Somewhat a taste of lost times
Farida Shaikh goes for a recapitulation of history
IT is a historical novel on the Indian Mutiny of 1857, drawn from local tradition, official reports and contemporary letters. The purpose of this work of fiction was to present 'a true perspective of facts… environment, circumstances and emotions…' The people and places in the story are fictitious, those outside are real. The 373-page book is in two parts: the upstairs room and running together. The title is the Messengers who distributed Chapattis shortly before the outbreak of the rebellion. This mysterious incident remain little understood. The fictional Savage family is introduced; whose history of service resembles Masters' own ancestors. The climax at the end of the story is where emotionally torn Captain Savage fights against his own former regiment and turns the tide of the battle. The beginning of the story is in Bhowani Cantonment; from which place Agra is 130 miles to the north, Gondwara 140 miles to the south, Kishanpur is to the east and Lalkot to the west. Bhowani Territory was a part of Kishanpur State, which the company took on annual forced lease with virtually no rights. It is the last day of 1856. The great Mogul emperors are all gone; Clive is long dead. Captain Rodney, thirty, of the 13th Rifles Bengal Native Infantry, is riding his mare, Boomerang. He thinks, 'We of the company's service live here all our working lives. We do our work and enjoy ourselves and lord it over the country entirely by the good will of the average native…specially the native soldier, the sepoy.' Further, 'The Bengal sepoy is the salt of the earth, the most wonderful person anyone can have the privilege of knowing…' The relation between the British officer and the sepoy is 'a sort of giving: we each give all we have, and we don't keep accounts. Of course, there are things we don't know about each other--- but aren't there things you don't know about your father or your cousin….things you don't want or need to know? It's only trust that matters, and we do trust each other, we and the native officers and the sepoys--- completely, unconditionally.' Caroline Langford, after six months in Kishanpur, speaks Hindustani. Though she is 'so cold, so English against the warm colours,' responds, 'Don't you ever feel that you and the sepoy might be pulled in opposite directions…by religion or politics?' Rodney understood the point perfectly and added that '… it would have to be something so fundamental … faith, loyalty, trust… to bring it out into the open.' The native soldier was a volunteer. For a very, very long time the ordinary people have been suppressed by the cruel rajahs. They want to free themselves of this shekel and look forward to peace, 'for about the first time in the whole of India's history.' Caroline was of the opinion that the 'English only inhabit the surface of India.' While teaching English to the Rani she finds that the Raja of Kishanpur has deep concern for the common people, for if the people are worried, 'the Rajah felt it.' The Silver Guru of Bhowani, his crowd of crows, had influence 'over Indians of every religion…' from Patna in the east to Meerut in the north. What he said worried all the Indians, and Caroline thought that the foreigners should be worried as well for 'we're supposed to be their friends, as well as their rulers.' Later at Naital town, speaking in Hindustani, he says …'the company is going to lose India---at Gondwara---and it is right that it should…The English have ideals of freedom for themselves. How would you like to be ruled at home by an Indian Company of merchant-adventurers?' The guru, whose name is Donegal Sean Shaughnessy, also tells the Rani that 'though we claim to work for great ideals--- patriotism, religion, liberty--- yet in fact meaner things drove us, such as jealousy, revenge, licence to kill, lust to take women and hatred . . . hatred of England which is not the same as love of Ireland. The Merchant was the only honest one. He wanted money and said so.' When the Rajah of Kishanpur is assassinated, upon the Rani's order, several of the culprits are executed. She commits suicide by drowning in the river. She gives away her son, the future king of Kishanpur, to Captain Savage, who says, 'I will raise him with my own son. You and I will never understand each other, but perhaps they will. It's going to be important.' In 1608, the English merchants had come begging to the Moguls to be allowed to build a trading post on Indian shores. By 1856, their 'aggressive skill…courage and persevering deceit' so extended their foothold that the presidency of Bengal covered 1700 miles from Burma to Afghanistan and 700 miles from Himalaya to Nerbuddha. The other presidencies were Bombay and Madras which together 'had swallowed up India.' The heirs of the Moguls existed only as company pensioners. Few rajahs ruled. The company had become a weird blend of trading corporation and administrative engine that dictated treaties, minted money, made laws, collected taxes, executed criminals and civil justice and maintained all British and native regiments. London controlled and hired out the Queen's regiment to the company. The chief representative in India was the governor general with unlimited power exercised directly and indirectly over nearly two million people. He controlled three armies; each presidency maintained its own, together numbering 348000 native troops, 38000 British troops and 524 field guns. Rodney hates his exile, yet loves the country of his exile. His father, William Savage, had rooted out the system of religious murder and robbery called thuggee. Rodney 'waited for some great thing to turn up for him to do.' The year 1857 was the twentieth year of the Queen's reign, sixty-ninth year of the Bengal Regiment and two hundred and fifty eighth year of the company. London hires out the Queen's regiment to the company. Lieutenant Colonel John Masters, DSO (19141983) was the son of a Lieutenant Colonel. He became GSO1 (Chief of Staff) of the Indian 19th Infantry Division in Delhi. He decided to write of his experiences in the army. When his novels proved popular, he became a full-time writer. After his death, his family and friends scattered his ashes from an aeroplane over the mountain trails he loved to hike. According to John Masters' biographer Clay, he was extremely hard working and meticulously well organized, both as a soldier and as a novelist. Speculation and rumor were around that Masters' family was not pure English, but Anglo-Indian or Eurasian. He did indeed have a distant Indian ancestor. Masters was impatient with the literary establishment, which faulted his Indian novels as unsympathetic to Indians, and he was impatient with editors who wanted to remove the rough edges from his characters as people mistook these as his own views. Masters aimed for accuracy and realism. Masters' works are not without their critics. Typical is Ronald Brydon: "For us, the saga of the Savages, heroes and conquistadors of the Raj, was a political pornography in which we savoured the illicit sensualities of imperialism." Others have detected a greater sophistication in Masters' dealings with the British Empire. Both Nightrunners of Bengal and The Ravi Lancers contain sympathetic portrayals of Indian nationalists, and portray irreconcilable tensions between British and Indian characters that mirror the conflicts of the Raj in a manner comparable to E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Popular Indian novelist Khushwant Singh, remarked 'that while Kipling understood India, John Masters understood Indians'. Masters' trilogy of Now God Be Thanked, Heart of War and In The Green Of The Spring is considered his Magnum Opus, covering the changes to various segments of British society wrought by the upheavals of World War I. Seven of his novels deal with the British Empire in India. Nightrunners of Bengal, published in 1951, deals with the mutiny of 1857 around Kishanpur. It was published in the US and the same year it was made the American Literary Guild's Book of the Month. The Deceivers (1952) is the experience of an English officer rooting out ritual murder in India. In Coromandal (1955), a boy runs away to the sea and ends up in India. Bhowani Junction (1954) is on the British exodus and the partition of India. It has been translated into other languages and turned into a movie. Nearly fifty years after its first publication Nightrunners of Bengal remains a historically accurate and readable portrayal of the good and the bad of the English and the Indians. It is a fictionalized account of real events. The book is both a joy to read and a lesson in modern history. Farida Shaikh is a critic and member, The Reading Circle.
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