18
PARTISAN REVIEW
tightly drawn back in braids forming a pattern as of loaves or folded
wings. They sang the sacred words not understanding them. Over–
head fluttered the banners and the political slogans-land, bread,
freedom, self-rule-these, too, words of a litany.
Satya neither prayed nor sang. His dry lips moved from time
to time, without forming syllables. His expression as usual was melan–
choly,
his
large eyes, staring, the lines around
his
mouth drawn into
their habitual cast of pity or pain. He was now completely gray and
his complexion had an ashy undertone, combining the pale olive of
nature with the infirmity of jails. He was at once impatient and in
repose, absorbed in himself yet conscious of the crowd, withholding
from prayer in the expression of
his
individual conscience and yet,
thereby, contributing to his public image. It was the division of the
inner and outer man, inseparable from political life, both a conflict
and a poise, neither wholly private nor wholly public, for neither in
itself was whole. Thus, he could look at the scene about him, enjoy
its color, enjoy the spread of caps and turbans, the crossed legs and
arms, the deep almost coal-black of the southern people, the lighter
skins and finer features of the men from the North-all this he could
enjoy, and also the profusion of banners and flags, the costumes of
the various castes, the physical conformation of the tradesmen and
artisans, the stunted, homogenous bodies of the peasants-he could
feel himself part of this crowd and participate in its being, where he
should merely have been a spectator. Yet, knowing their misery, their
humiliation, recognizing signs of disease, malnourishment and de–
formity, knowing also the ignorance of the people, he felt himself
withdrawn, observing where he should have been moved to participa–
tion through sympathy. Bapu had never suffered the complexities of
a divided nature. His faith had been whole, proceeding without devia–
tion from the heart; his life and his work were identical. His spirit
had never varied, never turned in on itself, or fled, leaping out. He
had not known what it meant either to love the crowd or to stand
off from them. Bapu had sat before them, his legs turned under, his
lap spread out, and the dirt of the soil and the mark of handiwork–
both visible-were one.
And yet Satya could feel a simple, positive joy, not to be sub–
tilized, when he rose on the platform at the conclusion of the singing
and received the ovation of the delegates.
It
was the joy of bdng with
his people and of discovering again, in the moment of pride, who he
was and what he was, when the inner life, expanding, merged with
the outer and proved
it~elf
equally great. Then all humiliation was
