Revering the landed gentry, not the merchant

The English writer, Martin Amis, has called a skyscraper in Mumbai with 300 servants “disgusting”. Although he didn’t say so, the reference was obviously to Mukesh Ambani’s home.

He also said that money was “evil … dirty … associated with rubbish and excrement”, which provided a clue to his thinking. Even then, would he have used the word, disgusting, for a palatial establishment in London with four times as many staff members? Why is Ambani’s 27-storey Antilla, built with his own money, a sickening sight for him while the much larger Buckingham Palace, where the British royal family lives a subsidised existence, not?

There is little doubt, though, that Amis is not alone. To most people, Antilla is an object of derision tempered by a sense of disbelief that a single family will live in it. Although the towering structure may become a tourist attraction, nearly all the gapers will look upon it with a disdainful smile and not with a mixture of awe and reverence, which the Buckingham Palace evokes. Shah Rukh Khan’s abode is also pointed out to newcomers by autorickshaw drivers, but it is seen with curiosity rather than criticism. In Antilla’s case, the most favourable reaction will be bewilderment along with an attempt to imbibe the message of the in-your-face showiness it conveys.

It is not difficult, however, to explain the contradictory responses to the two “homes” in Mumbai and London. Their origin lies in the familiar perceptions of the zamindar and the bania, the landed gentry and the merchant, the aristocrat and the nouveau riche. But what is intriguing is that the advent of democracy, where everyone is supposed to be equal, has not changed these stereotypical images. Even when the feudal overlords are castigated in fiction and films for their hauteur and rapacity, they still arouse respect for their wealthy lineage, whereas the man of commerce is an object of contempt from even the lowly because of his middle-class background and for his suspected profiteering. While the shopkeeper is sly and untrustworthy, the landlord, for all his faults, is always larger-than-life, even in his sins.

This attitude is probably truer in India than anywhere else. Hence, the growing influence of feudalism in politics with families automatically taking a higher place in parties. Even in outfits that profess to be more democratic, like those of the communists, it was a patrician like Jyoti Basu with his arrogant demeanour and lack of fluency in Bengali suggesting a convent education, who was the first choice to be chief minister in West Bengal when the comrades gained power. As was the Brahmin, EMS Namboodiripad, in Kerala. When the French intellectual, Andre Malraux, asked Nehru about Indian communists, the prime minister said, “One of our states, Kerala, is communist: all the same, the members of the central committee are Brahmins.”

As a corollary to the fact of feudal dominance in social and political life, the trading class has always held a lower place in the Indian scene. Invariably depicted in poor light in films - and not in India alone, vide Oliver Stone’s Wall Street - the merchant class shot itself in the foot by being among the first to acquire the reputation of amassing black money. So, when a 27-storey residence comes up, it cannot but be mocked.

There is another side to the story. Notwithstanding the ancient hedonistic counsel: javat jeevan sukham jivet, rinom kritya ghritam pivet (live in happiness all your life; consume ghee even if you have to borrow), conspicuous consumption is disfavoured in India.

It is a legacy of Gandhian austerity although the Mahatma never knew how much the Congress had to spend to keep him poor. But, throughout history, Indian culture has extolled abstemiousness. The feudal class is generally excluded, however, in this context. The zamindar would not have aroused fear and respect if he did not live in a sprawling palace.

The governing classes have unhesitatingly imbibed this tradition, which is the gift of the British, who also understood that a country cannot be ruled from a middle class home. Hence, the Raj Bhavans along with the intimidating paraphernalia of blaring of sirens as the lord and master passes by along sealed-off roads. Clearly, money is not “evil” for the patricians, who have inherited it from land, the ancient source of wealth and power. But it loses its glitter if acquired in the market place.