The Lowland

Udayan talked about what was unfolding. Secretly smoking after their parents had gone to bed, sitting at the study table, with an ashtray between them.
    Do you think it was worth it? Subhash asked. What the peasants did?
    Of course it was worth it. They rose up. They risked everything. People with nothing. People those in power do nothing to protect.
    But will it make a difference? What good are bows and arrows against a modern state?
    Udayan pressed his fingertips together, as if to clasp a few grains of rice. If you were born into that life, what would you do?
    Like so many, Udayan blamed the United Front, the left-wing coalition led by Ajoy Mukherjee that was now running West Bengal. Earlier in the year both he and Subhash had celebrated its victory. It had put communists into the cabinet. It had promised to establish a government based on workers and peasants. It had pledged to abolish large-scale landholdings. In West Bengal, it had brought nearly two decades of Congress leadership to an end.
    But the United Front hadn’t backed the rebellion. Instead, in the face of dissent, Jyoti Basu, the home minister, had called in the police. And now Ajoy Mukherjee had blood on his hands.
    The Peking People’s Daily accused the West Bengal government of bloody suppression of revolutionary peasants. Spring Thunder Breaks over India, its headline read. In Calcutta all the papers carried the story. On the streets, on college campuses, demonstrations broke out, defending the peasants, protesting the killings. At Presidency College, and at Jadavpur, Subhash and Udayan saw banners hanging from the windows of certain buildings, in support of Naxalbari. They heard speeches calling for state officials to resign.
    In Naxalbari the conflict only intensified. There were reports of banditry and looting. Peasants setting up parallel administrations. Landowners being abducted and killed.
    In July the Central Government banned the carrying of bows and arrows in Naxalbari. The same week, authorized by the West Bengal cabinet, five hundred officers and men raided the region. They searched the mud huts of the poorest villagers. They captured unarmed insurgents, killing them if they refused to surrender. Ruthlessly, systematically, they brought the rebellion to its heels.
    Udayan sprang up from the chair where he’d been sitting, pushing a pile of books and papers away from him in disgust. He switched off the radio. He started to pace the room, looking down at the floor, running his fingers through his hair.
    Are you all right? Subhash asked him.
    Udayan stood still. One hand was still clasping his head, the other resting on his hip. For a moment he was speechless. The report had shocked them both, but Udayan was reacting as if it were a personal affront, a physical blow.
    People are starving, and this is their solution, he eventually said. They turn victims into criminals. They aim guns at people who can’t shoot back.
    He unlatched the door of their bedroom.
    Where are you going?
    I don’t know. I need to take a walk. How could it have come to this?
    Sounds like it’s over in any case, Subhash said.
    Udayan paused before leaving, shaking his head. This could only be the beginning, he said.
    The beginning of what?
    Something bigger. Something else.
    Udayan quoted what the Chinese press had predicted: The spark in Darjeeling will start a prairie fire and will certainly set the vast expanses of India ablaze.
    By autumn Sanyal and Majumdar had both gone into hiding. It was the same autumn Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia, his hands cut off to prove his death.
    In India journalists started publishing their own weeklies. Liberation in English, Deshabrati in Bengali. They reproduced articles from Chinese Communist magazines. Udayan began bringing them home.
    This rhetoric is nothing new, their father said, leafing through a copy. Our generation read Marx, too.
    Your generation didn’t solve anything, Udayan said.
    We built a nation. We’re independent. The country is ours.
    It’s not enough. Where did it get us? Who has it helped?
    These things take time.
    Their father dismissed Naxalbari. He said young people were getting excited over nothing. That the whole thing had been a matter of fifty-two days.
    No, Baba. The United Front thinks it’s soon, but it’s falled. Look at what’s happening.
    What is happening?
    People are reacting. Naxalbari is an inspiration. It’s an impetus for