[Novel Excerpt] A Spy Rattles India House
Things are shaken up in India House to a point of no return.
This chapter is based on a real incident, one of the early times when the British officials tried to infiltrate India House with spies. As we’ll see, there were many many more spies, a lot of them Indian. But this one was the one that rattled Shyamji, who owned and ran India House, and intimidated him enough to run away to France, and then Switzerland.
Everyone seemed to be on a short fuse at India House. Mr. Mukherjee had taken to checking and double checking the grocery list. He was convinced someone was pilfering away from the sacks of lentils. Harnam had grown withdrawn and threw himself into his studies.
Hardayal, in contrast, had quit St. John’s College in protest, and taken to only wearing Indian clothes. Which had been fine in the summer, but as autumn neared, we worried he would catch something, or die of hypothermia. At first, his ability to get obsessed and immersed with ideas had been endearing, but now it grated on everyone to see him show up in a dhoti-kurta and a shawl, when we were beginning to get out our pea-coats. We worried for Sundar, his wife, especially since she was now expecting a baby. The concern added itself to our irritation, and it wasn’t unusual for Tatya or Chatto to lash out briefly at Hardayal. We had grown tired of the point of contention being his clothes, and found other excuses to bark at him. Hardayal leaned in to it and gave a controversial talk about why it made sense for the Indian nation to unite under Hinduism. Everyone, especially Tatya, wanted nothing to do with him after.
We began to see less and less of Hardayal around India House. Given our talks were all of this, that or the other outrageous topic, I didn’t quite understand why this particular one irritated people so much. It was probably a catalyst for something that had been a long time coming. I wonder if it might have been better received if Hardayal hadn’t annoyed us all with his obsessions so much.
I missed Hardayal and Sundar.
Shyamji was no exception either. But at least he had legitimate reasons to feel constantly outraged. The authorities had started taking note of him more than usual. The Post Office Act had been applied on several newspapers, preventing them from being shipped to India from elsewhere. The Indian Sociologist was one of the newspapers affected. The Gaelic American was another.
A string of abusive articles had appeared in several newspapers, one after another, almost like it had been a coordinated effort. The first of them had suggested Shyamji was running a house of scoundrels, who he had ruined by putting seditious ideas into their heads. Yet another accused him of “perverting young minds”.
He wrote back in the Times and in the Standard, saying he was proud of freeing young minds from the yoke of a foreign power. It didn’t help the situation any. He would show us his response pieces proudly, but underneath it all, he was just angry and exhausted, with no other outlet. There wasn’t much any of us could offer in terms of comfort or consolation; he was the one we all looked up to. The helplessness was getting to us. And it felt very lonely.
It was in this backdrop that we had a surprise visitor.
“A reporter from the Gaelic American to see you, sir, Mr. Shyamji” Mrs. Carr said.
“Hm? I wasn’t expecting anybody.” Shyamji said.
“Mr. Barry O’Brien, sir.”
Shyamji nodded. “What’s he like?”
“Seems a little American from his manners, but I could swear he grew up right here.”
“Not Gaelic enough, and not American enough?”
Mrs Carr shrugged and went to get him.
“Ah, Mr. Krishna Varma, so good to finally meet you!” Mr. O’Brien said as he burst in to Shyamji’s chambers.
“We’ve met before haven’t we?” Shyamji said.
“No, Mr. Krishna Varma, I haven’t had the pleasure. Until now.” O’Brien said, warmly offering his hand.
“Did Guy Aldred send you?” Shyamji said.
“Let’s just say we at the Gaelic American have always been a fan. And now that we’re both banned under the Post Office Act, that’s a real kinship now between us.”
“We at the Indian Sociologist are also great admirers of the Gaelic American. I go back a long way with some of your staff. Is Eoin still swain at his rowing club?”
“Oh you know Eoin, same as ever.” Barry said.
Shyamji pursed his lips.
“How long did you say you have been at the Gaelic American, Mr. O’Brien?” He said.
“Just over a year.” Mr. O’Brien said, “Just when I thought I had a good gig going, those bastards over at Scotland Yard try to ruin us.”
Shyamji watched Mr. O’Brien carefully before he said “Comes with the territory.”
“Aren’t you angry at this country and how it’s treating you and your people, Mr. Krishna Varma?”
“I say what I think in my newspaper columns, and in the Indian Sociologist, Mr. O’Brien.” Said Shyamji with a broad smile.
“How do you feel about the charges that you are ‘polluting and perverting young impressionable minds’?”
“Mr. O’Brien” Shyamji laughed, “If I took every piece of feedback I was given to heart, I would be quite unable to get anything done.”
“So it doesn’t bother you that they are accusing you of running a house of scoundrels right here in India House?”
Shyamji was amused by now. “Can I give you a piece of advice, Mr. O’Brien? Simply bombarding someone with accusations is not a great way to get quotable quotes for your newspaper. In addition to which that isn’t quite the kind of journalism your editor expects. Nothing I say will come off as explosive on the pages of the Gaelic American. Please come back when you’re geared towards a real interview. Good day to you.” Shyamji rose and showed Mr. O’Brien the door.
Tatya was standing outside.
“Oh, Barry O’Brien! I didn’t know you knew Shyamji.” He exclaimed.
“Mr. O’Brien is a reporter at the Gaelic American, did you know, Tatya?” Shyamji said in a mocking tone. “He was just on his way out.”
Tatya nodded to him.
As Barry O’Brien disappeared down the stairs, Tatya muttered in a low voice, “What’s he doing here? He was just a casual attendee to some of our events, wasn’t he?”
“He’s a reporter for the Gaelic American” Shyamji repeated facetiously.
Tatya smiled. “Scotland Yard is getting bold, aren’t they?”
“It’s not Scotland Yard. It is the India Office.” Shyamji’s voice clenched.
“Your old friend Sir Curzon Wyllie?”
“Who else.”
Shyamji seemed unusually tense.
“How did you know?” Tatya asked.
“He tried to pretend he knew my friend Eoin. But somehow missed that Eoin has been bedridden since his rowing accident three years ago.”
“You showed him the door. That’s something.”
“Tatya, this one is incompetent. Doesn’t mean they all will be. It’s only a matter of time before they send someone who actually tricks us into making a mistake.”
“We won’t make mistakes.”
“Do you realize what we’ve got ourselves into? You think the next person they send will be an Irishman we can easily distance ourselves from? No. They will send someone who will look like us, sound like us, and think like us, who you’ll like a lot, and who you will let into your life. All he needs to do is watch me enough to figure out where I keep the raw proofs of The Indian Sociologist where I am not as politically correct, or he will discover one of you holds ‘seditious views’ in private, and rat you out. And bam, we’ll be gone. Deported, just like that. Probably facing several years in prison.”
“Prisons in Britain don’t seem too bad.”
“Take this seriously, I implore you.”
“I am! Isn’t this par for the course? I have been watched since I was sixteen. This isn’t new to me! Or my family!”
“What you’re trying to accomplish is new.”
“It’s the same thing on a larger scale.”
“Tatyarao! Try to understand! We are in danger. We’ve only just got something started. We cannot let it go to waste by being careless and letting ourselves get put out of commission.”
“We won’t. We only lose if we have a gaddaar or two in our midst. That has been true since the times of Prithviraj Chauhan, we must almost expect it.”
“Exactly my point! You do know the India Office runs a student group for Indian students, right? Curzon Wyllie personally shows up and awes the tots with his persona and connections and ability to make magic happen.”
Tatya fell quiet.
“It is patently unsafe for me here. I should probably shift base to a place where Scotland Yard and the India Office hold no sway.”
“Shyamji! What are you saying? Who will manage this place without you?”
“It’s just something I’m thinking about. But think big. You think you couldn’t manage this place?”
“It’s not that, it’s just I—“
“Imagine how much fun you’ll have running this place the Tatya way, with no doddering old Shyamji to keep you on a leash.”
Tatya grew quiet again.
“And I’ll send Bhikhaji here every once in a while to maintain a grown up presence so you children don’t get too carried away.”
It sounded great to Tatya. But his body tensed up at the thought of it all.
“But you can’t go.”
“Tatya listen to me. They are already putting the screws on Guy. He is an Englishman and has his connections to make his life easy. I am neither of those things. We can’t afford to have me in jail and all my assets frozen. This is the only way out I see.
“Shouldn’t you stay and fight with us? Lead by example?”
Shyamji sighed. “You know it doesn’t work that way here.”
Tatya shook his head and walked away. None of this seemed right. Why was Shyamji so easily spooked? At some level, it felt like Shyamji just wanted the young people to do the fighting, so he could stick to posturing in print.
But he really knew Shyamji was right. They needed a man on the outside to keep the movement running. Though, why did it have to be Shyamji?
Besides, he could remake India House in his own image. That wasn’t a bad option at all.
Especially if it meant there would be no more moong dal for dinner every evening.
Endnotes:
I wanted to add in some sort of PG13 secret agent stuff, a la the Oceans trilogy, hence the Eoin bit, which I think is in one of the Oceans movies? I don’t recall perfectly.
The bit about Hardayal was an interesting find from his biography, which is a really well-researched book.
The bit at the end about moong dal was another really cute tidbit I found while researching this story. Apparently Shyamji, as a Gujarati vegetarian, was quite partial to moong dal and it was served at every meal at India House, while the residents didn’t care for it very much. All these little humanizing bits are so important to add character to a novel and I am always looking for more.
In general, this chapter is supposed to be a point of no return, with the house passing to Tatya. I’m foreshadowing the annoyance everyone had with Shyamji in general, that he just hung out in the ivory tower saying things in newspapers, while they did the actual work on the ground and experienced real consequences. They were even more annoyed he denounced them in his writings. This becomes a big reason why this group fragments in the end after Tatya gets sentenced to 50 years in the Andamans. But his position is also quite interesting - he aligns his self-preservation with preserving the idea he’s promoting. Which works out great when they are aligned, but sometimes they aren’t, at least in the short term. This causes much consternation, and this is where a lot of the pain that the British exploit come from.