Malgonkar’s Meditation on History: “The Devil’s Wind”

Malgonkar’s Meditation on History:
“The Devil’s Wind”

The personality of Nana Saheb and his role in the Sepoy Revolt of 1857 have been variously treated by the British and the Indian writers both in history and fiction. In general the British point of view as instanced by Pattie’s book projects Nana as a criminal “who achieved an immortality of infamy by his perfidy and cruelty at Cawnpore”.¹ Largely as a corrective to this, Edward Thompson, R. C Majumdar and Surendranath Sen have established that there is no dependable evidence to fix the responsibility of the genocide in the Sepoy Revolt upon Nana Saheb.

Manohar Malgonkar’s novel The Devil’s Wind (1972) sets out to put history in correct perspective and assess Nana’s, role. There is in it an attempt at creative integration of history and art while taking “no liberties with verifiable facts or even with probabilities.” In an interview, Malgonkar says:

All history of India is written from the British view. Nana Saheb, the leading figure of the Mutiny, has historically been treated as a villain. In my book I treat him as a human being. I write of him as neither a patriot nor villain but as a rather mixed-up human being, like most of us are. ²

Malgonkar’s concern is with what makes Nana human, a compound of good and bad. He does not shrink to turn the history of Sepoy Revolt inside out and to reflect on Nana’s role in it. Malgonkar works with his imaginative insight into the established historical material for the “clarification of his (Nana’s) motives” and his point of view.³ He has broadened our understanding of the Sepoy Revolt from a novelist’s perspective, probing the protagonist’s psyche which, of course, lies beyond the historian’s domain. The novel is “a meditation on history” and it succeeds as a historical novel by being “a stimulus tothe imaginative and critical faculties and an education in human sympathies”. ⁴ Commenting on the limitations of the novel, Prof. Amur remarks:

The Indo-British encounter of which Nana’s story is a part is no longer a matter of vital concern for Indians and Nana has hardly the kind of meaningful symbolism in the context of contemporary life as Camus’ Caligula, for example, has. This perhaps is the central weakness of Malgonkar’s book.

Though the symbolic aspect of the novel is weak, Prof. Amur’s equation of Nana with Caligula appears to be rather strained and far-fetched. The novel, nevertheless, acquires great significance as the psychological story of an individual. The interest of the novel lies in the portrayal of Nana’s intense quest for fulfilment which he sought in the values of friendship, patriotism and love. Malgonkar shows that Nana has given evidence of a guarded and honest approach to the problems involving the destiny of his country and his British friends. Nana does not want the innocent to be killed gratuitously. He sends word to the Wheelers before his attack on the Entrenchment. During his attacks, violence erupts without his knowledge or involvement. Nana continues his struggle for the freedom of his motherland even after his repeated defeats. Ultimately after his retreat to Nepal he seeks fulfilment in the love of Eliza, a British girl whom he had earlier saved from violence.

II

Nana is a victim of the deliberate distortion of historical facts. His “instinctive squeamishness at the shedding of blood” and “brahmanical humanitarianism” were of no consequence to the British. The British have connected him with the crude barbarities of the Bibighar and Satichaura incidents and deliberately made him up into “a monster of ferocity.” Nana explains:

Our revolt had thrown up a surfeit of British heroes but no villain to balance them against, and they needed villainy of the requisite magnitude to serve as a drop for heroism. How hollow would Havelock’s victories seem if I, Nana Saheb, had not been their principal objective!

So the British have magnified the horrors and invented a few, compelling the servants to testify to the cooked-up story. They have made Nana into a monster. Malgonkar simply uncovers the hidden historical facts for the real Nana to emerge in the course of his novel.

Nana regards the obligations of friendship as important as those of patriotism and racial loyalty. He had a large number of friends among the British, and he did not wish them to be made into scapegoats for all the wrongs committed by the East India Company. He is deeply human and would not allow the innocent men, women and children to become helpless victims of war. That is why he decides to escort the British families to Bithoor on the request of his collector-friend Hillersdon. He tries to keep Kanpur unaffected by the Revolt out of compassion for the innocent. He believes that he would be “the mediator and the negotiator” and “go down in history as the man who had tempered a Revolt, who had helped his own people to achieve freedom from foreign conquerors with only the minimum bloodletting.” One cannot doubt his patriotism for all his affinity with the British officials in India. It is tragic that Nana who found the meaning of life in human values should be linked up with the ghastly happenings in the Revolt and damned as an assassin.

Nana’s act of sending word to Wheeler before his attack on him was prompted by his sense of friendship. It cannot be treason. Nana explains:

I sent him word because I had promised to do so, and I shall never admit that my love for his daughter had anything to do with it. Somehow it seemed important that the gesture be made..It was my last concession to a friendship I truly valued. (Italics mine)

But Nana’s genuine intention to save the innocent men and women turns into an incredibly foolish act as more sepoys and innocent people fell victims to “mob fury and other grotesque drives of war hysteria.” Nana feels sick of the inhuman impulses of his followers when they starve the two hundred and fifty people of Entrenchment.

Out of compassion, Nana assures the victims a safe passage to Allahabad. He arranges for the manufacture of boats. The Britishers agree for exodus. Many people gathered at Satichaura Ghat to witness the scene of ruler departing. Everything was going on smoothly. But suddenly there was a pandemonium. Bullets cracked and the screams rent the air. There was a genocide and no one including Tantya and others knew, who started it. Having learnt the news, Nana sends messengers to stop the killings in vain. By the time he reached the spot, it was too late. Only 170 half-dead men and women were left who were removed to Bibighar. Nana feels intense agony at the unforeseen horror and is profoundly apologetic.

I am sorry, I said to them, but without uttering a sound. This is not how I wanted it to end. Forgive me, I am sorry, sorry, sorry. I have not saved your lives. I have compromis­ed, borrowed a little time for some, perhaps served a few, I don’t know. I am sorry.

The Bibighar genocide is another with which Nana is wrongly connected. When Nana was camping in Maharajapur preparing for a battle, all the hundred and seventy white women and children held captives at Bibighar were killed. The killing was suspected to have been done by butchers under the directive of Hussainy Begum whose daughter was burnt alive by the Britishers in Daryaganj. Although Nana was not connected with any of these massacres, he was conscientious enough to feel concerned about Satichaura and Bibighar incidents. He regrets:

Satichaura and Bibighar are monuments to our brutality. “Look and be ashamed,” the world will forever admonish us. “This is what you have done; this is what you are capable of.” So long as the sun and the moon go round, our noses will be rubbed in their dregs.

But Nana points to the truth that these incidents were only a measure in retaliation to the “calculated savagery” of the newly ­arrived British column headed by Neill and Renaud. The British column had committed notorious barbarities among the Indian villagers just to instill fear by violence. Their cruelty was so shocking that people spoke of the whole villages and townships raped, not of single woman. Referring to the destruction of Lucknow, Nana comments:

What the British did to Lucknow cannot be balanced against a hundred Satichauras, cannot be washed by banning all mention of it from history books, cannot be atoned for by a hundred years of the most unblemished administration. It was as though every single soldier was wreaking a personal vendetta against the men, women, and children of the city, and even against its bricks and mortar; the orgy of killing, rape, and vandalism did not abate for weeks.

The historians have, however, ignored it while magnifying whatever Indians did.

Although no inquiry could prove that Nana was present anywhere near Bibighar when the tragedy occurred, inscriptions were laid by the side of the well and the Entrenchment affixing the responsibility of massacres to him, “the rebel Nana” and “his followers.” In the last of the book, Malgonkar very imaginatively makes Nana present his argument. Nana makes it clear that neither he nor his followers had anything to do with the shameful butchery of women and children. He argues that if he is held responsible for the massacres, Queen Victoria should be accused of all the atrocities committed by the British in her name. He is sorry that the British officers like Hodson and Fredric Cooper responsible for indiscriminate shooting and butchery have been made heroes. He does not justify the genocide by the Indian soldiers and condemns their action as a monument to brutality.

After liberating Kanpur on 27 June 1857, Nana loses battles with the British at Fattepur and Kanpur. Even after his false Jal-Samadhi, he again assumes the stature of “the command of an army of five thousand strong.” Once he could also capture the city of Kanpur for a week forcing General Wyndham to withdraw into his new Entrenchment. When his hit-and-run tactics fail, Nana retreats to Nepal where he buys thirteen months of free life with his precious Naulakha necklace.

Nana’s unflinching commitment to the cause of his country is evident in an open letter he wrote to Queen Victoria.

“All I want you to understand is that I am not a murderer,” I wrote, “but at the same time you have no enemy more determined than myself. So long as I live, I shall fight. (Italics mine)

Nana, feels helpless at the news of Tantya Topi’s execution and the death of Balarao. With his ambitions wrecked, he could ulti­mately find his fulfilment in the loving company of his beloved Eliza whom he had earlier saved from the torture of Nizam Ali and his wife. He counts his experience with her richer and more satisfying than his past experience as “the master of the Wada at Bithoor or as the Emperor’s short-lived Peshwa.

Eliza and I were like some symbolic couple, like Rama and Sita during their exile, finding total fulfilment in one another and hankering for nothing which we could not find in our own surroundings.

This was not for long. He begins to feel restless at the thought of his native country. He is moved by the sight of his motherland when he returns from Nepal.

This was my land. My mind would forever be chained to it, my spirit haunt it everlastingly. Wherever I might go, I would never get away from Kanpur.

Nana thus emerges as a man who has fought his enemy and yet sought fulfilment in the values of freedom, friendship and love.

III

Asnani believes that the novel is “in no case in objective and dispassionate study ofhistory, nor does it bring to the reader’s knowledge any new and significant facts”. ⁵ Though Malgonkar reveals the Indian point of view in defending Nana from the attacks of the British historians, one cannot say that it is not dispassionate. Malgonkar points to the horrors committed by both – Indians and the British. He brings out the virtues and lapses of Nana Saheb. Best has rightly said that Nana is neither “a hero nor an anti-hero, he is the kind of ambiguous character that Malgonkar delights in”⁶ Malgonkar presents the argument of Nana as Nana would have written it himself in a cogent way and thus fortifies what is historically true.

Asnani also refers to what he calls historical distortions in the novel and finds fault with Malgonkar’s method. Prof. Amur on the contrary describes The Devil’s Wind as “more history than novel”. But one should remember that the novel is not all history. Malgonkar makes use of his inventive imagination only where sufficient historical evidence is not available. He cannot be indicted for historical inaccuracy since fiction rounds off facts, no matter how firmly the author has anchored himself in the historic base.

The Devil’s Wind could be contrasted with John Master’s Nightrunners of Bengal. ⁷ Masters in his novel depicts the various events of the Sepoy Revolt in general from the British point of view. But Malgonkar deals with the life of Nana Saheb in particular against the drop of the events of the Sepoy Revolt evidently from the Indian point of view. He is understandably not very much pleased with the way Masters has seen “the rebellion as though it were a mutiny”.⁸ But in fairness it should, however, be recorded that in the aspects of story-telling and characterisation, both of them compel admiration.

Notes

¹ A. Miles and A. Pattie, The Indian Mutiny (London: 1885)
² The Ellsworth American, November 12, 1970.
³ Prof. G. S. Amur, Manohar Malgonkar (New Delhi. Arnold Heinemann India, 1973) p. 125.
⁴ Helen Maud Cam, Historical Novels (London, Historical Association, 1961) p. 3.
⁵ Shyam M. Asnani, “A Study of the Novels of Manohar Malgonkar,” The Literary Half-Yearly, 16, No.2 (July 1975) p. 95.
⁶ Marshall A. Best, “Manohar Malgonkar,” in The Contemporary Novelists, ed. James Vinson (London: St. James Press, 1973) p. 826.
⁷ John Masters, Nightrunners of Bengal (London. Michael Joseph Ltd., 1969)
⁸ James Y. Dayananda, “On Authors and Books! Interview with Manohar Malgoankar,” The Literary Half-Yearly, 16, No. 2; (July 1975), p. 105.