What I’m Reading: Paul Scott’s *Raj Quartet*

From Jewel in the Crown (Part Six – Civil and Military)

He’s also said he’ll leave — but stayed put — long enough to create factions below stairs among the people who hope to inherit or rather get the house back. He hasn’t necessarily intended to create these factions, but their existence does seem to suit his book. Deny people something they want, over a longish period, and they naturally start disagreeing about precisely what it is they do want. So he likes nothing better than to give private interviews to deputations from these separate factions and to use the arguments of minority factions as moral levers to weaken the demands put forward by the majority faction. He’s got into the habit of locking up overvociferous members of all factions in the basement and only letting them out when they go on hunger strike like Gandhi used to.