Chapter 127: Interlude 3: Rights and Duties

26th January 1950, Morning

All India Radio, simultaneous relay to Rangoon, Colombo, Port Louis, Kathmandu, Thimphu, Gangtok and Karachi

"Citizens of India,

Today, the country has adopted a constitution. I urge everyone to read and understand it.

It is a book of rights. You may speak, worship, learn, work, and stand equal before the law. No one may buy you, bind you, or turn you from a well because of your birth. These rights are yours from this morning. You need not beg for them, and you need not thank anyone.

It is also a book of duties. A right that nobody defends is a promise written on water. The farmer who sows honestly, the teacher who turns up, the clerk who refuses a bribe, the soldier at the pass: these people keep your rights alive. And the man who demands his own rights while denying his neighbours has not understood the book.

Know what is yours. Know what you owe. Teach both to your children.

We are one people. Let us act like it.

Jai Hind."

Delhi, the canteen of South Block

The wireless clicked off, and the canteen stayed quiet for about three seconds.

"That’s it?" Rajat said. "I made the chai-wallah keep the kettle hot for an hour."

"Two minutes," Krishnagopala agreed. "Nehru-ji did an hour at midnight on independence, and this man does two minutes and goes home."

"He does not go home. He goes back to his desk." Madhuri turned her cup in its saucer. "Did you hear the middle? Know what you owe. Nobody says that on the radio. They tell you what you’re owed and hope you forget the rest."

"My landlord will be delighted," Rajat said. "I’ll tell him it’s the law."

"You’re three months behind on rent, Chaturvedi."

"A matter of timing."

Krishnagopala laughed into his tea and nearly choked. When he’d recovered, he said, "My amma will like it. She’ll say, finally, a politician who talks less."

Sector 2, refugee colony, Jullundur

Somebody at the back shouted, "Louder! Mahesh, turn it up!" and somebody else shouted, "It’s already as loud as it goes!" and a woman told them both to hush, in a voice that settled the matter.

After it ended, the lane stayed standing for a while, as if waiting for more.

"Dada," Santosh said, tugging at Teja Singh’s sleeve. "What was the part about the well?"

"That no one chases us from it."

"Who chases us from wells?"

"Beta, in my village there were wells we were not allowed to touch. Before the Partition. Before you were born." He said it flatly. "He is telling the people who ran those wells that it is over."

"Oh." She thought about this. "And the part about what we owe?"

"That one is for us."

"For us? We have nothing."

"We have this." He tapped her forehead gently. "And a vote, when you are older. And the habit of not looking away. That counts." He gave a dry little cough that might have been a laugh. "Come. Mahesh will charge me for the tea."

"He said he wouldn’t tonight."

A school tent, a village near Muzaffarpur, Bihar

The teacher was twenty-three, a probationer from the 1948 intake, and she’d kept sixty children back after the midday meal because the headmaster said so. They sat on jute mats, fidgeting, the smallest ones already half asleep.

When the set went quiet, a boy in the front row said, "Acharya-ji, is duty the same as homework?"

The tent laughed.

"It is something like homework," she said. "Only for everyone, and nobody marks it."

"Then why do it?"

"Because if nobody does it, the well runs dry." She pointed at him. "Raju. Who sweeps the tent on Fridays?"

"Meena."

"And if Meena stops?"

He looked around. "Our feet get dirty."

"There. That’s the whole speech." She clapped her hands. "Now go home, and teach your fathers. Properly, in Sanskrit."

At the flap, a labourer in a torn banyan stood twisting a cloth cap. His daughter had come to collect him, six years old and very stern.

"Baba," she said, "tonight I’ll teach you the first page."

"I can’t read, beti."

"I know. That’s why."

Rangoon, the old Secretariat

"Sir," Ma Khin Hla said, "was that live or recorded?"

Her supervisor, a heavyset Tamil officer from Madras named Subramanian, looked at the radio as though it might answer. "Live, I think. Why?"

"It sounded like he wasn’t reading it."

"He rarely reads the speeches, Delhi guys tell me." Subramanian sat down on the corner of her desk. "He talks like a man who has no time and doesn’t want to waste yours."

"My father would have liked him." She smiled a little. "My father trusted people who didn’t make speeches. He said a man who talks long is hiding something."

"Is that why you’re so terse with me?"

"I am polite, sir."

"You are a stone wall, Khin Hla."

"Yes, sir." She straightened a pile of papers. "Does it really apply to us? The book?"

"Every page. Even the boring ones."

"Especially the boring ones, my father would have said." She pulled the next file toward her. "So, we start tomorrow."

"We started in 1948. Tomorrow we just have to do it properly."

A longhouse, the Salween hills

The battery set crackled and hissed. Saw Ba U’s grandson, nine years old, kept adjusting a wire.

"Leave it alone," the old man said. "You’ll break it."

"It’s fading, Grandfather."

"Then it fades."

They heard the last of it in a rush of static. The boy sat back. "He said the law is for everyone. Even the Karen."

"I heard him." Saw Ba U poked the fire with a stick. "He said something else, too. About what we owe."

"The teacher says that means we pay the tax."

"The teacher would say that." But there was no real heat in it. "In my father’s time the British took the tax and gave us nothing. In my time Rangoon sent soldiers to take it. This one sends a doctor first." He grunted. "At least he asks politely."

"Will you pay it?"

"I’ll pay," the old man said. "If the clinic keeps its medicine." He glanced at the boy. "And if the school keeps its teacher. Write that down somewhere, in your book."

The boy, delighted, fetched a slate.

Jaffna, a verandah in Vannarpannai

The old schoolmaster had his reading spectacles on a string, and a copy of the Constitution from the post office open on his knees. Fifty neighbours, mostly women, sat on the verandah steps and the lane outside, and a few were shelling peas while they listened.

"Read the duties again," a woman called.

"There aren’t many. Just one list." He found the page. "’To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood.’"

"What does that mean in plain Tamil?"

"Don’t hit your neighbour. Don’t tell lies about him. Don’t cheat him at market."

"That’s what my mother taught me," the woman said. "Why does it need a law?"

"Because some people had mothers who forgot." He took off his spectacles. "A law isn’t a stick, amma. It’s a reminder, written down so it doesn’t slip."

"And who punishes those who forget?"

"Their neighbours, mostly. Which is the point."

"Then it’s a very cheap law."

"The cheapest in history," the schoolmaster said. "And the hardest to enforce."

Port Louis, the Aapravasi Ghat

Devraj sat on the basalt steps with his granddaughter, as he did most evenings, with the loudspeaker on the lamp-post crackling over the harbour. He was ninety, or near it. His knees had stopped negotiating years ago.

"Baba, he talks fast."

"He talks short. It’s different."

"What did he say we owe?"

"To each other." He rubbed his knee. "When I was young, a man owed the overseer. Then the overseer’s master. Then the master’s master, all the way to London." He looked out at the water. "Now he says we owe each other. That’s a new debt. I think I like it better."

"Is it a big debt?"

"No. But it never gets paid off, and it’s never taken from you by a stranger." He nudged her. "Go on. Ask me the thing you want to ask."

She hesitated. "Will it be different for me?"

"It already is," Devraj said. "You are going to school. I am sitting here in the sun, and nobody has shouted at me all day." He laughed, cracked and happy. "Do you know how long it has been?"

Mahé, the Seychelles

Auguste, mending his net on the beach, had the radio balanced on an upturned boat. The Gujarati trader on the next boat over pretended not to listen and then, in the middle, put down his scales.

"He talks like a bookkeeper," the trader said.

"He talks like a man who’s tired," Auguste said.

"Same thing."

"Not at all. A bookkeeper charges you for the explanation."

The trader grinned. "Fair. So, what do you think of it, this Constitution?"

"I think a fisherman can’t be thrown in jail without being told why." Auguste pulled a knot tight. "And that you can’t water down your fish oil and sell it as the good stuff."

"I have never watered down my oil."

"No. But you might have, if no one had told you not to."

The trader laughed. "You’re a philosopher, Auguste."

"I’m a fisherman with a radio." He bit off a thread. "Same thing, in the evening."

Thimphu and Kathmandu

In the Dorji House, the monk of the Je Khenpo’s household listened with his eyes closed, then said a few words in Dzongkha. The Indian civil servant leaned toward the Lonchen.

"He says that was very short for something so important."

"Tell him that’s what the Prime Minister said about the Buddha’s first sermon."

The monk’s mouth twitched. He said something else.

"He says that was not a very respectful comparison."

"Tell him I said it, not the Prime Minister."

In Kathmandu, the Koirala brothers listened in the old Rana palace. When it finished, B.P. polished his spectacles for a while and said, "You know, I almost wish he’d talked longer."

"You always wish that," Matrika said. "That’s why we lost the election committee in 1947."

"I’m making a point."

"You’re making a speech."

"Fine." B.P. put the glasses back on. "He said what we owe. I keep thinking about it. A man who has just taken over your country, and the first thing he says is, ’ Here’s your homework."

"Does it bother you?"

"I don’t know, yet."

Lhasa, the Norbulingka

The Dalai Lama sat cross-legged with his attendants and the Ladakhi monk, Tenzin, who had carried a battery set over the passes wrapped in a yak blanket and was still pink with cold. Nobody spoke at the end.

"Is that all?" the boy asked.

"That is all, Your Holiness."

"It was shorter than my morning lesson."

"The Prime Minister doesn’t believe in long lessons."

"I do," the boy said. "Mine is two hours." He sounded rather wistful. Then, after a moment, he said, " We owe, and we are owed. It reminds me of the Dharma. Some of it."

"I think he’d be pleased to hear it."

"Would he?" The boy looked up. "I have never met him. Is he stern?"

Tenzin thought. "Not stern. He just doesn’t say a word more than he needs. You grow used to it."

"I think I’ll like him," the Dalai Lama said. "People who don’t say much are usually listening." He grinned, suddenly very young. "My tutor says I should try it."

Karachi, a water queue in Lyari

The woman in the faded burqa stood in the long line at the tanker. Ahead of her, a young Gorkha soldier had a portable radio hooked on his webbing, volume low, and he looked startled when she leaned over.

"What is he saying, bhai?"

"That everyone has rights, ammi. And everyone has duties."

"Which are the duties?"

"Obey the law. Be kind." He scratched his neck. "I think the kind part is for the likes of me."

She snorted. "Your face is too young to be unkind."

"My sergeant says the same."

"And does he have rights, your sergeant?"

"Oh, he has plenty. He has a pension." The Gorkha grinned.

The line shuffled forward. She shifted the child on her hip. "My husband’s brother says the Indians will make us leave."

"If you want to go, mai, you can go. If you want to stay, you stay." He shrugged. "My sergeant says that’s what it means. Nobody forces you either way."

"That’s not what we were told."

"I know," the Gorkha said. "That’s the strange part."

A fruit stall, Srinagar

The old apple-seller had a half-peeled apple in one hand and a little knife in the other, and he’d stopped peeling somewhere around the second paragraph.

"Well?" said his neighbour, a Pandit named Raina, from the window across the lane.

"Well, what?"

"What do you think?"

"I think he talks like a man who wants the apples cheap." He peeled again. "But I will say, Pandit-ji, no ruler in this valley ever told me I had to look after your rights."

"No one told me to look after yours."

"Then we are even."

"Do you mind it? The telling?"

The seller considered. "I sell you apples at the same price I sell my cousin. I have always done it. Now it’s the law." He bit into the apple and chewed, thoughtful. "I don’t need to be thanked, and you don’t need to thank me. Saves everyone the trouble."

He tossed the other half across the lane. The Pandit caught it, one-handed, and bit.

A/N: Happy Dussehra, everyone.

This Chapter marks the end of volume 3. We have a constitution. I’ll start volume 4 tomorrow, or the day after. Awaiting your comments and stones.