The party reached Chundunnugger after noon. The tonga came to a halt outside the police station, which was a couple of furlongs distant from the town. The prisoners were escorted through an arched gateway which had WELCOME painted on it in large letters. They were first taken to the reporting room. The head constable opened a large register and made the entries of the day’s events on separate pages. Just above the table was an old framed picture of King George VI with a placard stating in Urdu, BRIBERY IS A CRIME. On another wall was pasted a coloured portrait of Gandhi torn from a calendar. Beneath it was a motto written in English, HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. Other portraits in the room were those of absconders, bad characters, and missing persons.

After the daily diary entries had been made, the prisoners were taken across the courtyard to their cells. There were only two cells in the police station. These were on one side of the courtyard facing the policemen’s barracks. The wall of the farther end of the square was covered by a railway creeper.

Jugga’s arrival was the subject of much hilarity.

‘Oye, you are back again. You think it is your father-in-law’s house,’ shouted one of the constables from his barrack.

‘It is, seeing the number of policemen’s daughters I have seduced,’ answered Juggut Singh at the top of his voice. He had forgotten the unpleasantness in the tonga.

‘Oye, Budmasha, you will not desist from your budmashi. Wait till the Inspector Sahib hears of what you said and he will put hot chillies up your bottom.’

‘You cannot do that to your son-in-law!’

With Iqbal it was different. His handcuffs were removed with apologies. A chair, a table, and a charpoy were put in his cell. The head constable collected all the daily newspapers and magazines, English and Urdu, that he could find and left them in the cell. Iqbal’s food was served on a brass plate and a small pitcher and a glass tumbler were put on the table beside his charpoy. Jugga was given no furniture in his cell. His food was literally flung at him and he ate his chapatties out of his hand. A constable poured water onto his cupped palm through the iron bars. Jugga’s bed was the hard cement floor.

The difference in treatment did not surprise Iqbal. In a country which had accepted caste distinctions for many centuries, inequality had become an inborn mental concept. If caste was abolished by legislation, it came up in other forms of class distinction. In thoroughly westernized circles like that of the civil servants in the government secretariat in Delhi, places for parking cars were marked according to seniority, and certain entrances to offices were reserved for higher officials. Lavatories were graded according to rank and labelled SENIOR OFFICERS, JUNIOR OFFICERS, CLERKS AND STENOGRAPHERS and OTHER RANKS. With a mental make-up so thoroughly sectionalized, grading according to their social status people who were charged or convicted of the same offence did not appear incongruous. Iqbal was A-class. Jugga was the rock-bottom C.