Indarsingh looked hurt. ‘It is, Mr President. A motion, certainly.’
Swami bellowed, ‘Mr President, enough of this damn nonsense motion and commotion, and listen to something sensible for a change. It is my motion that the constitution should be — be —’
‘Suspended,’ the boy prompted.
‘— be suspended, or anyway that part which say that members have to pay before they vote. Suspended for this meeting, and this meeting only.’
Indarsingh lost his temper, bared an arm, quoted Gandhi, talked about the Oxford Union, and said he was ashamed of the corruption in the Hindu Association.
Narayan looked wretched.
At a signal from Ganesh, four men rushed to Indarsingh and lifted him outside. ‘Undemocratic!’ Indarsingh shouted, ‘Unconstitutional!’ He became quiet all of a sudden.
Narayan said, ‘Who will second that motion?’
Every hand went up.
Narayan saw defeat. He took out a handkerchief and held it over his mouth.
Then the mood of the meeting changed.
The bearded Negro stood up and made a long speech. He said that he had been attracted to Hinduism because he liked Indians; but the corruption he had seen that day was entirely repugnant to him. It had, as a matter of fact, decided him to join the Muslims, and the Hindus had better look out when he was a Muslim.
The Chief Treasurer, the guardian of the blue exercise-book, a splendid figure in orange turban and silk koortah, said that Indians were bad people, and Hindus particularly bad. He had lost faith in his people and no longer thought it an honour to be Chief Treasurer of the Hindu Association. He was going to resign then and there and not offer himself for re-election.
Personal loyalties were forgotten. ‘Stay, punditji,’ the Hindu Association shouted, ‘stay.’
The Chief Treasurer wept and stayed.
Narayan looked crumpled and more miserable than ever when he rose to speak. He said — and his speech was fully reported in The Hindu — ‘Dissension and dissatisfaction prevail among the rank and file of Hindus in Trinidad today. My friends, I have caused some of that dissension and dissatisfaction. I confess it.’ He was weeping. ‘My friends, will you forgive an old man?’
‘Yes, ji,’ the audience wept back. ‘We forgive you.’
‘My friends, we are not united. And now, with your permission, I am going to tell the story of an old man, his three sons, and a bundle of sticks.’ He didn’t tell it very well. ‘United we stand, then, and divided we fall. My friends, let us fall united rather than stand united. My friends, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru never wrangled with Shri Chakravarti Rajagopalacharya or with Shri Vallabhai Patel for the Presidency of the All-India National Congress. And so too, my friends, I have no desire to be the cause of dissatisfaction and dissension among the rank and file of Hindus in Trinidad today. My friends, I only want back my self-respect and I want your respect. My friends, I withdraw from public life. I do not want to be re-elected President of the Hindu Association of Trinidad, of which I am a founder member and President.’
Narayan was cheered loud and long. Some people wept. Some shouted, ‘Long live Narayan!’
He wept too. ‘Thank you, thank you, my friends.’ And sat down to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.
‘A diplomatic son of a bitch, pundit,’ the boy said.
But Ganesh was wiping away a tear.
Ganesh was the only candidate for the Presidency and was elected without any fuss at all.
Swami and Partap were among the new Assistant-Presidents. The boy was a simple Secretary. Indarsingh was offered the post of Fourth Assistant to the Chief Secretary, but declined.
Ganesh’s first act as President was to send a cable to the All-India Congress. Awkwardly, it wasn’t the occasion of any important anniversary. He cabled:
KEEP MAHATMAJI IDEALS ALIVE STOP HINDU ASSOCIATION
TRINIDAD WITH YOU INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE STOP
BEST WISHES
GANESH PRESIDENT HINDU ASSOCIATION
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
11. M.L.C
VOLUME ONE Number Two of The Dharma never came out.
Swami and Partap could not hide their relief. But the boy told Ganesh, ‘I ain’t want to meddle in any more of this child-play, you hear.’ And he told Swami, ‘Next time you start up a paper leave me out.’
But The Dharma had served its purpose. Narayan kept his word and retired from public life. The election campaigns for Trinidad’s first General Elections raged around him while he remained at his house in Mucurapo in Port of Spain a useless invalid. The Hindu dropped the Each One Teach One and Per Ardua ad Astra slogans and consoled itself once more with quotations from the Hindu scriptures. The Little Bird disappeared and its place was taken by Sparks from a Brahmin’s Log-fire.
Ganesh didn’t have time for the affairs of the Hindu Association. The island elections were two months off and he found himself embroiled. Indarsingh had decided to go up in Ganesh’s ward and it was this rather than the promptings of the Association or Beharry or Swami that made Ganesh stand for the elections.
‘Narayan did have a little point there, pundit,’ Beharry said. ‘About religious visionaries. And Suruj Mooma too, she say curing soul go do but it wouldn’t put food in people mouth.’
Ganesh asked Leela’s advice.
She said, ‘But you have to go up. You not going to sit down and let that boy fool the people?’
‘Indarsingh ain’t a boy, man.’
‘It are hard not to believe that. Suruj Mooma right, you know. Too much of this education is a bad bad thing. You remain here, educate yourself, and yet you is a bigger man than Indarsingh for all the Ox-ford he say he go to.’
The Great Belcher cried. ‘Oh, Ganeshwa, is the word I was waiting for from your mouth. Is your duty to go up and help the poor people.’
So Ganesh went up for the elections.
‘But,’ Leela warned, ‘it are not going to make me happy to see my husband getting into all sort of low argument with all sort of low people. I don’t want you to drag your name in the mud.’
He didn’t. He fought the cleanest election campaign in Trinidad history. He had no platform. And his posters were the simplest things: GANESH WILL DO WHAT HE CAN, A VOTE FOR GANESH IS A VOTE FOR GOD; sometimes even plainer statements, GANESH WILL WIN and GANESH IS A MAN OF GOOD AND GOD.
He held no election meetings, but Swami and Partap arranged many prayer-meetings for him. He worked hard to expand his Road to Happiness lectures; three or even four taxis had to take the books he required. Quite casually, in the middle of a lecture, he would say in Hindi, ‘It may interest one or two of you in this gathering tonight to hear that I am a candidate for the elections next month. I can promise nothing. In everything I shall consult God and my conscience, even at the risk of displeasing you. But that is by the way. We were talking, you remember, about the transmigration of souls. Now, this theory was also put forward by a philosopher of Ancient Greece, but I have brought along some books tonight to show you that it is more than likely that the Greek got the idea from India …’
Beharry said one day, ‘Suruj Mooma don’t think the sign in front the house look nice, pundit. She say it so mildew it spoil the whole house.’
So Ganesh took down the sign which threatened that requests for monetary assistance would not be entertained, and put up a new and simpler one which said: Spiritual solace may be had here at any time.
At a prayer-meeting one evening Ganesh noticed the boy among the helpers taking away the books from the taxis to the platform. Swami said, ‘I bring the boy to apologize for what he say, sahib. He say he want to make up by helping with the poster and them. He crying all the time, sahib. And don’t mind he look little, he have a master hand for painting signs.’