35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

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EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
Harijans, he meant – Untouchables. For the first time the word had
some meaning for me.
The air-conditioned express train out of Karnataka state and through
the rich green rice paddies of Tamil Nadu to Madras was easy enough.
The bone-rattling bus ride north into the baked rocks of Andhra
Pradesh, wedged in with the usual solid wall of humid human flesh,
chickens, goats, and two baby camels, was the only thing it could be.
For nine hours.
I’d stayed overnight in Madras, visiting the fort where Robert Clive
had begun working, in 1744, as a clerk for the East India Company at
a salary of £5 per year. By all accounts, he found the job unrelievedly
tedious. Not fifteen years later, Clive, still technically an employee
of the Company, was also its landlord, and feudal lord, too. As first
governor of Bengal, defeating the local nawab at the decisive battle
of Plassey, he became the bridge between the commercial presence
of John Company in India and the imperial presence of Great Britain.
He returned to England in 1767, a very rich man indeed. In fact, as
some complained, perhaps too rich a man. In an age of colonial
plunder and state-sanctioned thievery, there were still limits on what
was deemed proper for any individual to make, as opposed to what
was deemed proper for the Crown and Company to make, and a
resolution was proposed in the House of Commons that Clive had
‘illegally acquired the sum of [$500,000] to the dishonour and
detriment of the State.’ The resolution was defeated, however, and
another passed: ‘That Robert, Lord Clive did, at the same time,
render great and meritorious services to his country.’ Something
clearly nagged Clive’s conscience, though, because eighteen months
later, on November 22, 1774, depressed and wracked with pain for
which he took opium, he sat on his toilet and slit his throat with a
penknife he’d used only minutes before to sharpen the quill of a
houseguest who wished to write a letter.
Information about local transport being more than usually scarce,
I had no idea how difficult it would actually be to reach Venkatagiri,
which was not featured on any map I could find.
Nine punishing hours on the first bus seemed to take me far out
of my way, although I kept being assured this wasn’t so. Then