The morning after the killing I complain that my bowels are loose and stay at home for the next five days. In any case I could not have gone out because riots have broken out in different parts of the city. The Muslims are being flushed out, their properties are being looted, their shops and businesses are being taken over and their homes occupied. They are fleeing in the hundreds of thousands to Pakistan. Those that remain are herded into the Purana Qila and the big mosques. The first battle for Delhi has been won. But much more remains to be done. We have to fight these Mussalman-loving Hindus like Gandhi and Nehru, drive out the remaining Muslims to Pakistan and wipe out all traces of Islam from our Bharatvarsha.

Gandhi is our enemy number one. He says: ‘Get out of the mosques and Muslims’ homes.’ I want to ask him: ‘Oi Old Man, if we get out of their mosques and homes, where-are we to live? On the pavements? It does not behove you who lives in Seth Birla’s palace to talk like this.’

Nehru is our enemy number two. He calls us goondas. I want to ask him: ‘Oi Pandit, where was your police and your army when Mussalman goondas were slitting our throats?’

Sardar Patel is our friend. ‘They are not thieves and dacoits but love their country,’ he says. Only to please Gandhi and Nehru he adds that we are ‘misguided’. The police are also our friends. And why not? Most of the new police are refugees from the Punjab. They know the truth about the Mussalmans and are not beguiled by the Gandhi-Nehru bakvas.

One day the Sangha chief says to me, ‘We must know what this Gandhi fellow is up to. Number 840 you will attend the Old Man’s meetings and report what he says and who comes to see him.’

I am given money to buy a white Gandhi cap, a thick, handspun khaddar shirt and trousers and a woollen shawl. I start going to Birla House in the early hours. I take down the names of people who come to the meeting. I make note of all the buk buk I hear about Hindus and Mussalmans being brothers.

I learn to imitate Gandhi’s voice. When I report what I have heard I use the same toothless, gummy Gujarati-Hindi: ‘I am waiting for the direction of the inner voice . . . straining my ear to catch the whispering of the inner voice and waiting for its command.’ Everyone roars with laughter. I can also imitate his gestures. I sit cross-legged, wrap the shawl over my head and continue: ‘I am in a furnace. There is a raging fire all around. We are trampling humanity underfoot . . . I am groping for light.’ I strike a match to show how. ‘I can as yet only catch faint rays of it.’ I bring the match close to my nose. ‘When I see in full blaze the dosti (friendship) of Delhi then it will really become dili (rooted) in the heart.’ They double over their bellies. The boys rename me Gandhiji Maharaj. They say that if the Old Fellow had been a member of our Sangha he would not have got a more appropriate number than mine; 840 is twice 420 which is the section of the penal code defining fraud—and Gandhi is a double fraud.