The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [345]
Had he stopped there, the chances are that he would have been back in Mardan that summer, and much that came later would not have happened – or happened differently. But the subject under discussion was one that interested him a great deal, and so he did not leave well alone, ‘– but it might help you to modify it,’ continued Ash, ‘if you were to try putting yourself in the other fellow's shoes just for a minute or two.’
‘Putting myself…?’ Mr Porson was offended. ‘In what way, may one ask?’
‘Well, look at it this way, sir,’ said Ash earnestly. ‘Imagine the British Isles as conquered territory, as it was in Roman times, but part of an Indian Empire instead. An Imperial colony, in which Indians hold every post of real authority, with an Indian Governor-General and Council proclaiming and enforcing laws that are completely alien to your way of life and thought, but which make it necessary for you to learn their language if you hope to hold any reasonably well-paid post under them. Indians controlling all the public services, garrisoning your country with their troops and recruiting your countrymen to serve in the ranks of regiments that they themselves would officer, declaring anyone who protested against their authority a dangerous agitator, and putting down any rising with all the force at their command. And don't forget, sir, that the last of those risings would have been less than twenty years ago, when you yourself were already a grown man. You would remember that rising very well, for even if you had not fought in it yourself, you would have known people who had, and who had died in it - or been hanged for complicity, or suspicion of complicity, or merely because they had a white skin, in the reprisals that followed it. Taking all that into account, would you yourself be eager to get on close and friendly terms with your Indian rulers? If so, I can only say that you must be a truly Christian person, and that it has been an honour to meet you. Your servant, sir.’
He bowed, and turning on his heel, walked out without waiting to hear if Mr Porson had anything further to say.
Mr Porson had not. Having never considered the problem from that angle, he was temporarily silenced. But Major Raikes and his friend Captain Crimpley, who had been among those present, had both said a great deal. Neither had any liking for Mr Porson; whose opinions and criticisms on the subject of Anglo-Indians they considered offensive, but Ash's views (and his temerity in expressing them to a stranger old enough to be his father and brought to the Club as a guest) had touched both on the raw.
‘Brazen impertinence and sheer bloody bad manners,’ fumed Lionel Crimpley. ‘Butting into a private conversation and spouting a lot of seditious twaddle to a man he hadn't even been introduced to. And a house-guest of the Commissioner's, too! It was a calculated affront to the entire Club, and the Committee should force that young sweep to apologize or get out.’
‘Oh, rats to that,’ retorted Major Raikes, dismissing the Committee with an impatient sweep of the hand. ‘The Committee can look after itself, and as for that numbskull Porson, he's nothing but a swollen-headed snob. But no officer has a right to say the sort of things that Pelham-Martyn said, or even think them. All that tripe about supposin' the British Isles were garrisoned by Indian troops – putting ideas into their heads, that's what it is, and damned treasonable ideas, too. It's about time someone kicked that young man's backside hard, and the sooner the better.’
Now there can always be found in any military station – as in any town or city anywhere in the world – a smattering of bored and muscular louts who delight in violence and are only too eager to take a hand in ‘teaching a lesson’ to any individual whose views they do not happen to share. Major Raikes therefore had no difficulty in recruiting half-a-dozen of these simple-minded souls, and two nights later they burst into Ash's bedroom in the small hours to drag him from