The Indian YMCA at 41 Fitzroy Square has provided accommodation to many young Parsis who came to London to qualify as Chartered Accountants. One such is in the British House of Lords. The vast majority of the rest had distinguished careers around the globe with various MNCs or Merchant Banks or other such Institutions. Little will be remembered of most of them. The exception is Kohad Ghandy- whose book 'Fractured Freedom' has just come out.
Ghandy was a Doon School lad who did a Chemistry degree at St. Xaviers. His father held a high position with Glaxo. Perhaps, if foreign exchange had been easier to come by back then- this was the late Sixties, just after devaluation- young Kobad would have been sent to America for Graduate work in Organic Chemistry or something of that sort. Better yet, he should have been taken on to the Management Training scheme of some sound Parsi enterprise. He would have more than paid his way because he probably was an honest and dedicated man.
London, at this period, was unwelcoming to 'coloureds' because Enoch Powell was using Race as a means to fire up the dockworkers and so forth and thus cause trouble for Ted Heath's beleaguered Tory administration. At the same time, Harold Wilson's wing of the Labor Party was back-pedaling from egalitarian policies (which hadn't won them votes) so as to focus on things the voters really cared about- viz. the exchange rate- i.e. how much you could spend on your holiday in Franco's Spain- and 'wage differentials' (i.e. protecting the 'labor aristocracy'). Thus, young working class people with shit for brains were radicalized- either you were a racist skin-head with a license for 'Paki-bashing' (which the Police turned a blind eye to) or else you were a Trotskyite. There were even a few Maoists. Thankfully, Mrs. Thatcher came to power and so Indians in the UK started to do well. What dissolves racial and class animosity is the chance to get rich through private enterprise. Ghandy never learned this lesson. He returned to India to, in the words of the Bible, 'trouble his own house' and 'inherit the wind'.
What radicalized the fellow? By his own account, Ghandy, had a privileged life-style in Bombay, and thus was greatly shocked by British racism though he wasn't particularly dark and his spoken English was 'upper class'. Perhaps this made things worse for him.
Faurkh Dhondy was another young Parsi who was very radical at the time. Indeed, he was pretty much running the British branch of the 'Black Panthers', after Darcus Howe lost interest, much to the hilarity of darker skinned Indians like myself. Dhondy later rose high in the Media world and wrote some silly books. Another, more cerebral Parsi, Jairus Banaji was a Classical scholar who became a Marxist theoretician with a pitiful propensity for 'mass outreach'. He even tried to embarrass Modi at some industrialist's conclave almost 20 years ago. Unlike Ghandy, his theory- which explains India's 'damaged modernity' as caused by 'merchant capital' continuing to dominate 'industrial capital' (thanks to restrictive land and labor laws, though Jairus does not say so) could gain little traction amongst India's indigenous eggheads with the result that, as even the vastly stupider Ghandy now acknowledges, no Revolution is likely, let alone 'inevitable, in India. The Parsis- India's one almost entirely bourgeois denomination- won't have their throats slit by the proletariat even if this means that Ghandys and Bananajis must weep bitter tears.
The fact is, India's industrial proletariat is too dispersed into small scale units. The participation rate for women is declining or failing to get off the ground. India's Left destroyed in advance their own vehicle to class power. There is a great irony that many Parsis themselves started off as a proto-proletariat class of carpenters and even mill-workers. But their entrepreneurs soon began to thrive in Bombay and their public-spirit and philanthropy soon helped pull up their entire community. Parsi accumulation of merchant capital through the Opium trade and, later, the Civil War Cotton boom, transformed the habitus and life-chances of even the poorest Zoroastrians. So long as they pursued their own self-interest they played a vanguard role in India. But when they subordinated themselves to a National sense of Grievance, they hindered India's economic rise. Ghandy was foolish to adopt a type of hysterical Nationalism which made no place for the genius of his own people. Like other such Parsis, he harmed himself without helping his country or the great mass of its people who would like nothing better than to emulate the Parsis and to rise in like manner. By contrast, if Parsis pursued their own self-interest, their own unique genius, they thrived and made an outstanding contribution. Thus, it was Freddy Mercury who was the apotheosis of the Parsi boy who makes good at that period. But the Revolution he heralded was Pink, not Red. His 'praxis' was liberative not just for himself but for a large and rising class of young people all over the world.
Ghandy's anger at British racism led him to discover the anti-Imperialist literature of an earlier age. Oddly he does not mention Saklatvala, one of the first Communists to sit as an MP at Westminster, but rather Palme Dutt who tended to be soft on the Nehrus.
In an extraordinary passage in his memoir, Ghandy- who had been arrested and beaten by the police for making an anti-racist speech- harangued a British judge by raking up all Britain's old inequities concerning India. Savarkar could not have done the job better. Ghandy- it seems- was a Nationalist, not a genuine Communist. But the Judge thought him dangerous and he served two months in Brixton Jail.
If the guy had just said he was drunk and now felt very silly for all the trouble he'd caused- he'd have been fined a Fiver.
Still, he wasn't deported. This suggests that he wasn't really involved with dangerous people. The fact is Heath's administration was paranoid about Communist infiltrators. Heath declared a State of Emergency, but the head of the Civil Service went mad and started rolling around on the carpet of Number 10 screaming about Communist machinations. Thus, unlike Indira, Heath faced an ignominious defeat- which Thatcher would later avenge.
Interestingly, Ghandy was keeping a distance from the Indian High Commission- whose legal adviser could have intervened to get the young chap off- because he thought he might be sent to Calcutta and shot in the back of the head! This suggests, once again, that he was a naive young man with little understanding of how things work in either India or the UK. What he should have done is let elders of his community take charge and smooth things out for him. If he wanted to quit Accountancy, he could have taken a job at a Restaurant or Grocery Shop and then swotted up on Marxism at Birkbeck and then Ruskin College and so forth. He'd have probably qualified as a barrister and gotten steady work from the Trade Unions and various NGOs. Why did Ghandy turn his back on his community- which, after all, had plenty of experience with young chaps who turn Commie after a spot of bother with racist Bobbies or what have you? They become perfectly respectable lawyers or actuaries or ship brokers or whatever. Indeed, this was something of a tradition in the City of London.
The truth is, back then, it was quite usual for the scion of a business family to get into trouble of this sort. Vikram Seth's younger brother used to be pretty left wing while his elder brother gathered up the glittering prizes and set off for America. However, prosecutions were generally dropped after the Minister Political at India House had a quiet word with his counterparts in Scotland Yard or the Home Office.
Of course, it may be that Ghandy is deceiving us. Perhaps he was recruited in London by the Chinese or something of that sort. This would explain his cutting off ties with old chums from School. It would also explain his glomming onto a rising academic from an influential Communist family- Anuradha Shanbag- who married him in 1977. Perhaps he steered her in a leftward direction with the result that she went underground in the early Eighties. Or perhaps, the shoe was on the other foot- as he himself suggests. Anuradha was- as appears from the historical record- the driving force in the partnership. Her father was a respected lawyer. She had contacts with Academia and the Media. As a feminist, her grass-roots work might be considered to have some value. Getting guys not to keep raping every female comrade they can lay their hands on might be considered a worthwhile type of work. Furthermore, by getting involved with resource rich tribal areas like Bastar, money 'for the cause' could be made. Ghandy says that the Naxals in prison came eagerly to him thinking he was a genuine big-shot with pots of money. They abandoned him to Afzal Guru, the Kashmiri who was hanged, when they discovered the hadn't pocketed the extortion money paid by Big Business Houses in Naxal infested areas.
What can one say about lives like that of the Ghandys'? Indeed, what can one say about any type of Gandhis of the political sort? They were and are as stupid as shit. Still, if the Indian taxpayer won't cough up money to make them feel important in one way or another, would it not be the case that the evil British Imperialists- or else the forces of Neo-Liberalism- have prevailed? Surely we owe it to our ancestors- billions of whom were robbed, killed, and subjected to heinous acts of cunnilingus and fellatio by perverted White Capitalists- to contribute a little money towards either keeping these nutters in jail or keeping them in a Lutyen's bungalow or, if we are too mean to even do that, can't we at least cough up the price of a bullet like the one used by Nathuram Godse? Have we really become so miserly and materialistic that we won't do our duty by the politically engaged Gandhis or Ghandys of this world? The answer- sadly- is yes. We don't want these guys to be beaten or killed on our dime. Let them just exhibit their imbecility to each other by writing a blog same as the rest of us. Also, they should get proper jobs and pay taxes not go around lecturing Dalits on the evils of 'Brahminism'. Why not the evils of 'Parsi-ism'? After all, Parsis, not Brahmins, are a Capitalist class.
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