Hill, on the money you earn for them with your work,' continued Sauda. "They eat five meals a day and issue forth to take the air in large Rolls Royces.' are the roofless, you are the riceless, spinners of cotion, weavers of thread, swecpers of dust and dirt; you Ar the workers, the labourers, the millions of unknown who crawl in and out of factories every day. You are the coolies, Blacknen who relieve yourselves on the ground, you are the miserable devils who live twenty a room in broken straw huts and stinking tenements. Your bones have no flesh, - your souls have no life, you are clothed in tattered rags. And yet, my friend Onkar Nath says that your interests and the interests of he mill owners are the same.' 'Shabash! Shabash! Sauda Sahib,' shouted Ratan. Munoo felt his lood stirring at the passion of Sauda's speech. 'Lalla Onkar Nath,' began Sauda again, is a very rich man. And he has never seen the wily demon of poverty drag you through the murky waters of that hell where the scorpions of hunger bite you, where the leeches suck your blood away,, where the big sharks devour you. How many you are not in the grip of the foreman of your factory? Against how many of you have not the hirelings of capitalism wreaked their vengeance? Brother Ratan there, an excellent workman, and others, have recently been dis- charged without any fault on their part, except that they refused pay their foremen a commission. How many of you have not been pounced upon by the Pathan warder and moncylender outside the mill gates and even inside, on pay day? The moneylender does not want his capital back, you tell me, and is kind enough to let you pay interest. Don't you see that he records defaults so that the borrowing of a small sum leads in a few months to a permanent and heavy load of debt, till some of you have to pay him the whole of your wages, and have nothing left over for your subsistence. And when the time comes that you can't pay either the capital or the interest because you have no pay, you go home to die of misery and hunger. Oh, when will 283 you realise, when will you learn that for centur 284/350 been the victims of graft and extortion!' Munoo stared hard at Sauda and pricked up his ears to listen to every word. "There are only two kinds of people in the world, the rich and the poor,' Sauda continued, 'and between the two, there is no connection. The rich and the powerful, the magnificent and the glorious, whose opulence is built robbery and theft and open warfare, are honoured admired by the whole world, and by themselves. You, poor and the humble, you, the meck and the gentle, wret that you are, swindled out of your rights, and broken.. body and soul, you are respected by no one, and you do not respect yourselves." Munoo felt that long ago, at Sham Nagar, he too had had similar thoughts about the rich and the poor. But he could not say them like the Sauda Sahib.
'Stand up, then, stand up for your rights, you roofless wretches, stand up for justice! Stand up, you frightened swine. Stand up and fight! Stand up and be the men that you were meant to be and don't crawl basks to the factories like the worms that you are! Stand up for life, or they will crush you and destroy you altogether! Stand up and follow me! From to-morrow you go on strike and we will pay you to fight your battle with the employers! Now stand up and recite with me the charter of your demands.' He paused for a moment. The whole throng rose to its feet, tense and excited. He continued: 'We are human beings and not soulless machines.' The crowd recited after him. 'We want the right to work without having to pay bribes.' 'We want clean houses to live in.' 'We want schools for our children and crêches for our babies.' 'We want to be skilled workers.' 'We want to be saved from the clutches of the money- lenders 284 'We want a good wage and no mere subsistence allowance if we must go on short work." 'We want shorter hours.' "We want security so that the foreman cannot dismiss us suddenly.' "We want our organisations to be recognised by law. The words of the charter rose across the horizon. At first they were simple, crude words, rising with difficulty like the jagged, broken, sing-song of children in a class room. Then the hoarse throats of the throng strained to rever- berate the rhythm of Sauda's gong notes, till the uncouth accents mirt@led in passionate cries assassinating the sun. on the margin of the sky. There was a shuffling of forms, the extended sound of black..gaping mouths taking breath, even a reflection of half self-conscious, half happy smiles through the deep waters of the coolies' eyes, and for a moment one could hear the soft, moist rustle of the sea brecze stirring the blades of grass across the fields and in the marshes. Then a screaming crescendo of pain shot into the air through the edge of the crowd. The broken accents of a voice defined the words 'kidnapped,' 'kidnapped,' 'Oh, my son has been kidnapped. What shall I do? This man tells me that my son has been kidnapped.' 'Kidnapped! kidnapped!' an undercurrent of vor surged through the tense crowd. 'Kidnapped by Pathans!' a whisper arose. 'Kidnapped! These bully swaggering Musulmans are kidnapping Hindu childre There was a pause. "What is this?" shouted Sauda. 'What is the matter there?" Only the moaning of a coolie could be heard, a queer, broken moaning like the howling of a she-hyena. 'Kidnapped! Kidnapped! A Hindu child has been kid- napped by the Muhammadan!' some of the coolies reported.'Go home! Go homel It is only a base rumour spread by our enemies, Sauda shouted. 'Don't go to work tomorrow. 285 The Trade Union will pay you an allowance. And meet here to-morrow for a procession.' 'But a Hindu child has been kidnapped, Sahib, a Hindu child!' a voice arose again. 'Not only one, but several Hindu children have been kidnapped!' another voice declared. اله 'Kidnapped! Kidnapped! These circumcised Muhani- madans have raised their heads to the sky! It is an insult to our religion! The sons of pigs! The illegally begotten! We will teach them a lesson!' The rumours had now be-. come defined. 'Go away, go away, you fools!' shouted Sausla. 'We will look into the matter.' 'No, we will revenge ourselves on them! They take our money and they take our children! We will revenge our- selves on them!' 'Shut up, you fools!' shouted Ratan, jumping on to the dais. 'I will fight for you if your children have been kid- napped, but first go home and see if it is true!' 'You black lentil caters! You Hindus! We will teach you what it is to insult our religion!' the shouts of some Muhammadans arose from a congested corner far awa, from the dais, where several hands had become engaged in pulling turbans off and striking blows. Munoo rushed up to Ratan and clung to his tunic, trem- bling. As he looked back he saw that the crowd was swirling in tides upon tides of faces, to and fro, in an utter panic of abandonment. He stood terrified and still, watching the rubbings of the hundreds of bodies, the pushings of the panting swarm that now pressed all around, crying loud and bitter oaths and abuses. It was sheer bedlam, only illuminated by the word 'kidnapped.' He seemed suddenly to have forgotten the invigorating air of that song of the charter and felt engulfed in an uncertain atmosphere of destruction, which the flourishing of arms, the glistening of eyes, the sharp hysteria of the voices had created. His soul swung back from the touching temper of Sauda's speech 286 to face the pale monster of fear that the word 'kidnapped' had suddenly conjured up. In the sentient, quivering centres of his mind this conflict summoned the uncertainty of that moment when Prabha had been arrested. And the two asions seemed similar as he saw blue uniformed police-Kidnapped! Kidnapped! Hai! Son of a pig! You heather! Take this onel' the cries came. 'You go home,' said Ratan to Munoo, and, wresting his tunic from the boy's grasp, plunged headlong into the fray. 'Oh Ratan! Ratan!' Munoo called. But his voice was lost in the pandemonium. He stood on the dais still shouting for Ratan. Then he stared into the fast-gathering darkness to distinguish the copper-coloured fares with glistening white teeth to see if he could find Hari 'Who are you, a Hindu or a Muhammadan?' a burly Pathan grunted, towering over him and flourishing a stave. Munoo was dumb for a moment, livid with the fear of impending death. He wanted to shout, but his mouth opened and he could not say anything. His eyes closed and then opened. He hesitated for the briefest second, then jumped to his right and heard the Pathan's stave crash on the dais. He tore through the crowd of rushing men, dodging his way till he was one of the many streams of coolics, hurrying away from the maidan. "These Pathans have been kidnapping the children of the poor people far months,' Munoo heard one coolie say to another as they hurried along. "The mill owners instigate them, and the sarkar connives at all this, commented a third. 'Yes, yes,' another remarked. "The Pathans have been kidnapping children and taking them away in motor cars, and the sarkar is taking no measures to stop it. How can we leave our children about?" 'But,' said a trade union official, 'the Pathans are your enemies. Two hundred Pathans were used by the mill 287 owners to break the strike of the oil mills last year. They have been undercutting the workers who go on strike. They should be taught a lesson.' 'Let us go and demand an explanation from Sadi Khan, the moneylender in Albert Road,' said a young coolie. 'He.. preens himself!' Munoo was half-inclined to offer to go with this coolic, but remembered the time when he had seen Hari beaten by the Pathan moneylender. He passed by the men, fio cursed or cast sporadic comment on the kidnapping. At the head of his lane he saw an exchange of slaps and blows. He darted towards the dusty town road, getting ur cover of anything that cast a shadow in the clear, pell night which descended from the heavens like a woman, apron ornamented by the stars, her deep, sea-green spread protectively about the cruel, hot earth. He knew a short cut to Dhobi Tallo leading through a colony of outcastes. He turned off the road into its decline, slipping in the mud and slush of its drains, tired and forlorn. He groped through the darkness, and hoped he would be able to find somewhere to sleep.
