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| Edited By: Swapan Dasgupta |Source: |Updated: Nov 19, 2013, 11:17 PM IST
In Kolkata for the state Assembly election, I arranged to meet an old college friend for a quiet drink at Calcutta Club. The venue had been carefully determined on the strength of both conviviality and familiarity — the sofas are comfortable, the atmosphere is conversation-friendly, and I am a third generation member.
We met on a Friday evening at the Member’s Bar upstairs—this part of the Club is still for only for “gentlemen”. Within minutes it was clear that we had dialled a wrong number. Apart from a boisterousness that I associate with gin joints of town, I was struck by the unconcern for the private space. First, two gentlemen we had never encountered before came and shook hands with us. Slightly bewildered, we let it pass assuming mistaken identity. Subsequently, another gentleman arrived, introduced himself and proceeded to harangue us about the shortcomings of the Club. This was followed by the brazen admission that he was a candidate for the forthcoming Club elections.
Raising our eyebrows in disgust, we signed for our drinks and departed. What has the world come to, I asked, when a man can’t even have a quiet conversation in his own Club without being accosted for — of all things — votes?
I remember my father telling me about the time in the early-seventies my maternal uncle—a Cambridge man and one of the city’s leading barristers—contested for a seat on the committee. On election day, when candidates are introduced to the members prior to voting, he stood discreetly in a corner of the main hall. When the chairman called his name, he merely raised his pipe and half smiled. Needless to say, this self-effacing decorousness proved counter-productive. He lost.
Indians who imbibed Britain’s most cherished global export—civility and gentlemanly conduct—have always been a little ill at ease with popular democracy. “First rate men”, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury warned in 1866, when the franchise was nominally enlarged further, “will not canvas mobs: and mobs will not elect first-rate men.”
I can’t say whether all gentlemen qualify as “first-rate men” but the codes of gentlemanly conduct born of breeding and a conscious acceptance of civility don’t seem to go down too well in the hurly-burly of electoral politics. “I am not a gentleman; I am a Communist”, the irascible Ashok Mitra had famously proclaimed. Jyoti Basu once broke every rule in the book of decency by remaining seated while the Assembly observed a minute’s silence after the death of Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, one of Bengal’s most dynamic entrepreneur politicians of the 1930s and 1940s.
In those days, despite the odd Communist trying to be outlandish—to be one with the “toiling masses”—boorishness was still the exception. Before envy corrupted the Bengali mind, politics was regarded as a form of service, the noblesse oblige of the propertied bhadralok class. Uncouth high landlordism was socially unacceptable.
One of the last relics of this zamindari style is Atish Sinha, a five-term MLA from Kandi in Murshidabad who was the floor leader of the Congress in the previous Assembly. Patrician and courteous, but with just a touch of arrogance, Sinha is facing a tough challenge this time from a rebel candidate fielded by Adhir Choudhury, the local Congress MP. The contest is both political and cultural. Sinha belongs to the local zamindar family. His local address is the dilapidated Kandi rajbari (palace). Choudhury’s background is both humble and criminal. In the best tradition of political dadagiri, he has carved out a constituency on the strength of his ability to play Robin Hood against the CPI(M). While Sinha will not sully his hands with anything disreputable, Choudhury will stop at nothing. In today’s parlance, he is a do-er.
With characteristic cussedness, the local media is fiercely on the side of Choudhury. While the Robin Hood courts reporters assiduously, the zamindar tries to ward off over-familiarity. Choudhury’s language is colourful; Sinha is guided by staccato understatement. Sinha may hold on this time but I have no doubt that the future belongs to Choudhury. He epitomises the emerging opposition to Marxist tyranny—brash and uninhibited.
One of these days I may even come face to face with him at the Member’s Bar of Calcutta Club. He will be at home. I may have to find another watering hole.
