Page:Plunder (Perlman).djvu/10

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4

NATHURAM

If I went back to making cloth, I would starve and nothing would change, Krishna. You are mistaken. From the day when the Portuguese sat their Patriarch in Goa, our dreams no longer matter.

MOKSA

Our dreams no longer matter because we no longer dream. It is we who are letting India die! We have books and religions that once inspired men to poetry, sculpture, architecture, philosophy. We had the finest cloth in the world even when the English could not tell men from wolves. Was not your father's cloth finer than any of the cheap English we have today?

NATHURAM

Those days are past, Krishna! The Europeans won! Our souls are diseased; India is dying--if this was not so, the Europeans would not have won!

MOKSA

It was not the weakness of our souls but of our arms that gave Europeans the crown of India! The savage Portuguese saw vitality, culture and prosperity they had not dreamed existed. If we had fought them with their instruments, we would have won, we would have become a powerful empire of Portuguese Christians, we would today carry murder and death to every corner of the world. But then there would not be India.

We are sick, Nathuram, but only because we let ourselves become what they make us. What can be more sick than the murders, the physical and spiritual tortures the healthy Westerners inflict--in the name of a Christ they say was as gentle and loving as Buddha?

AMONG AUDIENCE

DARIUS STARK

Aw, who's going to sit through this! It's like those glasses you put on and see everything upside down!