Twitter
Advertisement

Those Indian Englishmen

When Nehru reportedly described himself as the “last Englishman to rule India”, he wasn’t being entirely flippant, says Swapan Dasgupta .

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

There appears to be one set of rules for the Nehru-Gandhi family and another for lesser beings. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh drew a great deal of flak for his good-humoured speech in Oxford on July 8 where he acknowledged Britain’s contribution to the making of modern India. The Left and the Right joined hands in denouncing him as an unrepentant Macaulay putra, a fawning toady of British imperialism and a disgrace to India.

No such invectives were hurled at the head of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations for gifting a bust of Jawaharlal Nehru to Harrow School. On Novermber 14, the bust was ceremonially installed on the grounds of the very pucca English public school where Nehru spent two glorious years before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge.

There is little to distinguish the Prime Minister’s Oxford speech from the ICCR’s gift to Harrow. In praising the “good government” of British administrators, most of whom were Classics scholars and trained in Oxford, Singh was emphasising a common inheritance that has outlived the collapse of the Empire. Likewise, in honouring Nehru at his old public school, India was signalling a quirky truth: the subtle convergence between Englishness and Indian-ness. “He was one of us”, Lord Mountbatten had remarked at a dinner in Trinity College, shortly after Nehru’s death. India could also have said the same about its first Prime Minister.

When Nehru reportedly described himself as the “last Englishman to rule India”, he wasn’t being entirely flippant. A substantial part of his character, including his liberalism, his romance with socialism, his infatuation with Stalinist bleakness, his distaste for loud Americans, his evolved aesthetics and his partiality to a good bottle of Grand Eschezeaux, were in line with upper-class English society of his time. Politically, Nehru could have evolved into an Indian Tory as, say, D.S. Senanayake and Sir John Kotelalwala did in Ceylon. He could have become a flaming Red. Instead, he plumped for a wishy-washy Fabian Socialism that was the rage in Bloomsbury and Hampstead. The choice was personal and quintessentially English. Nehru’s Indian-ness, in fact, lay in his Englishness.

It was different with Nirad C. Chaudhury. In speech and appearance, the Unknown Indian was unmistakably Bengali. His fascination for England and British institutions was both intellectual and eccentric. Nirad Babu, for example, could boast an intimate knowledge of the streets of London well before he even stepped foot in Britain. Nehru’s Englishness on the other hand was instinctive and a product of careful upbringing. Nehru discovered India and denied England; Chaudhury was converted to England by his Indian-ness. No wonder they hated each other.

All this may sound bizarre to those who have imbibed the sloganeering version of anti-imperialism painted in detoxified textbooks. Yet, Nehru was by no means an oddity. The relationship between Britain and India was, to use Enoch Powell’s telling description, “a shared hallucination.” It involved Britons embracing India as both duty and a sacred trust. Conversely, it involved educated Indians looking on Britain as a natural extension of the motherland. Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, one of the most accomplished Bengali poets wrote in 1842 “Where man in all his truest glory lives,/And nature’s face is exquisitely sweet:/For those fair climes I heave the impatient sigh,/There let me live and there let me die.” He was, naturally, talking of England.

The Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagar Sir Ranjitsinhji, is commemorated in England as a great cricketer, the inventor of the leg glance and the inspiration behind Inky of Greyfriars (although some insist that Frank Richards, modelled the Nabob of Bhanipore on Nehru). Yet, in a forbidding corner of western Ireland, near Connemara, there is the charming legend of the Indian Maharaja who became the squire of Ballynahinch Castle from 1927 to 1933.

For Ranji, Ballynahinch became an idyllic retreat for six months each year. Here, he found tranquillity after a colourful and adventurous life. He forested the area, replenished the trout and showed incredible generosity towards the locals. Ballynahinch is now a boutique hotel but the public rooms are dotted with Ranji memorabilia. It is a corner of Ireland that is forever India. If Nehru can be commemorated in Harrow, the Gujarat Government should consider bequeathing a bust of Ranji to Ballynahinch.

Email: swapan55@gmail.com

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement