385practice to allow them whatever they obtained in excess of the agreed British share) but for the administration of the state they had trusted no one but civil servants of their own race, selected in, partially trained in, and imported from England - or, later, brown equivalents so close in education and ethos as made no appreciable difference.

And indeed, apart from racial mistrust, there was, the Nawab Sahib was compelled to admit, the question of competence. Most zamindars - himself, alas, perhaps included - could hardly administer even their own estates and were fleeced by their munshis and money-lenders. For most of the landlords the primary question of management was not indeed how to increase their income but how to spend it. Very few invested it in industry or urban property. Some, certainly, had spent it on music and books and the fine arts. Others, like the present Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, who had been a good friend of the Nawab Sahib's father, had spent it to build up influence in politics.

But for the most part the princes and landlords had squandered their money on high living of one kindor another : on hunting or wine or women or opium. A couple of images flashed irresistibly and unwelcomely across his mind. One ruler had such a passion for dogs that his entire life revolved around them : he dreamed, slept, woke, imagined, fantasized about dogs ; everything he could do was done to their greater glory. Another was an opium addict who was only content when a few women were thrown into his lap ; even then, he was not always roused to action ; sometimes he just snored on.

The Nawab of Baitar's thoughts continued to oscillate between the debate on the floor of the Assembly and his own meditations. At one point there was a brief intervention by L.N. Agarwal, who made a few amusing comments - at which even Mahesh Kapoor laughed. The Nawab Sahib stared at the bald head ringed with a horseshoe of grey hair and wondered at the thoughts that must be seething under that layer of flesh and bone. How could a man like this deliberately, indeed happily, cause so much misery to him and to those he held so dear? What satisfac-tion could it have given him that the relatives of someone who had worsted him in a debate would be dispossessed of the home in which they had spent the greater part of their lives?

It was now about half-past four, and there was less than half an hour before the division of votes. The final speeches were continuing and the Nawab Sahib listened with a somewhat wry expression as his sister-in-law circumscribed the institution of zamindari with a luminous purple halo.

Begum Abida Khan : For more than an hour we have been listening to speech after speech from the government benches, filled with the most odious self-congratulation. I did not think that I would wish to speak again, but I must do so now. I would have thought that it would be more appropriate to let those people speak whose death and burial you wish to preside over - I mean the zamindars, whom you wish to deprive of justice and redress and the means of livelihood. The same record has been going on and on for an hour - if it is not the Minister of Revenue it is some pawn of his who has been trained to sing the same song: His Master's Voice. I may tell you that the music is not very pleasant: it is monotonous without being soothing. It is not the voice of reason or reasonableness but the voice of majority power and self-righteousness. But it is pointless to speak further on this.

I pity this government that has lost its way and is trying to find a path out of the swamp of its own policies. They have no foresight, and they cannot, they dare not keep their eyes on the future. It is said that we should 'Beware of the day that is to come', and in the same way I say to this Congress government: 'Beware of the time that you are about to bring upon yourself and upon this country.' It is three years since we obtained Independence but look at the poor of the land: they have neither food to eat nor clothes to wear nor shelter to protect themselves from the sky. You promised Paradise and green gardens under which rivers flow, and gulled the people into believing that the cause of their pitiable condition was zamindari. Well,zamindari will go, but when your promises of these green gardens prove to be false, let us see then what the people say about you and do to you. You are dispossessing eight lakh people, and openly inviting communism. The people will soon find out who you are.

What are you doing that we did not do? You are not giving them the land, you are renting it out just as we did. But what do you care about them? We lived for generations together, we were like their fathers and grandfathers, they loved us and we loved them, we knew their temperament and they knew ours. They were happy with whatever we gave them, and we were happy with whatever they gave us.

You have come between us and destroyed what was hallowed by the bonds of ancient emotion. And the crimes and oppressions you blame on us, what proof do these poor people have that you will be any better than you claim we are? They will have to go to the venal clerk and the gluttonous Sub-Divisional Officer, and they will be sucked dry. We were never like that. You have separated the nail from the flesh, and you are happy with the result

As for compensation, I have said enough already. But is this decency, is this a just provision - that you should go to someone's shop and tell him: 'Give me this and this at such and such a price' and if he doesn't agree to sell it, you take it anyway? And then when he pleads with you at least to give him what you promised him, to turn around and you then say, 'Here is one rupee now, and the rest you will get in instalments over twenty-five years'?

You may call us all kinds of names and invent all manner of miseries for us - but the fact is that it is we zamindars who made this province what it is - who made it strong, who gave it its special flavour.

In every field of life we have made our contribution, a contribution that will long outlive us, and that you cannot wipe away. The universities, the colleges, the traditions of classical music, the schools, the very culture of this place were established by us. When foreigners and those from other states in our country come to this province what do they see - what do

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they admire? The Barsaat Mahal, the Shahi Darvaza, the Imambaras, the gardens and the mansions that have come down to you from us. These things that are fragrant to the world you say are filled with the scent of exploitation, of rotting corpses. Are you not ashamed when you speak in this vein? When you curse and rob those who created this splendour and this beauty? When you do not give them enough compensation even to whitewash the buildings that are the heritage of this city and this state?

This is the worst form of meanness, this is the grasping attitude of the village shopkeeper, the bania who smiles and smiles and grasps without any mercy -

The Hon'ble the Minister for Home Affairs (Shri L.N. Agarwal) : I hope that the honourable member is not casting imputations upon my community. This is getting to be common sport in this House.

Begum Abida Khan : You understand very well what I am saying, you who are a master at twisting words and manipulating the law. But I will not waste my time arguing with you. Today you have made common cause with the Minister of Revenue in the shameful exploitation of a scapegoat class, but tomorrow will show you what such friendships of convenience are worth - and when you look around for friends everyone will have turned their face away from you. Then you will remember this day and what I have said, and you and your government will come to wish that you had behaved with greater justice and humanity.

There followed an extremely long-winded speech by a socialist member; and then the Chief Minister S.S. Sharma talked for about five minutes, thanking various people for their role in shaping this legislation -^ particularly Mahesh Kapoor, the Minister of Revenue, and Abdus Salaam, his Parliamentary Secretary. He advised the landowners to live in amity with their erstwhile tenants when the divestiture of their property took place. They should live together like brothers, he stated mildly and nasally. It was an opportunity for the landlords to show their goodness of heart.

389They should think of the teachings of Gandhiji and devote their lives to the service of their fellow- men. Finally Mahesh Kapoor, the chief architect of the bill, got the chance to round off the debate in the House. But time was too short for him to say more than a few words : The Hon'ble the Minister of Revenue (Shri Mahesh Kapoor) : Mr Speaker, I had hoped that my friend from the socialist benches who talked so movingly of equality and a classless society and took the Government to task for producing an impotent and unjust bill, would be a just man himself and would confer some equality on me. It is the end of the last day. If he had taken a little less time for his speech I would have had a little more. As it is I now have barely two minutes to speak. He claimed that my bill was a measure created with the intention merely of preventing revolution - a revolution that he believes to be desirable. If that is so, I would be interested to see which way he and his party vote in a couple of minutes. After the honourable Chief Minister's words of thanks and advice advice which I sincerely hope will be taken by the landlords - I have nothing to add except a few further words of thanks - to my colleagues in this section of the House and, yes, in that section too, who have made the passage of this bill possible, and to the officers of the Revenue Department and the Printing Department and the Law Department, in particular the drafting cell and the Office of the Legal Remembrancer. I thank them all for their months and years of assistance and advice, and I hope that I speak for the people of Purva Pradesh when I say that my thanks are not merely personal.

The Hon'ble the Speaker : The question before the House is that the Purva Pradesh Zamindari Abolition Bill of original date 1948 as passed by the Legislative Assembly, amended by the Legislative Council and further amended by the Legislative Assembly, be passed.

The motion was put and the House passed the bill by a large majority, consisting mainly of the Congress Party,

390whose numbers dominated the House. The Socialist Party had to vote, however reluctantly, in favour of the bill on the grounds that half a loaf was better than none, and despite the fact that it somewhat assuaged the hunger that would have allowed them to flourish. Had they voted against it they would never have lived it down. The Democratic Party voted against it unanimously, also as expected. The smaller parties and Independents voted predominantly for the bill.

Begum Abida Khan : With the permission of the Speaker I would like a minute's time to say something.

The Hon'ble the Speaker: I will give you a minute's time.

Begum Abida Khan: I would like to say on behalf of myself and the Democratic Party that the advice given by the pious and honourable Chief Minister to the zamindars - that they should maintain good relations with their tenants - is very valuable advice, and I thank him for it. But we would have maintained such excellent relations anyway regardless of his excellent advice, and regardless of the passage of this bill - this bill which will force so many people into poverty and unemployment, which will utterly destroy the economy and culture of this province, and which will at the same time grant not the least benefit to those who -

The Hon'ble the Minister of Revenue (Shri Mahesh Kapoor) : Mr Speaker, what sort of occasion is this for speech-making?

The Hon'ble the Speaker: I gave her permission merely to make a short statement. I would request the honourable member -

Begum Abida Khan: As a result of its unjust passage by a brute majority we are left at this time with no other constitutional means of expressing our displeasure and sense of injustice other than to walk out of this House, which is a constitutional recourse, and I therefore call upon the members of my party to stage a walk-out to protest the passage of this bill.

391The members of the Democratic Party walked out of the Assembly. There were a few hisses and cries of 'Shame!' but for the most part the Assembly was silent. It was the end of the day, so the gesture was symbolic rather than effective. After a few moments, the Speaker adjourned the House until eleven o'clock the next morning. Mahesh Kapoor gathered his papers together, looked up at the huge, frosted dome, sighed, then allowed his gaze to wander around the slowly emptying chamber. He looked across at the gallery and his eye caught that of the Nawab Sahib. They nodded at each other in a gesture of greeting that was almost entirely friendly, though the discomfort of the situation - not quite an irony - was lost on neither of them. Neither of them wished to talk to the other just yet, and each of them understood this. So Mahesh Kapoor continued to put his papers in order, and the Nawab Sahib, stroking his beard in thought, walked out of the gallery to look for the Chief Minister.

392-Part Six6.1

ARRIVING at the Haridas College of Music, Ustad Majeed Khan nodded absently to a couple of other music teachers, grimaced with distaste at two female kathak dancers who were carrying their jangling anklets into a nearby practice room on the ground floor, and arrived at the closed door of his room.

Outside the room, in casual disarray, lay three sets of chappals and one pair of shoes. Ustad Majeed Khan, realizing that this meant that he was forty-five minutes late, sighed a half-irritated and' half- exhausted 'Ya Allah', took off his own peshawari chappals, and entered the room.

The room that he entered was a plain, rectangular, highceilinged box with not very much natural light.

What few rays came in from outside were provided by a small skylight high on the far wall. On the wall to the left as he entered was a long cupboard with a rack where a number of tanpuras were resting. On the floor was a pale blue unpatterned cotton rug; this had been quite difficult to obtain, as most of the rugs available on the market had floral or other designs of one kind or another. But he had insisted on having a plain rug so that he would not be distracted in his music, and the authorities had very surprisingly agreed to find him one. On the rug facing him sat a short, fat young man whom he had never seen; the man stood up as soon as he entered. Facing away from him were seated a young man and two young women. They turned when the door opened, and immediately they saw it was him, got up respectfully to greet him. One of the women - it was Malati Trivedi - even bent down to touch his feet. Ustad Majeed Khan was not displeased. As she got up he said reprovingly to her :

'So you've decided to make a reappearance, have you ? Now that the university is closed I suppose I can expect to see my classes fill up again. Everyone talks about their devotion to music but during examination time they disappear like rabbits into their burrows.'

The Ustad then turned to the stranger. This was Motu

395Chand, the plump tabla player who as a rule accompanied Saeeda Bai. Ustad Majeed Khan,surprised to see someone whom he did not immediately recognize in place of his regular tabla player, looked at him sternly and said, 'Yes ?'

Motu Chand, smiling benignly, said, 'Excuse me, Ustad Sahib, for my presumption. Your regular tabla player, my wife's sister's husband's friend, is not well and he asked me if I would stand in for him today.'

'Do you have a name ?'

'Well, they call me Motu Chand, but actually -'

'Hmmh!' said Ustad Majeed Khan, picked up his tanpura from the rack, sat down and began to tune it.

His students sat down as well, but Motu Chand continued standing.

'Oh-hoh, sit down,' said Ustad Majeed Khan irritably, not deigning to look at Motu Chand.

As he was tuning his tanpura, Ustad Majeed Khan looked up, wondering to which of the three students he would give the first fifteen-minute slot. Strictly speaking, it belonged to the boy, but because a bright ray from the skylight happened to fall on Malati's cheerful face Ustad Majeed Khan decided on a whim to ask her to begin. She got up, fetched one of the smaller tanpuras, and began to tune it. Motu Chand adjusted the pitch of his tabla accordingly.

'Now which raag was I teaching you - Bhairava ?' asked Ustad Majeed Khan.

'No, Ustad Sahib, Ramkali,' said Malati, gently strumming the tanpura which she had laid flat on the rug in front of her.

'Hmmm!' said Ustad Majeed Khan. He began to sing a few slow phrases of the raag and Malati repeated the phrases after him. The other students listened intently. From the low notes of the raag the Ustad moved to its upper reaches and then, with an indication to Motu Chand to begin playing the tabla in a rhythmic cycle of sixteen beats, he began to sing the composition that Malati had been learning. Although Malati did her best to concentrate, she was distracted by the entrance of two more students -

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^'both girls - who paid their respects to Ustad Majeed Khan before sitting down.

Clearly the Ustad was in a good mood once again; at one point he stopped singing to comment: 'So, you really want to become a doctor ?' Turning away from Malati, he added ironically, 'With a voice like hers she will cause more heartache than even she will be able to cure, but if she wants to be a good musician she cannot give it second place in her life.' Then, turning back to Malati he said, 'Music requires as much concentration as surgery. You can't disappear for a month in the middle of an operation and take it up at will.'

'Yes, Ustad Sahib,' said Malati Trivedi with the suspicion of a smile.

'A woman as a doctor!' said Ustad Majeed Khan, musing. 'All right, all right, let us continue - which part of the composition were we at ?'

His question was interrupted by a prolonged series of thumps from the room above. The bharatnatyam dancers had begun their practice. Unlike the kathak dancers whom the Ustad had glared at in the hall, they did not wear anklets for their practice session. But what they lost in tinkling distraction they more than compensated for in the vigour with which they pounded their heels and soles on the floor directly above. Ustad Majeed Khan's brows blackened and he abruptly terminated the lesson he was giving Malati.

The next student was the boy. He had a good voice and had put in a lot of work between lessons, but for some reason Ustad Majeed Khan treated him rather abruptly. Perhaps he was still upset by the bharatnatyam which sounded sporadically from above. The boy left as soon as his lesson was over.