India is not CWC

Every Indian, except our refugee friends who came over after Partition, and some urban communities around Mumbai, has strong links with one village or another. In Patna they invite you to the quot;deraquot; or camp. Home is in the village. This also explains those specialtrains, heavily booked months in advance, headed south when our South Indian friends at great cost to themselves return to their quot;native placequot; for the vacations.

It is this abiding rural link that imparts that gentle, pastoral flavour to our songs which, on account of that link, have a legitimacy even on the metropolitan concert stage.

Thus, when Gangubai Hangal, reared in Dharwar, approximating the cultural turf of Saint Purandardasa, sings Ambua Ki dali se bole koyalya the Koel sings ecstatically on the branch of a mango tree, in the Uttar Pradesh dialect, she is establishing those invisible links which adds up to the civilisational fabric of India. Or, to be more precise, Gangubai provides an essential strand in that complex civilisational mosaic.

Nirad Chaudhuri once said that to write good English, or any European language, you have to be sensitive to the nuances of western classical music. Exactly. Each one of the arts adds something to the cultural environment which, in turn,influences the other.

But politicians, it will be argued, are philistines. This is only a half truth. Mahatma Gandhi, Jawarharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Indira Gandhi were very much Saraswati8217;s children. Talking to Dange, B.T. Ranadive and E.M.S. Namboodiripad, on purely cultural themes, was a humbling experience. Atal Behari Vajpayee too re-presents that quot;high seriousnessquot; of Indian civilisation even though the BJP tends to imitate and inspire calendar art rather than draw from the springs of Indian civilisation. The crisis of the BJP is that it has not been able to project a coherent picture of its preferred version of an Indian elite. Its mindset is arrested at the mofussil level.

Where, you might ask, does Rajiv Gandhi fit into this scheme of things? Well, he was the consequence of that streak in Nehru8217;s framework which saw the Indian elite, through an anglaise prism. In 1835 Macaulay wrote his famous letter; in 1935 Doon School was founded where Nehru sent his grandchildren. Vijayalakshmi Pandit oncetold me of quot; Bhai8217;s annoyancequot; with Motilal Nehru because he Motilal Nehru had appointed an English governess for Vijayalakshmi and not a French governess as was the practice among the British aristocracy during the days when Nehru was a student in England.

Don8217;t get me wrong. The public school produced some very integrated Indians. Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth are prime examples. But Rajiv did not have the intellectual ability to quot;buildquot; on that education and, more important, to retain that deep Indianness that informs the works of Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy or even Salman Rushdie.

In fact an earlier generation of Indians, say those who manned the Civil Service, were very Anglaise and very Indian, in cultural terms. Rajiv was culturally illiterate, but to the newly emerging mass-produced, metropolitan elite he was preferable to those inspired by calendar art.

In this framework, I find it impossible even to discuss Sonia Gandhi.

I have deviated a great deal from my Mustafabad story.Seven years ago my friend Mark Tully of the BBC and his companion Gillian Wright attended Moharram in my village. Well informed about various facets of Indian life, they found this little bit of India8217;s composite culture fascinating.

Gillian made it an annual pilgrimage, while Mark8217;s attendance remained erratic on account of his work. This year too Gillian braved 44 degree Celsius temperature and turned up in Mustafabad, wearing black, participating in every activity associated with the solemn season. Marsias or epic poetry written by Mir Anis approximates the highest point of Urdu poetry. Gillian has not only read these Marsias but, at one of the Moharram congregations, even recited a Marsia from the pulpit just as Pundit Kachru did some years ago.

Evenings were spent discussing literature, politics, caste, communalism, with Gillian keeping everyone regaled with her vast knowledge of Indian life. Her English translations of Hindi and Urdu novels, particularly Masoom Reza Rahi8217;s The Feuding Families ofVillage Gangauli are singular contributions, providing larger audiences to masterpieces that would otherwise have remained confined.

Considering that our house seldom has electricity and the flushes never work, Gillian does have to share the inconveniences as well. The whole of Mustafabad finds Gillian8217;s affection for us and the village ever endearing.

quot;She has demonstrated her affection for us and for Hindustan by deed.quot; My mother never, never tires of repeating. This year she announced that Gillian was her fourth daughter. So, I have four sisters now.

Now, if by some quirk, Gillian were fielded by some freak party as a candidate for Mustafabad, my mother would be the first to endorse her candidature. And should the question of her British passport ever be raised, I shall defend her right to retain it. The entire village will. We know that Gillian cares. This detail supersedes trivial passport details.

It is precisely this that we do not know about you, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. In fact as P.A. Sangmasaid, quot;we know nothing about you.quot; You have never spoken to us, you have never spoken to the Indian people. This ancient and proud country should not be mistaken for that exclusive breed, the 21 members of the CWC, who sit around you with their tails between their legs. Even some of them are now demonstrating their ability to straighten their tails.