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

voters. “The people aren’t voting for Bishweshwar. They’re voting for Indira.”
    Which, as everybody said, was what the election was about: Indira, Mrs. Gandhi, that formidable lady in New Delhi, who had done a de Gaulle on the Congress and taken over, who had abolished the old consensus politics of the Congress. She had declared war on privilege; her appeal was to the poor, the untouchables, the minorities. She had nationalized the banks; she had “de-recognized” the princes; and, to deprive the princes of their privy purses, she intended to change the constitution.
    Indiscipline, people like old Mr. Mukut said, grieving for all those old members of the party who had fallen.
Indira Hatao
, the opposition posters said: Remove Indira. And on the other side:
Garibi Hatao
, Remove Poverty. The rich, the poor: the wonder was that, in India, thisbasic division had taken such a long time to be politically formulated. The socialists and communists hadn’t done that: they offered theologies. And this was the first election in Ajmer in which the parties had issued manifestoes.
    R ICH AND POOR. But there was a regional complication. Rajasthan is a land of princes. Ajmer itself, though in the centre of Rajasthan, hadn’t been a princely state and had no maharaja. But the Ajmer constituency was vast: two hundred miles, mainly of desert, rock and jagged brown hills, between Ajmer and Char Bazaar: more than six hours in a jeep. Two of its districts belonged to the former state of Udaipur; and the Maharana of Udaipur, who had supported Mr. Bishweshwar at the last election, had declared for Mr. Mukut in this. The princes of Rajasthan, “de-recognized” by the government, their privy purses threatened, were in their different ways up in arms against the government. And they could take their case to the people and get a hearing, because they were princes.
    For other people in the opposition, supporters of Mr. Mukut, it wasn’t so easy. Mr. Kaul, an old Congressman of Mr. Mukut’s age, was now a member of the Indian Upper House. Mr. Kaul ate only one meal a day and he said he had acquired the habit during his time in jail in 1932. But there was no jail-taint to him now; the post-independence years of power, honour and politicking had worn him smooth; and Mr. Kaul thought that personal canvassing should be banned.
    “We issue our manifestoes. Why should we go to the people personally? By canvassing the way is found for bribing them. Our people are poor; they don’t understand what we are fighting for. Their ignorance is being exploited. The Indira Congress is spending crores of rupees, spoiling them, the peasants, the villagers, the uneducated and the labour classes. Giving them slogans. All slogans. It’s our national character.”
    I asked him about the national character.
    “Our people don’t think in terms of country first.”
    “What do they think of?”
    “Nothing.”
He laughed. “Haven’t you noticed? They’re indifferent.”
    A ND ON THAT FIRST day in Ajmer the election seemed far away. The tongas carried advertisements for the Apollo Circus; walls everywhere were painted with family-planning slogans in Hindi. It was a Tuesday, the day of the weekly service at the Hanuman temple; and monkeys from the temple hopped from tree to tree on the nearby Circuit House hill. At the top of the hill there was a view of the clear lake beside which Ajmer is built, the water a surprise after the dust of the streets. On the black rocks at the lake-edge scores of washermen were beating the cotton clothes of the poor to death, swinging the twisted wet hanks with a steady circular motion and grunting competitively at every blow.
    The sun rose higher. The brown mist lifted over the brown hills. The washermen spread out their lengths of cotton, white and coloured, and went away. Hawks hovered over the lake, at whose margin clouds of midges swirled and thinned like cigarette smoke in a wind, and then re-formed. From the flat-roofed