14
PARTISAN REVIEW
time the dead woman reached Lokhamadra, the whole city was
aroused; demonstrations were held in the bazaar, in the native quar–
ter and in the public squares. The body, scantily guarded, was left
in the open for several hours. The delegates from the North consid–
ered it remarkable that no violent incident occurred.
The surveyor meanwhile had been placed, not in the large jail
outside the city, but in a small police: station in the bazaar where
the natives soon discovered him.
It
was apparent that no precautions
had been taken against a public uprising. Some believed that the
station's normal complement of police had been dismissed; others,
that they had fled in fear. Whatever the case, the jail had been un–
guarded. The accused, who was in an outside cell, could easily have
been reached from the street. But here, too, the people had restrained
themselves and there was no violence, although several natives, who
were later shown to be provocateurs, had tried to incite the crowd.
No storm had broken, for which the party was thankful; but
apathy and resentment had not been dissipated. A strange mood had
come over the people. They were completely unconcerned in the trial
(the murdered woman's funeral had been sparsely attended) ; and
yet they showed an unprecedented bitterness. They knew even before
the party had been able to point it out to them, and even before the
trial proceedings had established it beyond doubt, that the govern–
ment had arranged the entire incident as a deliberate provocation.
And while they had maintained perfect calm after the initial demon–
strations, it was a calm-so bitter was it-that could exist only in
the absence of a means of reprisal. Which had given to the party
leaders an indication of the danger now present in the mood of the
people, and to the administration whatever success it had achieved
in the affair. The trial itself had been dismissed when the authorities
saw that they had overplayed their hand and had nothing more to
gain. The surveyor had disappeared, returning, so it was believed, to
the mother country where he received a promotion in the civil service.
The delegates were now debating whether to bring the incident
before the party. The news had not, of course, reached the other
provinces, and had in fact not been known outside an area of some
600 square miles in the densely populated Northern Province. Satya
advised the delegates to place the affair on public record, to warn
the people that they would soon be exposed to similar provocations
and incitements to riot. It would also show how strong and efficient
the censorship had become, when it could arbitrarily restrict infor–
mation to a single region, and yet use every means of public dissemi-
