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HYDERABAD, 24th January, 1891.
As promised in a recent letter of mine I shall let you know how a gentleman who has the misfortune to be independent-spirited and to have the courage of his convictions, has been and is being persented here. The gentleman I refer to is no other than Mr. A. C. Rudra, Barrister-at-law. He set foot on this soil about two years ago and he has been a marked man since. The success that greeted him on all sides at the outset and the petty persecution and social "boycotting" that followed it close on its heels, the treatment he has received from the Moglai officialdom ranging from utmost warmth to utmost frigidity, from petting to persecution: these show how very difficult it is for a self-respecting mau to pull on well where factions reign supreme, that sycophaney and time-serving alone can constitute the secret of success in a place where men in power are such as are bent upon self-aggrandisement. Mr. Rudra was received with open arms by every one here at the beginning. How he was shaken by the hand by the official "silk gloves," how Mehdi Hassan "chaperoned" him into the favour of the officialdom, how he in his enthusiastic admiration proposed Mr. Rudra a membership of the Nizam Club and how the Joint-Secretary of the Club seconded the proposal-all Hyderabad knows And how all this favour and friendship turned into antagonistic factors-is equally well known. About the same time that he got into the Nizam Club, Mr. Rudra accepted the correspondentship of the "Pioneer" -and then began his troubles. As the local representative of the "Pioneer" he was not going to act the apologist of the vagaries and the wrong-doing of the officials or their hangers on. In his telegrams to the "Pioneer" which appeared in its issues of November and December 1889, he evinced a spirit of independence and a determination to echo the people's voice at any cost which well-nigh took away the beath of his official friends and admirers. They saw what stuff he was made of, but thought that time would change him and convert him into a blower of their trumpets. They thought wrong-Mr. Rudra's independence
