The Patriot

Fiction

India's new Lady of Justice

Raju is shocked out of his deep sleep early in the morning by the doorbell that rings rather imperiously. His mobile phone shows the time: 4.04 am. Who can come visiting at this unearthly hour?

Raju looks out through the window and sees a saffron-robed man with a saffron shawl wrapped around his torso standing outside. An alarm bell rings in Raju’s heart.

As soon as Raju opens the door, the saffron man hands him a sealed envelope and walks away into the darkness without uttering a single word.

The letter is addressed to Mr Rajashekharan, LD Clerk, Shantigram. It is written in extremely formal language. The letter charges Raju of being antinational and orders him to prove his patriotism to concerned authorities at the earliest failing which he will have to face severe consequences under some section of the Naya Nyaya Samhita, New Penal Code.

Raju sits with a tremor in his heart on the sofa in his small living room. He doesn’t want to disturb his wife and children who are sleeping unthreatened by the treason of the man of the house.

Where did I go wrong? Raju asks himself. Cleopatra, his beloved cat, comes from somewhere and snuggles up to him on the sofa. He pats Cleopatra and wonders whether his love for a cat, especially one named after a foreign Queen, is an act of treason in a country where good citizens are expected to worship the cow. He had refused to adopt a cow a few months earlier when the local MLA had made the suggestion. Was Cleopatra a colonial ruler? Raju wondered. His knowledge of history wasn’t quite strong. He named the cat after the queen merely because he thought Cleopatra was quite feline and his cat was quite Cleopatraesque. He got that notion not from history but from Shakespeare.

Could the roots of his treason be lying asleep in his bedroom? His wife, Jennifer, was from an orthodox Catholic family. Theirs was what is known in the country as ‘love marriage’. But their marriage had taken place long before a Hindu loving a non-Hindu became a crime in the country.  

Raju picks up his mobile phone and checks his social media posts to see whether he had wittingly or unwittingly posted a comment against the government. It is not quite likely since both Facebook and X, the only social media where Raju makes occasional appearances and leaves his markings mostly in the form of readymade emoticons apart from a few photos of Cleopatra, have fixed bots to instantly delete any comment that can be deemed antinational even by the remotest interpretations.

“Why don’t you seek the help of Amina?” Jennifer asks when she gets to know about the curious letter from the government. Amina is a lawyer in their neighbourhood, the only one of that community to have studied enough to become a professional because of which she is held in high esteem in the neighbourhood.  

A few days pass. Amina has been unable to find out anything about the charge against Raju though everyone in every government office is aware of the charge. She has not even been able to find out where she can fight the case to get Raju justice whose statue has recently been liberated from her blindfold and has also been draped in the country’s traditional dress.

Raju has gone to the MLA and expressed his readiness to adopt not one but two cows. But it’s late. The MLA admonishes him saying that opportunities don’t knock twice on your door. Raju remembers that the saffron man didn’t pay a second visit.

To which authority should he, Raju, prove his patriotism? Raju asks the MLA. The MLA shrugs his shoulders. “The highest authority is like God, invisible and inaccessible except to the chosen few.” Raju doesn’t understand what that means.

Soon, everyone is aware of Raju’s treason. His office doesn’t suspend or dismiss him but his colleagues and seniors have stopped looking at him. His neighbours keep a distance from him. Even Jennifer seems to avoid him, Raju thinks. She has moved her bed to the children’s room and has asked children not to disturb father with unnecessary conversations. “Your dad is a very important man now to his country,” Raju hears Jennifer tell the children.  

“How do I prove my patriotism?” Raju asks Jennifer.

“Not sure,” Jennifer muses. “Maybe, you can kill a Muslim and claim that the fellow was a killer of cows.” Raju is not sure whether Jennifer is indulging in black humour.

Raju joins all the rallies and processions organised by the ruling party and its brother-and-sister-and-parent organisations. He wears saffron robes whenever it doesn’t look absurd to do so. He deletes Cleopatra’s pictures from Facebook and X and puts up the national flag and the ruling party’s flag instead. He composes some poetry too in honour of the nation.

O, my dear land, so wide and free,

You’re the greatest place for me to be!

Your mountains stand so tall and proud,

And your ruler stands with a higher head.

            Finally, after months of struggle like Hanuman who left no mountain unturned and no seas uncrossed and no fire unburnt in order to accomplish his mission, Amina manages to arrange a tribunal to hear Rajashekharan’s case.

The tribunal finds that Raju has done nothing significant to prove his patriotism. Therefore, the tribunal decides that Raju’s job must be changed. He is assigned a new job to identify the antinational elements in his neighbourhood.

Raju goes home, takes out a sheet of paper, and writes the heading: ANTINATIONAL PEOPLE OF SHANTIGRAM. 

PS. The seed of this story flew into my soil illegally from Franz Kafka’s literary landscapes.  

Similar story from 2017: Halley’s Fishes