The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) by Paul Scott Page A

the leader. The leader was asking what he was doing riding in a car with an Englishwoman. Mr. Chaudhuri was not answering his questions but trying to shout him down, trying to tell him that Miss Crane was an old friend of India, that only that morning she had saved the lives of many Indian children from drunken power-mad policemen and was on her way to a secret meeting of the Congress Committee in Mayapore whose confidence she enjoyed and whose efforts to overthrow the English she wholeheartedly endorsed.
    The leader said he did not believe Mr. Chaudhuri. Mr. Chaudhuri was a traitor. No self-respecting Indian male would ride with a dried-up virgin memsahib who needed to feel the strength of a man inside her before she could even look like a woman, and what would Mr. Chaudhuri do if they decided to take the memsahib out of the car and show her what women were for and what men could do? Not, the leader said, spitting onto the hood of the Ford, that he would waste his strength and manhood on such a dried-up old bag of bones. “She speaks Hindi,” Mr. Chaudhuri said, “and hears these insults. Are you not ashamed to speak so of a guru, a teacher, as great a guru as Mrs. Annie Besant, and afollower of the Mahatma? Great evil will come to you and your seed if you so much as lay a finger on her.”
    “Then we will lay one on you, brother,” the leader said, and dragged open the door, whose lock Miss Crane had failed, month after month, to have repaired. “Go,” Mr. Chaudhuri said, as he was taken out. “Go now. It’s all right. No harm will come to me.”
    “Pigs!” she cried in Urdu, trying to hold on to Mr. Chaudhuri’s arm, using the words she had used years ago, in Muzzafirabad. “Sons of pigs, cow-eaters, impotent idolators, fornicators abhorred of the Lord Shiva. . . .”
    “Go!” shrieked Mr. Chaudhuri, from outside the car, kicking the door shut, his arms held by four men, “or do you only take orders from white men? Do you only keep promises you make to your own kind?”
    “No!” she shouted back. “No, no! I don’t!” and, pressing the accelerator, released the brake, nearly stalling the engine so that the car jerked, paused, and jerked again, throwing the laughing men away from the hood, and then it leapt away so that they had to jump out of its path. A couple of hundred yards further on she stopped and looked back. Three of the men were chasing after the car. Behind them Mr. Chaudhuri was being pushed from one man to the other. A stick was brought down heavily on his shoulders. She shouted, “No! No! Mr. Chaudhuri!” and opened the door, climbed out. The three men held their arms out, laughing, and called, “Ah, memsahib, memsahib,” and came towards her. Remembering, she reached into the car and found the starting handle, stood in the road, threatening them with it. They laughed louder and struck postures of mock defense and defiance, jumped about grinning, like performing monkeys. Mr. Chaudhuri had his head covered by his hands. The sticks were coming down, thwack, thwack. Then he was on his knees, and then out of sight, surrounded by the men who were beating him. Miss Crane cried out, “Devils, Devils,” and began to move towards the three men, still waving the starting handle. They moved back, pretending to be alarmed. The youngest of them reached into his dhoti as if about to expose himself, shouted something at her. Suddenly they turned and ran back to their leader who had called out to them. The other rioters were standing over Mr. Chaudhuri who lay unmoving in the middle of the road. A couple of them were going through his pockets. The leader was now pointing at the car. Five or six men left the group surrounding Mr. Chaudhuri and came towards Miss Crane. Instinctively she backed, but held her ground next to the car. Reaching herthey pushed her aside, roughly, angrily, as if ashamed they had not yet summoned up the courage to disobey their leader and attack her. Bending to the task