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concluded by saying, that if they didn’t believe him, why didn’t they experiment and find out for themselves.
    Bauji was impressed with this logic, and moved by the possibilities of meditation. Sceptical by nature and shy of religion, he was amused to see himself being swept by the guru and the ashram’s atmosphere.
    From the mystic calm of the ashram, the guru and the river, Bauji was brutally thrown into the mundane world. On his way home, as he was getting into the train at Jullunder, he found himself trapped in the middle of what the next day’s newspapers called ‘a minor communal disturbance’. The papers went on to praise ‘the speed and firmness with which the police put down the disorder’, but Bauji remembered only his humiliation.
    Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, two handsome Muslim boys, scarcely twenty years old, emerged. They confidently walked into his compartment, and with extreme courtesy asked Bauji his name. Bauji gave it to them. When they heard it they spat in his race and turned to run away, but their way was blocked by a gentleman with a suitcase who had entered at that precise moment. The gentleman had seen what had happened. He slapped the boy closest to him squarely across the cheek. The blow was struck with such force that the sound was heard all over the noisy platform. The boys were taken aback and managed to beat a quick retreat. Bauji smiled gratefully at his benefactor, though he felt ashamed. The ironic discovery that his benefactor was a Muslim momentarily diverted him from his own humiliation.
    A third passenger entered shortly, and informed them that there had been a communal riot that morning in the area around the railway station. The trouble had apparently started because a Hindu procession had played music outside the Muslim mosque. The Muslims had regarded this as a provocation and had retaliated. The next morning’s papers placed the casualties at ‘four dead, twenty wounded, two shops burned, two cases of rape’. By the time the police arrived on the platform Bauji’s train had started to move. Just as well, he thought, that he was spared the ordeal of publicly recounting his humiliation. Neither he nor the Muslim gentleman mentioned the incident again during the journey.
    As the train gathered speed, Bauji’s feelings of shock and humiliation were gradually replaced by calm reflection of what had happened. He was surprised by the clarity of his mind so soon after this unpleasantness. He did not feel hatred for the two boys: they were part of a tide which was carrying the Punjab towards an unthinkable doom. The mischief had been unleashed not by Jinnah alone (as everyone believed) but also by Gandhi.
    Bauji felt comfortable with the Congress movement so long as it was led by men like Gokhale, who spoke the familiar language of liberalism and the law. But the entry of Gandhi at the end of World War I had set it on a path of ‘direct action’ and given it a more Hindu complexion. Bauji distrusted Gandhi’s methods of civil disobedience and mass agitation. They caused division everywhere—the biggest one being between Hindus and Muslims. And Gandhi seemed oblivious of it. For Gandhi—with all his fads and fasts, his mud baths, goat’s milk, days of silence, non-violence—was fundamentally a Hindu. Although he claimed to be a ‘Muslim, Parsee, Christian, and Hindu’, who else but a Hindu could expect people to take such a quixotic idea seriously?
    Like a true Hindu, who prefers dreams to facts and ideals to reality, Gandhi did not seem to realize that he was playing with fire. The more he succeeded with the masses the more he alienated the Muslims. Where was all this leading to? Today’s incident at the railway station was merely a sign of what was to become of the Punjab. His own life had not been in danger today, but no one had been able to save that poor innocent boy in the Company Bagh last month. In their quest for independence the politicians had ended by