sardar only as a master more oppressive than the
usual run of landlords. They brushed aside my queries as to the declining
years and manner of death of such a person. Something of my reputation must
have spread out from Kanpur, because I was asked again and again, "You
have helped the mill-hands obtain I higher wages; but what of a better deal
for the farm labourer? Your speeches foretold the day when the mazdur
would take over his factory; when will the kisan own the land he
cultivates?" And the light of hope that shone from within upon
toil-worn faces made it clear that Govind Singh had not only killed a
brother, but had dealt mortal wounds to his own historic period, cutting at
long centuries of stagnant agricultural production. The regions he had
helped to open up were now held not by armies of occupation but by the far
deadlier grip of banks and factories. To me, his memory was like a beacon
pointing out a deserted road, the road of abstract loyalty and unthinking
courage. We had to follow another path, in order to free both worker and
peasant from slavery to human masters, to the machine, and to the soil.
Govind Singh had
never eaten British salt; only Indian salt taxed by the British. The lands
that Alexander bestowed upon King Pauravas were Indian lands that could
never have been garrisoned by the conqueror's mutinous soldiers.
[My place was not
with the heroes, but with the rabble, with the men who had been pressed
into the ranks by force of arms, or force of hunger, with nothing to fight
or work for and little to gain; whose function in the epics was to be
slaughtered by the heroes; whose role, according to the historians, was to
provide a mere background for the deeds of great men. The heroes of a
money-making society rose from the people, at the expense of 'the
people; I could rise only with the common people.]
Fergusson &
Willingdon College Magazine, Poona, 1939, pp.10-12 The initial two-thirds
of this story was written as an English At theme at Harvard in 1924.
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