Free The Writer and the World by V.S. Naipaul

Indira Congress. And here—a local reflection of the national quarrel about legitimacy—was the first issue in Ajmer: who was morally in the wrong? The uncle, for fighting the nephew? Or the nephew, for fighting the uncle?
    Mr. Mukut, the uncle, was sixty-eight years old, a lawyer, and blind. He was famous in Rajasthan for his prodigious memory and his skill in matters of land revenue. His fees were said to be as high as one thousand rupees a day, about £50; his earnings were put at two lakhs a year, about £10,000. But Mr. Mukut was also known for his free services to peasants, who still came to Ajmer to look for “the lawyer without eyes.” Mr. Mukut was an old Congressman and freedom fighter and he had gone to jail in 1942. His political career since independence had been unspectacular, but steady and without blemish: he was perhaps best known for his campaign to have clarified butter easily distinguishable from its groundnut-based substitute. He had won the Ajmer seat for Congress in 1952, 1957 and 1962. In 1967, at the age of sixty-four, he had retired, handing over the Ajmer seat to his thirty-six-year-old nephew and protégé, Mr. Bishweshwar. Now, with the Congress split, Mr. Mukut wanted his seat back; and, to get it, he had allied himself with all his old political enemies. Was Mr. Mukut right? Was Mr. Bishweshwar wrong, for resisting?
    The answer, overwhelmingly, was that Mr. Bishweshwar was wrong. He should have withdrawn; he should not have fought his uncle, to whom he owed so much. It was what Mr. Mukut’s son, who was Mr. Mukut’s election agent, said; and it was what Mr. Bishweshwar’s agent said. Mr. Mukut himself always spoke of the contest with a sense of injury. “The State Congress chose the meanest weapon,” he said, “setting my own nephew to fight me. They know I’m a man of strong family feeling and they were hoping I would withdraw.” The Maharana of Udaipur, who was supporting Mr. Mukut, told an election meeting, “The Indira Congress is dividing the country, and not only ideologically. They are breaking up families.” And the Rajput village headman, loyal to his Maharana, agreed. “A nephew who cannot love the members of his own family, how can he love the public?”
    But wasn’t the uncle also wrong to try to pull down his nephew? “I didn’t want my father to fight this election,” Mr. Mukut’s son said. “I said, ‘Bapuji you are old now, you are disabled.’ But then I was overwhelmed by his answer. It brought tears to my eyes. He said, ‘This is a time for sacrifice.’”
    Sacrifice: it wasn’t a claim Mr. Bishweshwar could make, and for much of the campaign he looked harassed and uncertain and sometimes hunted. Unlike his uncle, who always spoke freely, even elaborately, Mr. Bishweshwar had little to say; and his manner discouraged conversation. He stared blankly through his glasses, like a man alerted not to say anything that might be used against him. Once he said, “I cannot understand how my uncle can go against all those principles I imbibed from him.” It was the only comment on his uncle I heard him make, and it was spoken very quickly, like a prepared line.
    Mr. Bishweshwar wasn’t a popular man. He suffered from all comparisons with his uncle. Mr. Mukut was small and lean and brown, an ascetic politician of the old school, with a jail-record. Mr. Bishweshwar was as tall and plump as a film star. He was a post-independence politician, an organization man. People in his own party said of him: “Politics is his profession.” And: “If politics were taken away from him he would hardly be having two square meals a day.” And: “His uncle massacred hundreds of party workers for him.” But that wasn’t held against the uncle; that was held against Mr. Bishweshwar.
    “I’m not working for Bishweshwar,” his campaigners said. “I’m working for Indira.” And this was what they said even on polling day, waiting in the brightly coloured party tents for