NEW DELHI, 12 August — Embarrassing question for Independence Week: How do you rule India? Philip Mason, that chronicler of imperialists more than imperialism (The Men Who Ruled India) thought that he recognized the British formula as a mirror of a traditional Indian pattern. The Raj was also run on the four-tier caste system: Scholar, Soldier, Scot, Servant.
One has taken a mild liberty with the syntax in the interests of sibilants, but the analogy should be obvious. The Indian Civil Service (ICS) was the top, trained for two years at Oxbridge and sought by dons who wanted to rule the world through their students. Not for nothing was the ICS known as the realm of the twice-born. The Kshatriya of the British Raj.
George Nathaniel Curzon, the ultimate Rajah of the Raj, believed that the British Empire was the “greatest instrument for good that the world has seen” and that the noble mission of ruling India was “placed by the inscrutable decrees of Providence upon the shoulders of the British race”.
But two aspects of the Curzon persona are relevant to our appreciation of British rule. His Eton schoolmates identified him with a doggerel:
My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,
I am a most superior person,
My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim once a week.
And when Curzon was leaving for India to become viceroy, still less than 40 years old, Lord George Hamilton, the secretary of state for India in London, advised him: “Try to suffer fools more gladly; they contribute to the majority of mankind.” It is the kind of advice that a Brahmin fundamentalist like P.V. Narasimha Rao might have offered if he believed that any subordinate had the intelligence to understand what he was saying.
The flaw in the paradigm must be apparent, particularly to the Brahmins, with their sharp minds and clear heads. Whether it was the British Raj at its best or the Hindu caste system at its ideal, the principle that anchored behavior was good government, not self-government. The British ruling class and the Brahmin were as superior to their own people as they were to those they had conquered. This did not necessarily mean ill-use of power.
The Indian Brahmin took over from the White Brahmin in Delhi, and handled the transition with some success. The Nehru-Gandhi family, with a pause for a Shastri (a Kayastha, not a Brahmin), understood the dynamics of a coalition concept like the Congress party and survived through a system of give and perhaps a disproportionate (though not extortionist) amount of take.
When tragedy removed the family from the Congress leadership, the party turned instinctively to a consummate Brahmin. Narasimha Rao was perhaps too Brahminical for his own good, so clever that he became too clever by half. Rao’s decline and then fall were the consequence of excess. He was a Brahmin fundamentalist who lost sight of duty in his myopic greed for power. The Rao kind of Brahmin has become the worst enemy of his own interests. Morarji Desai, irrespective of his last, Janata appellation, was quintessentially a non-Brahmin Congressman anxious to wrest power from the Nehru-Gandhi family. Indira Gandhi’s folly gave him the opportunity in 1977.
Morarji knew how to administer, but he did not know how to rule. Others from different castes have become prime ministers thanks to one set of stars or the other. They will surely blame circumstance rather than themselves for their aborted tenures, but you could be forgiven for tracing a pattern.
The only non-Brahmin prime minister to build any rapport with mass sentiment was the Thakur, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, but that story too is such a classic restatement of caste temperament as to be almost ironical. V.P. Singh did not rule Indians; he led them into battle, from the war against corruption to the war against social injustice.
The only prime minister from the non-Congress dispensation to hold a fractious coalition together and deliver a popular vote is another Brahmin, Atal Behari Vajpayee. The reason for his success is that he has molded himself on the Nehruvian model. He is not a man of sectarian causes; he is, primarily, an assurer and a reassurer.
His concerns tend to be national in character, whether he commits himself to better relations with Pakistan or economic liberalization. Nehru went some steps further, blending his dreams for his nation into a new world order. The success or failure of such leaders is less important than what they represent. Success in any case cannot be permanent or even long-lasting, which is why sensible systems place a time limit on the longevity of a term of office.
Second, success in a complex nation like India can only be achieved through an inclusive vision. Sectarians can be essential ministers; the underpinning: they cannot be prime. Vajpayee could be the last such Brahmin of our times.
Sonia Gandhi is neither a Brahmin by birth or learning or temperament. When she attempts to be one, the experience is faintly ridiculous. All other parties, barring the Marxists, are sectarian by intention and the Marxists are limited by presence.
It is important though to enter a caveat. We are talking of original concepts here, of the meretricious Brahmin and not the hereditary one; of the mind rather than what the caste has become today, another fundamentalist sect.
The BJP’s deputy leader, or prime minister-in-waiting, L.K. Advani, injures himself by being shrill. Indians today, like any people who believe that they are under siege, appreciate the need for a general who can raise the temperature or at least survive the heat of battle, but the empirical role of kings is shaded by calmer attributes.
A king must flourish in peacetime, even if he does allow generals their excesses in war. No Indian king is a hero if he is an Alexander, who never left the campaign trail. The sage who saw Alexander outside Taxila and later befriended the Greek, first laughed at the conqueror. Conquest for its own sake is an immature ambition.
How do we come to terms then with this strange phenomenon called democracy that makes a Phoolan part of the ruling class? How do we deal with an upsurge that punishes the avarice of Brahminical excess by excluding its wisdom? What happens when sectarians demand their portion and more in the most strident tones?
We are in fact seeing right now what happens. Change cannot come without turmoil. Turmoil is not easy to manage. Paradoxically, change does not always promise change. The corruption that has wasted the Brahminical order, for instance, is not always going to be replaced by a Puritanism that places sacrifice on the altar of ideology. The changers may be as, or even more, rapacious than those they have replaced, the greed fueled by first-generation opportunity. Oppression could give way to counter-rape, in a repetition of a historic syndrome, where the hapless citizenry pays for defeat of its government.
But democracy is meant to be the civilized route map for upheaval, is it not? That is meant to be its affirmed genius. So is the problem with democracy or is it with India?
It is facetious to believe that democracy is only about political rights. Democracy is not about pressing a button every five years to throw a rascal out. It is a daily business of incremental comfort, however minuscule that might be. Democracy must be an economic fact and the graph must travel in a positive direction.
Democracy encourages demands, and any perception of prejudice encourages street theater in support of retribution. Tricky. Add the problems of rising expectations and the mix becomes more volatile. Mass media, a cornerstone of democracy, becomes a constant reference point for rising expectations as it flaunts the lifestyle of haves in its search for entertainment.
How then do you rule India? Send an invitation to George Nathaniel Curzon, on the assumption that he is still interested?
The Indian Rope Trick is not the answer, despite its popularity in Indian politics. Politicians enter the arena, accompanied by bugles and trumpets. They dazzle spectators with their oratory, and climb the rope to the summit of their achievement to thunderous applause. Then they disappear. That is a fact, but not an answer.
Is there an answer in the theory of traditional relationships (as opposed to their practice)? In forming an interdependence between the various communities of India that creates mutual wealth within a system of political preferences that may be different?
Above the fray, but not above involvement, is the patriarch, the Prime of the Ministers. He presides by consensus, but has the authority to weed out the poisonous ivy that so often emerges from the undergrowth of human relationships. The patriarch has more responsibility than power. That is the first check on him. His time frame is defined. That is the second check. His human tendency toward greed and nepotism is monitored by professional hecklers like us journalists. He belongs to his party but is of the nation. His judgment is his asset, his vision is his weapon. Am I also saying that he does not exist? Maybe.
