Produced by Al Haines
The three Mahrattas, Sindhia, Holkar, and Bhonsla, were plotting theoverthrow of the British, and the Peshwa was looking out of broodingeyes upon Hodson, the Resident at Poona.
Up on the hill, in the temple of Parvati, the priests repeated prayersto the black goddess calling for the destruction of the hated whites.
Each one of the twenty-four priests as he came with a handful ofmarigolds laid them one by one at the feet of the four-armed hideousidol, repeating: "Om, Parvati! Om, Parvati!" the comprehensive,all-embracing "Om" that meant adoration and a clamour for favour.Even to Nandi, the brass bull that carried Shiva, he appealed, "OmShiva!"
But down on the rock-plateau, where gleamed in the hot sun marblepalaces, a more malign influence was at work. Dandhu Panth, theadopted son of the Peshwa, had come back from Oxford, and the Englishbelieved he had been changed into an Englishman, Nana Sahib.
Outwardly he was a sporting, well-dressed gentleman, such as Oxfordturns out; but in his heart was lust of power, and hatred of the whiterace that he felt would make his inheritance, the Peshwaship, but avassalage. His dreams of ruling India would fade, and he would sit apensioner of the British. The Mahrattas had been stigmatised by acaptious Mogul ruler, "mountain rats." As Hindus there was a sharpcleavage of character; the Brahmins, fanatical, high up in the castescale, and all the rest of the breed inferior, vicious, blood-thirsty,a horde of pirates. Even the man who first made them a power, Sivaji,had been of questionable lineage, a plebeian; and so the body corporatewas of inflammable material—little restraint of breeding.
And for all Nana Sahib's veneer of English class, mental development,beneath the English shirt he wore the junwa, the three-strand sacredthread, insignia of the twice-born,—the Brahmin.
From Governor General to the British officers who played polo with thePeshwa's son, they all accepted him as one of themselves; considered itgood diplomacy that he had been sent to Oxford and made over.
There was just one man who had misgivings, the Resident at Poona. Hewas a small, tired, worn-out official—an executive, a perpetual wheelin the works, always close to the red-tape-tied papers, always.Strange that one not a dreamer, no sixth-sense, should have attained toan intuition—which it was, his distrust of the cheery, sporty NanaSahib. That Hodson's superiors intimated that India was getting to hisliver when he wrote, very cautiously, of this obsession, made nodifference; and clinging to his distrust, he achieved something.
After all it was rather strange that the matter had not been taken outof his hands, but it wasn't. A sort of departmental formula running;"Commissioner So-and-So has the matter in hand—refer to him." And so,when a new danger appeared on the distressed horizon, Amir Khan and ahundred thousand massed