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During the ten years from 1932 that Nurullah stays with the
family, Akbarabad educates him in many ways, leaving him opposed
and resistant to non-violence. At the centre of the movement, is
Nurullah’s host, the charismatic Nikhil, or Bhai, as his
friends and supporters call him. Nikhil is a man "who would
by his honey-tongued gentleness, manage to guide an elephant
with a hair" but who spends the major part of his adult
life in prison because of his involvement in the non-violent
movement.
Sahgal explores
the possibility that non-violence was the fantasy of one man
which may or may not have worked. "Nor did ahimsa put
an end to violence…it even spurred it on, aroused savage
instincts bred from time immemorial to expect resistance,
savager when deprived of the familiar fighting adversary or
fleeing quarry. Good old-fashioned war was waged against ahimsa
and ahimsa did not escape war’s legacies and
tragedies, war’s prisoners and its wounded and its killed….No
lethal weapon- wielder stood back and said this man before me is
unarmed so I will not strike." This, according to Nurullah,
is the true picture of ahimsa, which he holds up to the
view of a western researcher whom he meets in 1980.
Nurullah also
propounds the view that non-violence made little difference to
the fortunes of the nation. "You must understand the kind
of world it was, made up of Europe and the lesser breeds whom
Europe had a right to rule. Armed or unarmed revolt made no
difference to that right. Only war and its fortunes drove Europe
out." The question whether ahimsa was going to
change anything and of what use it was, is answered by Nikhil,
"What else have unarmed people got?"
Sahgal introduces
her readers to a pantheon of characters. Unfortunately, except
for a few of them, most don’t make much of an impact on the
reader. However, there are evocative descriptions of people.
Among these is the description of Lilibet, an Anglo-Indian girl
and her family. "She spoke a mincing, stilted English she
thought was English She mourned her beautiful black hair and
longed for it to be a colour called ash-blond through which she
would have worn a narrow black velvet band." Then there is
Nikhil, whom one encounters rarely but whose presence pervades
the book, Shan, his daughter, the leggy, grumpy little girl who
grows into a charming young lady and who chooses the turmoil of
her country over the better lifestyle in America, Edgar, the
American journalist who believes that the non-violent movement
was effective and his sister, the highly-strung Leda.
In fact, as the
action in the latter half of the book shifts to America, Sahgal
makes us aware of the fact that Gandhi’s ideology of
non-violence and non-cooperation affected the lives of
individuals and communities the world over, in ways that couldn’t
have been envisaged.
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NAYANTARA
Sahgal is never shrill, even when she handles issues like struggle
and violence. She is always restrained, yet she deals with huge
problems that beset a nation and their effects on the individuals
who inhabit the nation and even those who are not directly involved
and are living thousands of miles away. And all this is done with
the self-composure and élan that is to be expected from a writer of
her background and achievement.
