Paul Scott: “The Raj Quartet”

Appreciation

Paul Scott, like his celebrated namesake Sir Walter Scott, is a topnotch fictionist. He wrote thirteen distinguished novels includ­ing the famous Raj Quartet televised recently. Several of his novels were adapted for radio and television. He was the winner of the Yorkshire Post Fiction Award for the Towers of Silence, the third in the Quartet. His novel Staying On won the Booker Prize for fiction. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he died in 1978 in his fifty-eighth year. This paper deals with the Raj Quartet which is about the Decline and Fall of the British Raj in India and which has carved for itself a niche: in Anglo-Indian fiction beginning, perhaps, with Sir Walter Scott’s The Surgeon’s Daughter. Anglo-Indian fiction begins, perhaps, with Sir Walter Scott and ends with Paul Scott: Max Egremont prophesies that the Raj Quartet defies further fictional excursions into the last years of British India. Susan Hill is of the view that the Raj Quartet is one of the most important landmarks in post-war fiction and a mighty literary experience. Webster Schott writes: “I cannot think of anything worth knowing about the Raj in India that Scott has not told me. His contribution to literature is permanent. “J. W. Farrel pinpoints the excellence thus: “Its two great and time-resisting virtues are first the extra­ordinary range of characters it so skilfully portrays and secondly its powerful evocation of the last days of British India now quietly slipping away into history.” Paul Scott’s achievement is said to be a major one, monumental, breath-taking and the Quartet, according to Gordan Winter, are amongst the most moving and perceptive works of English fiction in the past quarter century. Some of the most remarkable books I had read for a long time, says Elizabeth Thomas. This chorus of praise leaves us in no uncertainty about the excellence of the Quartet.

Knowledge of India

For six years from 1940 to 1946 Paul Scott served in Indian Army and this accounts for the unimpeachable accuracy of his observation of Indian life. Of course, one may remain a lifetime with eyes that see not like the English soldier stationed at Agra who never saw the Taj and who going home on furlough was poring over books on the Taj so that he could answer questions on that dream in marble. Paul Scott notes at the railway station at Ranpur the mournful voice of the man selling tea, Chay-wallah, garam cha-ay, new and old spittings of betel juice which a stranger to the country may confuse with bloodstains, gang of coolies running alongside for fifty yards or more, smell of coal smoke, ripe fruit and of cotton cloth which human sweat has drenched and dried and drenched again, coolies trotting barefoot erect under headloads shouting warning of approach, lighting yellow and intermittent, passengers running or walking or waiting for trains at the base of steel pillars’ black hands thrust out of third class compartments to bid goodbye. When Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners or others visit the Venkateswara Temple at Mayapore we read that chappals are left outside and someone marks them in chalk and takes care of them, the “teertham” is tasted and palms are passed over the head. An Indian can appreciate the truth of these observations. At a higher level Daphne describes the Dancing Siva at Sister Ludmila’s Sanctuary and speaks of Indian music “as the only music I know that sounds conscious of breaking silence, of going into it when it is finished as if to prove that every man-made sound is an illusion.” We find in the Quartet a basketful of Indian terms: darshan, namaste, achcha, nimbopani, chotahazri, chappattis; durzi, nai, chaukidar, puja, raga, sannyaasa, prana, etc. Tumara nam kya hai is juxtaposed to gataasunagataasumsca naanusuchanti panditaah of Gita.

The Quartet

            The Quartet runs into 2000 pages approximately in the Banther edition and covers a period of five years from 9 August 1942 to 9 August 1947. The action takes place mainly at Mayapore, Mirat, Ranpur and Pankot. The Quartet composed in nine years consists of The Jewel in the Crown published in 1966; The Day of the Scorpion in 1968; The Towers of Silence in 1971 ; A Division of the Spoils in 1975.

The overplot of the Quartet sketches the events in India between the Second World War and the partition of the country. Of course, the Quartet is fiction, not history. The main story is that of the criminal assault on an English woman, Daphne Manners, by five or six “badmashes” at Bibighar Gardens. Hari Kumar, who was educated at Chillingborough in England and who had to return to India with his tail between his legs after the suicide of his father, was suspected of complicity in the gang rape, arrested by Merrick the D.S.P. of Mayapore and sent to Kandipat jail. Daphne Manners, becomes pregnant, goes away to her aunt Lady Manners wife of a former Governor of Ranpur, was delivered of a female child (christened Parvati) and died of peritonitis. Lady Manners coming to know of the innocence of Kumar from her niece Daphne who passionately loved him, persuades Governor Sir Malcolm to make a fresh probe into the case of Hari. His A.D.C., Rowan, and a high placed civilian Vallabh Ramaswami Gopal, interview Hari, find outthat the D.S.P. who himself proposed to Daphne, overdid his part. Kumar is released and earns his livelihood by coaching students. The truth of the matter is that while Daphne and Kumar were he-ing and she-ing, a gang of wogs, five or six, tie up Kumar and assault Miss Manners. But the D. S. P., who regarded Indians as men of lesser breed without law, develops a hatred to the extremely handsome Hari Kumar, who, as a Chillingburian, spoke English with better accent than Merrick. This story is “incommunicable in isolation but in the totality of the place, the action and the people”, as Scott points out. This story of Hari and Miss Manners is intertwined with that of Miss Crane and Miss Barbara, two Missionary ladies, that of Lay tons, of the Indian Army, that of Perron, Field Security Officer and later a freelancer and Rowan; A. D. C., that of Kasim, Muslim Congress Minister who resigned at the behest of the High Command, and Bronowsky, a Russian emigre, who became the Chief Minister of the Nawab of Mirat.

Miss Crane, Superintendent of the district’s Protestant Mission Schools, loves India but not any particular Indian, is attacked by a mob and is left by the roadside in drenching rain holding the hand of a murdered Indian, Chauduri. Earlier at Muzafirabad she showed exceptional courage in driving away a mob of Muslims trying to burn down the school. Perhaps this experience made her over-confident. Later she resigns and commits Suttee in a white saree, perhaps as the widow of an Indian now dead. This was the time of popular upheaval consequent on the arrest of the top Congress leaders and the resignation of Congress ministers as India was dragged into the war without the consent of her representatives. Miss Barbara, retired Superintendent of the Prote­stant Mission Schools in the city of Ranpur, becomes a paying guest at Rose Cottage at Pankot owned by Mabel Layton, widow of J. W. Layton, I. C. S., who died of amoebic infection. Barbie becomes the dogsbody of Mabel but earns the bitter hatred of Mildred Layton, wife of Mabel’s stepson, Colonel Layton. After the death of Mabel she had to vacate the Rose Cottage and passes away at the hospital of the Samaritan Mission of broncho-pneumonia.

Colonel Layton was a prisoner of war in Germany. His wife Mildred and two daughters Sarah and Susan managed the affairs of the house. Mildred is a drunk, unfaithful to her husband. Susan gets married to Teddie Bingham and becomes a widow and mother. Because Captain Merrick who got recruited to the Army from the police pulled her husband out of a burning jeep to save him and lost his left arm, Susan is later married to Merrick who for his act of heroism wins D. S. O., and becomes a Lt. Colonel. He was a paederast and was murdered at Mirat where his services were needed by the Chief Minister, Bronowsky, to maintain law and order, though it was given out that he died in a riding accident. Sarah who thinks of India as an unnatural place for a white woman, prefers to stay in India at the end. She has an unconventional ride with Ahmed, the son of ex-minister Kasim, dislikes Merrick as not being her class, goes to Calcutta for Susan’s sake to meet the hospitalised Merrick, loses her cherry to Clark, without and later had to undergo a “d and c”, meets Bronowsky on the return journey and wins his appreciation, welcomes at Bombay her father released from German prison and takes him to Pankot, is somehow estranged from her mother, wins admiration and respect of Rowan and Perronand is too intelligent to fall in love with anyone among the whites and helping others becomes her life style. Later she goes to like as Mrs. Perron.

Perron, a student of history from Cambridge, is Field Security Officer and a radical in thinking who believes in the Purvisite economics that India is a wasted asset and a burden to be off­loaded at the earliest and, as a Chillingburian, is interested in the fate of Hari, gets information about his release from Rowan, considers Merrick a frosty sort of bugger and collects informa­tion about his paederasty and murder from Bronowsky and flies to England.

The Nawab of Mirat as a young man was entangled in the toils of a white lady. Bronowsky, a white, Russian, rescues him and becomes his Chief Minister and transforms Mirat into a modern state. The Nawab, a Muslim ruler of a predominantly Hindu population, signs the instrument of accession to India and ex-minister Kasim remains in the Congress fold though persuaded by his INA son Syed to defect to Jinnah and the Muslim League. Wavell and Mountbatten, Nehru and Jinnah, Gandhi and Cripps, Bose and INA pass across the stage of the Raj Quartet.

Colour of the skin

All these strands are skilfully twisted into an impressive Syndrome: White versus Black, the colour prejudice from which radiate the various confrontations and conflicts and clashes. This colour prejudice is, according to Lady Manners, a fifth-rate passion appropriate only to a nation of vulgar shop-keepers and a nation of fat-bellied banias. The Raj Quartet is a variation on the Othello theme of a black Ram tupping a white EWE and as in Othello it is a white man Merrick who is black and a black man Hari who is white. There is a witty remark by Dr. S. Radha­krishnan that God overbaked a human being and found him to be a Negro, underbaked him to find an Englishman, baked him enough to find an Indian.

Titles

            The Jewel in the Crown is obviously a reference to India the brightest jewel in the British Crown. Is it a jewel if a white woman is gang-raped? If India is a wasted asset, how is it a jewel? The Day of Scorpion refers to the myth of a scorpion stinging itself to death if ringed by fire. Susan is a Scorpio: when off her rocker she places her child on the wet grass, makes a fire round the child whispering. “Little prisoner, shall I release thee?” till Minnie the ayah rescues it. Susan’s senseless act either enacts her husband’s death in a blazing jeep or embodies a philosophy that the British Raj is reduced to an insect surrounded by the destructive element and doomed. The Raj should go down with eroded values, not fight for them. The scorpion is intelligent enough to realize that it cannot escape, courageous enough to kill itself.

            The Towers of Silence ought to refer to the Parsee Towers at Ranpur and the vultures, that feed on the dead thrown on the towers as burial or cremation desecrate the elements of Earth or Fire. Miss Barbie’s life is dedicated to Mabel Layton though abandoned later like a dead body by Mildred. Silence may connote her damaged voice which was her pride. A Division is self-explanatory. The spoils are Dead Sea fruit as the vivisection of the country – a crown­ing failure of British administration – is accompanied by bloodshed and arson. The Jewel is the story of Daphne and Kumar, of Miss Crane and Sister Ludmila and of D. S. P., Merrick. The Day is the story of the Laytons. The Towers is the story of Barbie. A Division is the story of Perron and Rowan, of Kasim and I N A Syed, of Bronowsky and Ahmed. By and large The Raj Quartet is the Biography of Sarah Layton, Hari and Merrick.

Technique

Paul Scott is a superb story-teller. For entertainment value alone these novels, Knightley writes, must rank among the best in recent years. The technique may be called Cancerian and Cross Reference. Scott goes and forth like a crab or at a tangent. It is not a straight run. Scott zig-zags, is repetitious, hither-ing and thither-ing to-ing and fro-ing. An event is told over again, is commented on by several in differing contexts. For instance, Teddie Bingham’s betrothal, marriage, death, birth of his child and christening are all stated in The Day of Scorpion, the second in the Quartet. And his story, his wooing of Sarah and switching over to Susan, sharing room with Merrick, marriage at Mirat, honeymooning at Nanoora are all described in the Towers, the third in Quartet, illustrating the Cancerian. We read that Duleep Kumar went to study law at the same time when Miss Crane entered the service of the Mission and a young girl (later Sister Ludmila) entered an orphanage – illustrating the cross reference method. The affair of the Manners girl with Hari is the unwearying topic of all the characters – Brig. Reid and Deputy Commissioner White, Lady Manners and Lady Chatterjee, the memsahibs and Mackay, Perron and Rowan, Sarah and Bronowsky, Major Tippit and Mac, Gopal and Pandit Baba and of course Merrick. The interview of Kumar is described in 84 pages in The Day of Scorpion and the same is repeated in 42 pages in A Division of Spoils. The narrative makes use of letters, diaries, cartoons and journals.

Summing up

Here is God’s plenty – in Raj Quartet. One has to echo Orville Prescott: “So comprehensive is Mr Scott’s scope, so detailed his knowledge that reading his novel becomes a major experience and a prolonged one. “ In the words of Holloway here is a portrait of real India. Note this about the milkman: “who comes in the morning and milks cow outside the house near the Telegraph pole. To this pole he ties a dead stuffed calf which the cow nuzzles. This keeps her milk. The calf was starved to death because the cow’s milk was taken by milkman to sell to good Hindus” (The Jewel p. 241)

Daphne Manners is the one character who breaks through the colour bar, makes herself grubby for her convictions and result is Parvati, an enchanting girl in the MacGregor House. In the Quartet the Bibighar Gardens is the haunt of Indians, the Cantonment is the preserve of the whites, the MacGregor House is the beacon of Equality between the Whites and Blacks. The Bibighar does not approach the MacGregor House and the Cantonment distrusts it. They are so near and so far. If only the ethos of MacGregor House preavailed, the sun would not have set on Raj. There is neither East nor West when two bold men meet. The Raj Quartet illustrates the terrible Beauty of Yeats’ famous lines on the Easter Rising:

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through winter and summer seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The stone symbol of fanaticism white or black, troubles
the living stream.

In the words of Patrich Swindell, the Raj Quartet, though historical, is metaphysical.