Epilogue

The story is on-going, but it started early. In the National Archives of India, I found a document that forced itself back into my memory as I was completing this work and vicariously living in Tahrir Square. It was a Confidential Note in 1906 from the Resident at Hyderabad to the Foreign Department elaborating on some of the observations made in an official letter. The note includes the following statement about the effects of “infiltration among the masses of objectionable political doctrines”: A trifling incident came under my own notice the other day, illustrative, not of rudeness, but of the change in native attitude which is taking place. I went quietly with my wife and another lady last week to see an Exhibition which is going on here. A policeman, who happened to recognize me, made way for us to a stall and in doing so asked some men who looked like frontier Panjabis, but were very probably settled here, to let us pass. They did so, and after we had passed, I heard one of them say to his companions, not angrily, but as if the policeman represented a wrong order of things, “[we all gave money to watch, we are all equal]”—remark which one cannot conceive of a man of his class having made a few years ago.

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