28
PARTISAN REVIEW
reality of the life they know. So Satya, who, as a political man, had
become incomplete in himself, now found it necessary to believe in
the reality beyond his present experience, and by imagining the· land–
scape, the river, the town and the people in it, he was keeping alive
the image of himself that existed out there, and without belief in
which he, locked in prison, would lose identity. But as he could
not see out of his cell-like the mud hole in the Central Province, in
which he had lived voluntarily, the cell had only a narrow slit, high
above
his
head, for light and ventilation-he recognized the necessity
he would be under of admitting that the outer reality was now
transcended by the inner. He settled back into
his
obscurity, accus–
tomed to prison life but encountering, as he had each time in the past,
a new desolation and a fresh anxiety that he would not be able to
sustain himself.
Quite apart from its indignity, it had been a heartbreaking trip.
The party leaders for the first few hours were militant and resolute.
They had been arrested and dragged off the platform so quickly that
they were spared the sight of the massacre, and while they had heard
the first shots and seen the first of their followers fall, they were
removed before the assault had reached its full proportions. There–
fore, they were unbroken in spirit, and their admiration of Satya–
to whom, on this occasion, some of the worship reserved for Bapu
had fallen-reached heights remarkable even in a party inclined
to
charismatic excess. At one point their ecstasy had been such that
though they were all bouncing about, chained and bound in the dark
and crowded van, they insisted on embracing him, and they fell over
one another in the effort to throw their arms, and their chains, around
his neck. His speech, they declared, was the greate<st that man had
ever uttered, exceeding even Bapu's speeches in fire and eloquence.
Now they could understand why Bapu, no matter how passionately
he spoke, had always failed to satisfy them. Now that one thought of
it he was inclined to ramble and repeat himself, especially in the later
years, and
his
effectiveness had fallen away with
his
teeth. Satya
need have no fear, they assured
him;
he had raised the people to
greatness, and they would not fail. Even in the precious moment of
agony, which they had been allowed to share with their comrades,
one had seen how they had risen fearlessly and overwhelmed the
soldiers with their faith. They would carry on the struggle, even as
he had directed them; the very attack to which the administration
had resorted wa<s proof of its weakness, and the people, whom no
