gress Party of elements that had profited from the war and were now positioning themselves to profit from Independence. Thus, the corrupt Congressman in 'Study Touf, published in September 1946, sets up something called the Swadeshi Import Export Syndicate. Another .story, ^ ^RT ^\ published in November 1946, wittily debunks the nationalist ethos, and makes a pointed distinction between the Congress in 1942 and the Congress in 1946. A poignant comment on Independence is to be found in a story published in August 1947 - 'f^R^t'. The protagonist is a woman who has, over the long years, sacrificed everything in order to fight for freedom, and finds herself destitute and neglected, out of^une with the new Congress of the post-war phase. Living by herself, uncompre-hended, an incongruous and embarrassing survivor from an earlier era, she tries to write down her final testament. When the body is discovered: w^c ?PTR' WM-W 4^r ^ ^ ^iftr T^ ^ft wft ftn^ '^i^r, '^^r, '^iftr, ^ft-err ^ WF^im ^ftr ^^dr i^rfe ^r<^ wnT ^r ^Wt sft i ^ ^ ^ftprr^r w^ WPTT f^W-^T ^TW ^3 ^ feqr ^T....22 In the August 1947 editorial, however, we get a sense of that cultural, central-ity which we had noticed earlier — a tone of measured evaluation which, we know from hindsight, was soon to be abandoned: ^pfti^i chi^ Three possible kinds of literary response to the coming of Independence are visualized here: one, blind patriotism; two, irresponsible left denigration, which is expected to be anti-Muslim as well, and so share features with the Hindu Right; three, a responsible, guarded optimism. A poem, published in November 1947, nicely captures this poised mood: ^tf^T ^R" ^ WsrT ^t ^ ^T ^ yr ^ n^t y4 I have already suggested that the eruption of communal violence disturbed this monient of poised centrality. In 1948, with power firmly in the hands of those who ,had, to be fair, already shown their true colours. Communists began to be arrested, Telengana flashed across the Indian political horizon, and in April 1948 Nagaf-juna published a lyrical a'nd angry poem: CF)FT*T ^ ^rrnr^t ft^nft ^ ^t ^t ^ ^r ^ w^ ^Fft TR^ §f t ^rr f^ N^r ^25 In May 1948, Hans carried Ali Sardar Jafri's unequivocal poem -'li5N-XT;:^ ^piia ^ftr ~5^ ^T^5: ^WS^J^ RRH^ ^ t yynft ^t" ftrq^t ^ft ^yt ^r ^ ^nft ^ t ^n^ft ^r 'TT^t ft^ ^ '^t ^ 3^Rft t ^t... 3^ January-March 1984