Notes On the Great Indian Circus

by Khushwant Singh

  It was their women and children who acclaimed him as a saviour and a saint: he was a good guy. To this image, Bhindranwale put on the macho gloss of a tough man: bandolier charged with bullets across his hairy chest, pistol on his hip, in his hand a silver arrow like the one Maharajah Ranjit Singh used to carry. The crowds loved him when he referred to Indira Gandhi as pandit dee dhee (that daughter of a Brahmin) and the central government as bania-Hindu sarkar.

  Later when Bhindranwale shifted to the Golden Temple, started making anti-Hindu speeches and his goons began killing innocent people, his admirers dismissed the allegations as government propaganda. To them he still remains a good guy who laid down his life for the Khalsa Panth. It will not be easy to exorcise Bhindranwale’s ghost from the Punjabi mind.

  Sunday, 23 January 1988

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  With Baba Amte

  Our country is fortunate in having many good people cast in the Gandhian-Vinoba Bhave mould who remain unsullied by the faith churned out everyday by our present-day netas and continue doggedly to pursue their lonely trails. If India re-emerges from the slough of despond in which its politicians have dumped it, the one hope is the example set by these people. I wish I knew all of them and could write about them. About three years ago I encountered one at Pune airport in the person of Krishnabai Nimbkar. At the time, her anguish over the Punjab was so acute that she contemplated immolating herself on the steps of the Golden Temple. A couple of weeks ago I met Baba Amte at Calcutta. Here we have a very sick and dying man who can barely sit or stand for more than a few minutes at a time. And yet he goes around the country with his chosen band of cyclists to knit the country together. Whether or not he will succeed in doing so only time will tell; the fact that he is risking his life in the attempt should make us bow down our heads to him, take the sacred dust on which his feet have trod and smear it on our foreheads.

  In Calcutta Amte brought together on one stage such diverse elements as the multi-billionaire S.K. Birla and his wife Sarla, the fiery upholder of Muslim rights, Syed Shahabuddin, the actor Victor Banerjee, the saffron-clad Gandhian Swami Agnivesh and the managerial expert O.P. Shah. All of us said much the same thing about national integration: there is nothing new that anyone can say on the subject. The sayers are so many; the doers are so few. That is India for you.

  The Hindustan Times, 4 February 1989

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  Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna

  I though Bahuguna would one day become prime minister of India. He came from the right state. He was without communal prejudice, somewhat left of the centre in his views, voluble, well-informed, articulated his ideas with clarity and was fluent in both Hindi and his slightly Americanized English. He had a nice-sounding name—Hemvati Nandan. What more does an Indian who is neither a Nehru nor a Gandhi require to dream of becoming Pradhan Mantri of Bharat Varsha? When I first met Bahuguna I told him that he was of the timber of which prime ministers are made. He agreed. But he was not sure when he would become one. He was an ambitious man. Also an impatient man. Ambition and impatience are lethal combinations. They produce high blood pressure and heart problems. I met Bahuguna many times. He was an utterly informal man and would ring up and invite himself to tea. He was a great talker and would hold forth animatedly for an hour or more non-stop. Very often his monologue had to be ended by my wife telling him that we were getting late for our next engagement. He could be extremely charming in his total lack of class consciousness. He recognized my servants as fellow Garhwalis, spoke to them in their dialect and on subsequent visits always addressed them by their names: ‘Chandan bhai, garma-garam chai pilao’. They loved him.

  The last time he dropped in was after reading an article in which I had chastised him for letting down V.P. Singh and the Opposition. ‘If friends like you begin to criticize me,’ he said over the phone, ‘I know there must be something wrong. I would like to explain my stand.’ He did. He was bitter over the choice of V.P. Singh as the Opposition candidate for Allahabad: ‘It was always my constituency. They should have at least consulted me,’ he said. He did not relish the rise of V.P. Singh as the Opposition’s shadow prime minister. ‘I have been marginalized, made inconsequential as if I don’t matter in national politics. I have to re-establish my self-respect. I will show them.’ Alas! Bahuguna was unable to attain the goal for which he felt he was destined because the gods let him down.

  The Hindustan Times, 25 March 1989

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  Kanpur

  ‘I went there once,’ said my friend Soli Sorabjee, ‘that decided it for me; I never want to go there again.’ His words pretty well sum up my reactions to Uttar Pradesh’s largest city. The judgement is not against Kanpurians—they are as nice, hospitable and friendly a people as you will find anywhere else. It is against Kanpur’s total lack of character: no historical buildings, no city squares, no great shopping plazas, no beautiful parks or lakes, no five-star hotels or taxis—not even an attractive river front or ghat along the Ganga. It is just a shapeless, unplanned huddle of bazaars and residential area, a few roundabouts with the incredibly ugly statue of the revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad eternally twirling his moustache. It could have been developed into a beautiful city because it has many rich people. It is India’s leather capital. It also has textile and steel mills. But all that these industries have given the city are effluents to pollute the Ganga.

  ‘What should I see in Kanpur?’ I asked Harjeet with whose sister and brother-in-law, the Ahluwalias, I was to stay. After thinking over the problems she replied: ‘You must see the J&K temple, all in white marble, bigger and more beautiful than the Birla temple. And Bithur, only a half-hour’s drive from Kanpur. That’s where Lav and Kush were brought up and Mother Earth took Sita into her bosom. You’ll have a lovely view of the river.’ That seemed to end her list of the sights that Kanpur had to offer. ‘Oh yes,’ she exclaimed as another idea struck her. ‘You must taste the chaat: it’s too good.’ ‘Too good’ is Harjeet’s favourite expression for something she rates very high. So I had three items on my list: the Singhania temple, Bithur and leaf-fulls of spicy chaat.

  Where did Kanpur get its name from? The British ‘Cawnpore’ misled me into believing that it was a corruption of ‘Khanpur’, so named after some Khan or the other. Hobson-Jobson, the dictionary of Anglo-Indian slang, states the original name of Kanpur as being the city of Lord Krishna. Like many of our other big cities, Kanpur is largely British. As early as 1766, the Nawab of Oudh granted permission to the East India Company to set up a cantonment there. Most of its old buildings are Victorian architecture and some name-places, Indianized versions of the English. The city’s red-light area is called Moolganj. It was originally set aside by a British officer named Moule as a chakla (brothel house) for soldiers.

  Bithur was a great disappointment. I don’t think there is any historical basis to prove that Valmiki’s ashram was situated there nor of a nondescript little room designated Sitaji ki Rasoi—Sitaji’s kitchen. There is, however, a watchtower from which you get a splendid panoramic view of the Ganga. What could make Bithur a place of historical pilgrimage is the fort of a Dhondu Pant. Little remains of it except heaps of rubble alongside a massive gate. In the middle of a deserted park overrun with weeds stands a marble bust of the Maratha chieftain, a mute reminder of the vast territory once ruled over by the Peshwas.

  The Singhania’s marble temple is the pride of Kanpur. It is indeed a beautiful piece of architecture. I wish instead of being erected in the heart of the city it had been put up on a high plinth along the Ganga with steps running down to the river.

  What Kanpur can really be proud of is its IIT—the highest rated in the country for its computer research. Like other IITs it has the cream of our brightest students on its rolls. It even has its own aircraft and an air-strip on the campus. Mercifully, it is a long way away from the cacophony of Kanpur’s bazaars.

  Kanpur’s famed chaat was a near disaster. I have savoured more palate-tickling chaat in Delhi and w
ould give the pride of first place to Bombay’s bhelpuri. The Kanpur concoction was stodgy and indigestible. It gave me an uneasy stomach which reminded me of Kanpur two days after I had left it.

  The Hindustan Times, 12 August 1989

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  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

  If he had been living, Dr Radhakrishnan would have been celebrating his 100th birthday next week. He was by any standard of reckoning, a most erudite scholar whose genius lay in his ability to synthesize all he had read and create something new. His critics claimed that he was not an original thinker but an interpreter of Hinduism in a language the West could understand. There was a sizeable lobby of envious academics who tried to belittle his achievements. They have been cast in the dust heap of oblivion while Radhakrishnan’s books continue to be read all over the world and his voice still echoes in the ears of those fortunate enough to have heard his spellbinding oratory.

  Radhakrishnan, born 5 September 1888 in village Tiruttani (Andhra), was the second son of a clerk in the Tehsildar’s office. It was at Madras Christian College that he attracted attention as a boy with a phenomenal memory and a gift of words. He was barely twenty when he wrote Ethics of Vedanta as a part of his MA thesis. He had gone through college giving private tuitions and got his first job as teacher at no more than Rs 60 per month. He did not abide by any rules. He came 20 minutes late for his class and ended 10 minutes earlier. He said all he had to say in 20 minutes. His students were more than happy with him.

  Although in sympathy with the freedom movement, Radhakrishnan was not very impressed with Mahatma Gandhi when he first met him in 1915. He recalled the meeting later: ‘Gandhiji said to me: Don’t drink milk, which is the essence of beef. I replied: In that case we are all cannibals. For we drink our mother’s milk, which is the essence of human flesh.’

  Rabindranath Tagore impressed him much more than Gandhi. He wrote a book on the poet’s philosophy which the poet admitted ‘surpassed his expectations.’ Radhakrishnan’s professional career began in earnest at Mysore University. From there he went on to be the first King George V Professor at Calcutta University. He had a setback in his career when one of his students, Jadunath Sinha, took him to court for lifting passages out of his thesis and using them in his two volumes on Indian Philosophy without acknowledgement. Radhakrishnan denied the allegations and filed a counter suit of libel against Sinha. The cases were compromised. No one knows what the terms of compromise were.

  The publication of two volumes on Indian Philosophy opened up gates of all prestigious universities of the world for Radhakrishnan. Honorary doctorates, memorial lectures, and honours including a Knighthood were showered on him. Amongst those who attended them were Bertrand Russell and H.N. Spalding who was so impressed that he instituted a Chair at Oxford University for Eastern Religions and Ethics and persuaded Radhakrishnan to accept the position.

  Pandit Nehru brought Radhakrishnan into the mainstream of the country’s political life. He sent him as Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Stalin who had refused to meet Vijayalakshmi Pandit sent for him more than once and even allowed him to ruffle his hair and pat him on his cheeks. Nehru had him elected vice-president in the hope that on Rajendra Babu’s retirement after the first term, Radhakrishnan would become President. Rajendra Babu, despite noises he made of wanting to retire, refused to do so. And Radhakrishnan, despite noises he made that he would not serve another term as vice-president, agreed to do so. The story was to be repeated when Radhakrishnan became President. When his term was about to end, despite protestations that he would like to return to academic life, he wanted a second term as President. Indira Gandhi who started off by being very enthusiastic about him, had been soured by his criticism of her father and her corrupt ministers, and finally forced him to make place for Zakir Hussain. No Indian quits the seat of authority willingly; Radhakrishnan was no exception.

  This year a great deal has been published on this truly remarkable and loveable man. Most of it is entirely laudatory (and well he deserved to be lauded) and do not expose his warts.

  The Hindustan Times, 2 September 1989

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  Sweet Smell of Success

  My father was a great party-thrower. At least twice a week he would invite more than 30 people to wine and dine with him. His menus were not very imaginative, as the items offered, though well-cooked, were usually the same: soup, fish, pulao, chicken curry, dal and vegetables. Usually the best item was the dessert. His ice-creams were the best and most relished by his guests.

  I discovered the secret much later. Some time in 1940, a young Punjabi boy from Lahore came to see him and persuaded him to let him make ice-creams for his parties. My father agreed to give him a trial. For the next many parties this young man and a friend came to our house carrying their own churner, ice, saltpetre and the ice-cream mixture. It was after the guests were seated at the table that they began to churn the ice-cream with their own hands. It was served straight from the container to the guests. They admitted they had never tasted anything like it before.

  That was the humble beginning of Iqbal K. Ghai who was later given the title of Maharajah of Ice-creams and chosen by the BBC as one of the seven self-made persons in the world. Ghai died last month in London at the age of 72.

  Iqbal was exactly two years younger than me—we had the same birthday. But that was not the reason for my father’s affection for him; it was his ice-cream. He let him open his first Kwality Ice Cream parlour on his premises in Regal building. Then an egg, bacon and chips shop and the Gaylords Restaurant. Ghai never looked back. He visited Europe in 1948, bought the best ice-cream-making equipment from wherever he could get it and opened up a chain of restaurants and hotels in all our metropolitan cities and abroad (London, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Kobe, Jeddah, Sharjah). And inevitably, he became a multi-millionaire. The one thing that endeared him to me was that he never forgot the start my father had given him in his life. Whenever my parents went to England, he put them up in his apartment and looked after them like a son would his parents. He even extended the courtesy to me in his newly-built ritzy hotel in Aurangabad. When I was about to leave and asked for my bill, he happened to be standing beside a full-length colour portrait of Sai Baba whom he worshipped as a deity. He held my hand and said ‘Kyon sharminda kardey mainoo? (Why do you put me to shame?)’ and tore up my bill. That was the last time I saw him.

  The Hindustan Times, 18 November 1989

  Saintly Sublimation

  Madhu Kishwar, women’s libber and editor of Manushi, finds the likes of me ‘silly and puerile and plain boring’ for the simple reason that we like looking at girlie pictures in Debonair and Playboy. I don’t find the likes of Madhu Kishwar either silly or puerile or boring. On the contrary I find them intelligent, interesting and exciting. All I would like to do is to lay them down on a psychoanalyst’s couch and question them because I discern a lot of humbuggery in their pretensions. I have the same desire to probe into the psyches of women saint-poets like Andal, Muktabai, Akka Mahadevi, Lal Ded and Mira Bai. All of them pretended to spurn earthy sex, remained virgins or rejected their husbands, and refused to bear children. And yet the dominant theme in their poetry was consummation of love with their chosen deities in language that is no different from that used by writers of soft porn. It is good, powerful poetry because it is sensuous. Let me quote just two examples from Manushi’s most readable issue on women Bhakta poets. This is how Andal speaks of her yearning:

  ‘O cool clouds

  go to him who churned the ocean deep

  fall at the sacred feet

  of the Lotus-eyed Lord of Venkatam

  And make this request on my behalf:

  tell him that my life will be spared

  only if he will come

  to stay with me for one day

  if he will enter me

  so as to leave

  the mark of his saffron paste

  upon my breasts.’

  Akka Mahadevi is equally explic
it:

  ‘. . . O Siva

  when shall I

  crush you on my pitcher breasts

  O Lord white as jasmine

  When do I join you

  stripped of body’s shame

  and heart’s modesty?’

  The queen of our woman saint-poets is of course Mira Bai of Rajasthan. She made a mess of her marriage with the Rana of Chittor, drove the poor fellow to want to murder her and was admittedly adulterous in her passion for Lord Krishna. And yet she was one of the greatest woman poets of India.

  If you think I am being a male-chauvinistic pig, then get hold of a copy of the January-June 1989 issue of Manushi and come to your own conclusions.

  The Hindustan Times, 25 November 1989

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  V.P. Singh

  I can take the credit for having forecasted more than two years ago, that V.P. Singh would be the next prime minister of India. I did a longish interview with him some time in 1987 (long before his victory at Allahbad) which was published in The Illustrated Weekly of India. It should have been the cover story but the editor did not believe that what I had written would come to pass. This is what I wrote:

  It was after the Fairfax affair and his sudden transfer from the Finance to the Defence Ministry followed by his ouster from the government, suspension, and dismissal from the Congress Party that, from being one of the many possible candidates for succession to Rajiv Gandhi, he emerged as the most likely successor. This was not entirely through his own efforts. After Fairfax came Bofors, the German submarine deal, the Bachchan brothers’ business morals: Rajiv’s troubles came not in single spies but in the proverbial battalions. He tried to ward them off, waving his arms like one attacked by a swarm of hornets. And was stung all over his face. The once Mr Clean acquired a visage swollen with innuendos of corruption, sheltering corrupt friends and insulting the President. Instead of relying on advice of trustworthy tellers of unpleasant truths he lent ears to self-seekers like Dinesh Singh ever eager to return to the Treasury Benches and the likes of loud-mouthed K.K. Tewari and the greasy Kalpanath Rai to bray to their trumpets. Within two years of his spectacular victory at the polls, Rajiv Gandhi achieved the incredible by turning from a vote-catcher to a vote-loser; from being the Congress Party’s best bet to remain in power, to its biggest handicap. Those that began to desert his sinking ship were not rakes but men who felt that the only chance of saving it was by changing the pilot.