Hopes, dreams, Potemkin Shows

Vinod Khanna, who was recently elected to the Lok Sabha from Gurdaspur, has declared that he will turn it into another Paris. It made hilari...

Vinod Khanna, who was recently elected to the Lok Sabha from Gurdaspur, has declared that he will turn it into another Paris. It made hilarious reading. Paris is known for the Folies Bergere, who attract countless tourists abroad every year, sophisticated women, art galleries and ever-flowing champagne. Gurdaspur is like any small town in India poor, lacking in most basic amenities and plagued by illiteracy and unemployment. And obviously, most of those who voted for Vinod Khanna had not even heard of this El Dorado called Paris.

But it does not really matter, either for Khanna or his voters. With good grace, the latter would have taken his words as a nice gesture. Intentions have always scored over achievements in India, where the politician is taken more seriously than his politics. Since Independence, through every election poverty, illiteracy and unemployment have increased along with an exploding population. But the infinitely patient Indians have taken every misfortune with stoic equanimity. True,they are pathological complainers, but their capacity to undergo hardship and to forgive their elected representatives is legendary. Indians, many of whom do not get a square meal a day, live on a diet of hope and dreams. They continue to believe in the Golden Era which they are convinced existed in some distant past, and a better future tomorrow. Or the day after. Or, well, some day in the future. Life is the unfolding of past karma, inexorable but neither punishing nor rewarding, merely consequential. T.S. Eliot, who measured out his life in coffee-spoons, Indians take into account millenniums past and future. Politicians come and go, governments are formed and destroyed. But everything passes.

Indians honour the word and count it an adequate substitute for the deed. This is why they forgive the career politician and do not take his promises seriously. They didn’t believe in Mrs Gandhi’s Garibi hatao, but brought her back to power nevertheless. Even today, roti, kapda aur makan remains auseful slogan. Since the voters are not taken in by these slogans, it does not really matter to them who wins or who loses. Their eternal wait is for the arrival of the Ram Rajya. They aren’t sure when it is due, nor do they care very much. The fun is in the waiting, in hoping. Nothing can destroy a people which can dream forever and which has infinite patience. This is also the reason why Potemkin Shows are repeated from time to time for the benefit of the rulers and the ruled. The Russians have been remarkably like Indians in their capacity to wait and watch and endure.

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Their Queen Catherine liked to see her beloved subjects living in a bucolic paradise of plenty. In the villages she visited, every family lived in a small but comfortable house surrounded by verdant landscape. What the queen did not realise during her sojourn in rural Russia was that the villages and the contented people she saw were a great show created for her benefit by her trusted Governor Potemkin, to convince her that Russia underher reign was a land of milk and honey. The moment the queen’s entourage left the entire village disappeared with its people and their cattle and moved on to the next village — again created by Potemkin — to populate it before the queen arrived there.

The Potemkin Shows enacted by the politicians of India do not even require such painstaking attention to detail. People here are content with words. They know when to call the politician’s bluff but they do it very gently, with a finesse honed to perfection by centuries of practice and patience. However, they also make it clear to all concerned that they actually like Potemkin Shows, so long as they aren’t enacted too often. Reality is stark and ugly and needs to be relieved by dreams. And yes, by the deceptions which they allow their politicians to play to the hilt. The show must go on, come what may. And, sure enough, it does!