So it came to pass that Habibullah Khan was sent off to the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun to be trained as an officer. This was India’s equivalent of Sandhurst. Some Indians had in fact been commissioned at Sandhurst, obtaining the same commission as British officers. But there were too few of these King’s Commissioned Officers. The process was horribly expensive, suitable candidates were thin on the ground and those who went found the climate and customs of the country tough to adapt to. Many dropped out. Dehra Dun was the answer. The officers who graduated from Dehra Dun were the cream of the crop. They got a real commission, as second-lieutenants rather than jemadars. They were posted first to a British battalion and subsequently to an Indian battalion, where they replaced the British company commanders. The Indian Commissioned Officers from Dehra Dun were destined for high command in the new Indianised Indian Army. In theory, they were the equal of the British officers. In theory.

  The reality had proven quite different. The Bhurtpore Regiment was not like most of the battalions raised by the princely states. These tended to be officered by Indians of indifferent quality, not products of either Sandhurst or Dehra Dun. The Rajah of Bhurtpore had the means to hire British officers on secondment from the Indian Army, courtesy of the gold-mines that nature had blessed his little parched patch of hill country with. The Bhurtpore Regiment was run and organised exactly like any other battalion of the regular Indian Army, with British company commanders supported by Indian jemadars and subedars. In this milieu, Second-Lieutenant Habibullah Khan found himself very much an outsider. Some of the older Viceroy’s Commission Officers resented the newcomers. They were jemadars and subedars who had risen from the ranks and could go no higher. The VCOs knew that they were inferior in status to British officers, no matter how junior. They accepted that as part of the order of the universe. They were used to deferring to white sahibs. An Indian lieutenant or captain was a different matter altogether. Many found it difficult to defer to a brown sahib.

  The British officers of the Bhurtpores looked upon him as a jumped-up babu with ideas above his station. They cold-shouldered him socially. Their wives were worse; whenever an Indian got into the swimming pool at the officers’ club, the women would pointedly get out. His Pathan blood ran hot at the discrimination and petty humiliations he faced. He felt he was their equal; their better in many ways, as the type of white who became an officer in the State Forces was not usually a man of great education or distinction. This made their arrogance and that of their low-bred wives that much harder to tolerate. Indian soldiers saluted even the most junior British officer as a matter of course; no British soldier ever voluntarily saluted an Indian officer, of whatever rank.

  There were several other young Indian Commissioned Officers officers who felt equally frustrated and chafed at the constant slights. They knew that the whites who officered the Bhurtpore Regiment were not first-rate. The malcontents gathered together in the Mess, where the natives were kept apart from the whites. Habibullah became their leader. He had a natural aura of authority. A circle of discontented, angry men formed around him. They began to wonder out loud why they should be serving the British. India, they said, should be ruled by Indians for the benefit of Indians. The British had promised self-government. They were not taking any meaningful steps to make good on that. It was clear that the promises were empty.

  It was in this frame of mind that the Bhurtpores were posted to Malaya and stationed at RAF Batu Sembilan to protect the airfield. This was where I joined them, at the behest of Colonel Newman, to observe and report. At that time, it was known by British intelligence that the Bhurtpores were not a happy unit. The suspicion was that Japanese agents were subverting the troops. D’Almeida and I were tasked to find out how far the rot had gone. Newman placed d’Almeida as an accounts clerk in the unit. I became a mute waiter in the officers’ club. We didn’t find any evidence of Japanese subversion. The agitation was homegrown, by Indians inside and outside the ranks striving towards a free India.

  There was simmering discontent too among the rank and file, who did not care about politics. Most of that had to do with the personality of the new CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes. By this time, all the British company commanders had resigned or been re-assigned. The only one left was the second-in-command, Major Leslie, an ineffectual though not unpleasant man. Holmes had been transferred from a regular Indian Army unit after a scandal and given command of the Bhurtpores. It was meant as a reprimand. He felt it a professional disgrace and took it out on the men. He insulted them. He humiliated them. He punished them for every minor infraction. He treated them as scum. It was clear that the CO despised his unit. The men reciprocated with sullen hostility.

  Things came to a head when Habibullah was framed by two corrupt senior Indian officers who had been selling off the unit’s supplies. It was an open secret that the two, Major Naidu and Captain Prithvi Singh, were involved in embezzlement on a grand scale. Naidu, the senior Indian officer, was a distant relative of the Rajah. Bhurtpore, like so many of the princely states, functioned on the basis of kleptocracy. Naidu, being royal (albeit barely), did not see a distinction between public and private property. He had no qualms about helping himself. Prithvi Singh was a thoroughly bad piece of goods. Where the Rajah disinterred him from only heaven knew. He was the battalion adjutant. Between them they had a nice little racket going, skimming the rations, drawing allowances for non-existent pensioners, making the troops do with sub-standard bedding and equipment. They had confederates on the outside, but no one knew exactly whom. The border country between the Malay states and Siam was infested with smugglers and assorted cut-throats, both private and official.

  But there was a code of silence among the Indians and the British officers were kept in the dark. The second-in-command, Major Leslie, had served in the battalion since he was a subaltern. He owed his promotion to that singular lack of drive that keeps a mediocrity in place until more talented men have left. Leslie may have been ineffectual, but he was honest. As for the CO, no one doubted that he wasn’t involved. To have been involved would have meant fraternising with the natives, and that wasn’t on. That tacit agreement of silence broke down one night when Naidu had argued with Habibullah. Hot words were exchanged, knives were drawn. Although a fight was averted, Habibullah had threatened to blow the whistle on both Naidu and Prithvi Singh. To stop him, they planted subversive materials in Habibullah’s sleeping quarters. He had been arrested and marched off to the guardhouse. When his company heard this, they had effectively gone on strike. So had the other Mussulman company. The Rajput companies followed in short order. Holmes had gone beserk when he heard about the mutiny. He marched right over and threatened to shoot Habibullah as the putative ringleader. This was too much for the troops. Their pent-up hatred for the CO exploded. One of the men shot Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes dead.

  I hadn’t been a witness to the actual shooting, but I met Dave Blake, a young Australian RAAF corporal, who had. He had the bad luck to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time and was captured by the mutineers, but managed to slip away in the general confusion. He confirmed what Habibullah had told us, that the shooting was done by one of the men and not by him. That was the very day that the Japanese landed at Kota Bahru. We got out by the skin of our teeth, Corporal Blake, me and a couple of others. We had an eventful journey getting back to Singapore. When the island fell, Blake went off to try his luck finding a boat. I had no further information on what had become of him.

  Habibullah was a little surprised at the amount of information we had about his activities at Batu Sembilan. However, he didn’t remark on it further. By this time he had heard of d’Almeida’s formidable reputation and his unparallelled network of friends and acquaintances. He also knew of George’s deep involvement in the Indian Independence League; in fact, it was that connection that brought the case to D’Almeida & D’Almeida in the first place. Habibullah filled in the blanks, fleshing out the tale after d’Almeida and I had quit Batu Sembilan.

  19

  THE death of Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes was the Rubicon. Habibullah knew that there was no going back after that. They knew of the Japanese landings at Kota Bahru. The sounds of artillery could be heard clearly even at Batu Sembilan. The British and Australian airmen had bolted in unseemly panic before the Bhurtpores mutinied, stampeding at the rumour that the Japanese were coming. The antipathy that Habibullah felt towards the British turned to disgust when he witnessed it. This was the master race that claimed the divine right to rule India. But he had no time to indulge in reflection on the iniquity of the Raj. The immediate problem was what to do. To ask his men to defend the airfield was completely out of the question. They had broken the link that bound them to the King-Emperor. They had no loyalty to the Rajah of Bhurtpore, even though he was their paymaster. Their only loyalty was to the Regiment. Men would have fought and died for the honour of the Regiment, but that too was gone. They were masterless warriors, adrift in a foreign land, embroiled in a war not of their making, for a cause that they did not believe in.

  The men looked to him for leadership. Although he was not the most senior officer, the mantle of command had fallen naturally on his shoulders. Habibullah was in a dilemma. From all accounts, 8th Indian Brigade was putting up a good fight, but it was hard-pressed. His sense of honour and loyalty impelled him to go to their aid. But he knew that he could not ask it of his men. With a heavy heart, he gave the order to disperse. The men should make their way as best they could to the Siamese border and there surrender themselves. There was no choice. If the British caught them, would be summarily shot as deserters and mutineers. This way most would survive. At some point, perhaps, they might find they way home. It was the death warrant of the Regiment. The 1st Battalion of the Bhurtpore Regiment would cease to exist. Even if the Rajah raised a new unit, none would bear its name ever again.

  Habibullah himself resolved to remain at the camp and take what was coming. It was the only thing he could do to salvage the Regiment’s honour, a personal sacrifice to expiate the sins of the many. He was under no illusions as to his fate. The British were not the sort to forgive a mutineer. Since the Great Rebellion of 1857, their nightmare was an uprising among the sepoys. To prevent such a thing, the Indian Army had been deprived of field artillery. Every brigade had one British battalion to two Indian. Indian battalions were segregated by race and religion, recruited only from certain martial races and kept separate from the civil population, so that they would not find common cause to rise up against their masters. Even so, the 5th Light Infantry had mutinied in Singapore in 1915. The mutiny had been put down, ironically with the help of sailors from Imperial Japanese Navy ships that had fortuitously been in port. No mercy had been shown to the ringleaders. They were shot in front of Outram Road Gaol. Habibullah expected no better.

  Some of the men hesitated. His orderly Nisar Ahmad insisted on remaining. There was an almost feudal tie between an officer and his orderly. Habibullah did not insist that Nisar Ahmad go. But for the rest, he saw no need for them to risk their lives for his sake. There was nothing that they could do. He didn’t intend to put up a fight, whether it was the British or the Japanese who came for him. He ordered them to head for the border. Military discipline re-asserted itself. The men left as ordered. When they had gone, the thought crossed his mind that there was one way out: shoot himself. But the thought was gone almost as soon as it surfaced. To commit suicide was not the way of the warrior. His code of honour demanded that he should face whatever punishment the British might choose to mete out, and face it unflinchingly.

  THAT night, he spent a strangely peaceful time in his quarters. Nisar Ahmad prepared his food, a simple meal of rice and lentils. For the first time in many months, he had leisure to read and relax. The stifling poisonous atmosphere created by Holmes was gone. It was only then that he realised how much tension he had been under, not only because of Holmes but also on account of that crooked pair Naidu and Prithvi Singh. For months, he had lived with the knowledge of their thievery, constrained to silence by the need to preserve the honour of the regiment, watching with impotent rage while they pulled the wool over the eyes of the egregious Major Leslie. If Holmes had been a more sympathetic CO, he would not have hesitated. But Holmes was a maniac, and he had no desire to carry tales to such a man. His public school education restrained him. There was nothing worse than a sneak. The other Indian officers took their cue from him. He could not very well ask them to do something that he would not do himself. His only regret was the effect that this would have on his mother. The old lady should not have to bear such a disgrace in her last years. But there was nothing for it. Habibullah decided to compose a letter, to be sent to his mother upon his death.

  There was a commotion while he was writing. Shots were heard from the direction of the Operations Block. This is it, he thought to himself. Buckling on his revolver, he sallied out to meet his captors, followed by the faithful Nisar Ahmad. A few Bhurtpores still remained in the camp, clustering in small groups near the fence. The airfield was still burning from the air raid earlier in the day. The smouldering fires gave enough light to see by. He looked around. There was no one on the road beyond the fence. Gathering a few men, he investigated the administration buildings. In a room in C Block they found traces of fresh blood. There was a strange contraption, which looked like a typewriter but contained what seemed to be parts of a radio. It had been smashed. He detailed the men to search the surrounding area, but they found nothing. Looters, he guessed and put it out of his mind. It didn’t matter anyway. They just had to wait for either the British or the Japanese to show up.

  The following morning, Habibullah woke with a start. He was used to being awakened at the crack of dawn by Nisar Ahmad with a mug of char. His first groggy thought was that he had overslept. Then it all came back to him. Nisar Ahmad was there. He had let Habibullah sleep in. There were no regimental duties to do. The customary mug of char was procured, together with a fresh chappati and dhal. Habibullah was not fastidious about what he ate. Food to him was a necessary distraction. He left the matter entirely to his orderly.

  At mid-morning came another commotion. This time it was caused by a group of Chinese, who appeared at the gate with a lorry. They drove it right into the camp without even stopping. They knew exactly what they were after. The lorry was parked at the Officers’ Club. To Habibullah’s surprise, the men went into the derelict servants’ quarters behind and emerged with boxes and bags. It was then that he realised where Naidu and Prithvi Singh had been hiding all the stores that they had stolen from the regiment. Evidently, these men were the ones whom they had been dealing with. Now that the soldiers were gone, there was nothing to stop them helping themselves to the loot.

  Some went to the armoury and broke it open. One of his men came running up breathlessly. “Sahib,” he said, “the Chinese bandits are stealing the guns and ammunition. Shall we stop them?”

  Habibullah strode out to the armoury, where some of his men stood around indecisively. They automatically stiffened to attention when they saw him. The Chinese ceased their activity and looked nervously at him.

  “Who is in charge here?” he demanded loudly, not really expecting an answer.

  A young man detached himself from the group. “I am the headman,” he said. Though the accent was strange, the English was tolerably good.

  “Where are the Japanese?”

  “They are near Kota Bahru town. They will come here soon. Will you fight them or not? The Orang Puteh have run away,” he answered.

  “No, we will not fight them,” replied Habibullah. “My men are gone. You should go too.”

  The young man said, “We will go, but we must have guns and bullets. The Jepun will come and kill us. We must fight here as our brothers fight them in China. Give us the guns.”

  Habibullah nodded. He had heard of the blood feud between the Chinese and the Japanese. Word of the Rape of Nanking had penetrated even to the wilds of Bhurtpore. He had no use for the weapons. The Chinese would need them. Let them take what they wanted. He gave the order to his men to help load up the lorry. They hesitated at first, not able to comprehend this breach of all that had been drilled into them about custody of weapons. He repeated his order. The sepoys obeyed and moved towards the armoury. The Chinese recoiled, thinking that the sepoys were reclaiming the weapons. Then they understood and broke out in smiles. The lorry was filled and despatched. The Chinese remained behind, methodically emptying the armoury. A second lorry appeared after half an hour. This too was filled. Habibullah left the men to it. As he returned to his quarters, he noticed that the Chinese were systematically looting the Operations Block, carting away lamps and furniture and even the filing cabinets.

  BY late afternoon, the camp had been stripped bare. The word had gone round that the garrison had decamped. The Chinese had taken what they wanted. People came from the nearby kampongs to pick over the leavings. There were still some scavengers among the buildings when the Japanese finally arrived. They scuttled away immediately, clutching their bundles of loot.

  The Japanese came on bicycles. He eyed them curiously. They were short, much as British propaganda had portrayed them, but without the buck-teeth and squint-eyes. Comically, their rifles seemed taller than they were. But there was no mistaking their determination or ability as fighting troops. They dismounted quickly and spread out, searching the buildings methodically. Habibullah watched them with professional interest. It was odd to see modern troops led by officers with swords. There was a flag-bearer and a bugler. Their uniforms were loose-fitting khaki. On their legs they wore puttees, a fashion that the British and Indian Armies had abandoned two decades previously. Instead of boots, they had curious split-toed shoes. They moved very fast, with a fluid grace that elicited admiration. This was a discplined, experienced army, not a horde of slant-eyed myopic monkeys as the British believed. Knots of sepoys emerged with their hands up. The Japanese rounded them up and hustled them towards the gate.

 

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