Page 148 - Train to Pakistan

immolation, as on a cinema screen, the sacrifice might be worth while: a moral
lesson might be conveyed. If all that was likely to happen was that next morning
your corpse would be found among thousands of others, looking just like them—
cropped hair, shaven chin … even circumcised—who would know that you were

not a Muslim victim of a massacre? Who would know that you were a Sikh who,
with full knowledge of the consequences, had walked into the face of a firing

squad to prove that it was important that good should triumph over evil? And
God—no, not God; He was irrelevant.
Iqbal poured another whisky. It seemed to sharpen his mind.
The point of sacrifice, he thought, is the purpose. For the purpose, it is not

enough that a thing is intrinsically good: it must be known to be good. It is not
enough only to know within one’s self that one is in the right: the satisfaction

would be posthumous. This was not the same thing as taking punishment at
school to save some friend. In that case you could feel good and live to enjoy the
sacrifice; in this one you were going to be killed. It would do no good to society:

society would never know. Nor to yourself: you would be dead. That figure on
the screen, facing thousands of people who looked tense and concerned! They
were ready to receive the lesson. That was the crux of the whole thing. The doer

must do only when the receiver is ready to receive. Otherwise, the act is wasted.
He filled the glass again. Everything was becoming clearer.
If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy

—to wipe the slate clean—then you should not turn green at small acts of
destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the conflagration, not
to turn a moral hose-pipe on them—to create such a mighty chaos that all that is

rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood, sycophancy, is drowned. In
blood, if necessary.
India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it

means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and
kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian,
Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures.

Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully
removed. Take philosophy, about which there is so much hoo-ha. It is just
muddle-headedness masquerading as mysticism. And Yoga, particularly Yoga,

that excellent earner of dollars! Stand on your head. Sit cross-legged and tickle
your navel with your nose. Have perfect control over the senses. Make women