Roger Fry- who had introduced 'Post Impressionism' to the Brits in 1910 with his exhibition titled 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists'- painted this portrait, the very next year, of, his, rather slovenly buttoned up, fellow Cambridge Apostle, E.M Forster.
Between October 1912 and April 1913, Forster was in India- initially staying with Syed Ross Masood, an Oxonian, with whom Forster was in love.
I should mention that a portion of literary England, at about this time, was deeply steeped in Persian poetry of a Sufi, mystical, type. Here, passionate, albeit Platonic, love between the adept and the aspirant- or even between two equals on the Sufi path- helped preserve the impassability of God while endowing a purely spiritual pursuit with colour, emotion and romance.
Forster, like other members of the Bloomsbury group, revered G.E Moore who held that
'the idea of a perfect activity of will and intellect, without any emotional faculty to take pleasure in their activities, seems to me absolutely incompatible with happiness.' This meant that to 'only connect' and thus maintain personal relationships grounded on a tender mutuality and candid reciprocity, was to advance ethically- i.e. have a better ethos- without your lived world turning into something arid or abstract. Impressions could be valued for their emotional content even if there was something deeper, more impersonal or hostile to individuality, beneath appearances and the moods in which they were apprehended.
Sir Syed Ross Masood was a descendant of the Ninth Shia Imam and was fully occupied in advancing his grandfather's scheme for spreading modern education and thus re-energising the Muslims of India. As we can see in the picture below, he was a man born to command and to achieve great things.
“You can talk to Miss Quested about the Peacock Throne if you like—she’s artistic, they say.”
“Is she a Post Impressionist?”
“Post Impressionism, indeed! Come along to tea. This world is getting too much for me altogether.”
Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian, had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism—a privilege reserved for the Ruling Race, that.
Intellectuals speak of Ideological movements or Aesthetic trends. The Rulers don't bother. Fielding is making out that he is neither the one thing nor the other. The world has become too much for him. He has retreated to the cloisters from which the modern College- or, Degree Mill, in the case of India- had emerged. Forster visited India thrice. On the third occasion he remarked that Indian English had become unintelligible to the Englishman. His novel is set in a sunnier Edwardian age where even the Indians spoke in a gentlemanly enough manner and ideology was considered declasse.
This raises the question, why does Forster put in a joke about 'Post Impressionism' which his own friends might have made against him? More particularly, why is it associated with Adela? The answer, I suppose is that Adela, not Fielding, corresponds to Forster. She, like him, is solicitous to elderly women. Perhaps, they hold some secret denied to the rest of us. Or, more poignantly, they are sphinxes without a secret. Freud's term 'the Oedipus complex' had only entered the English language in 1910.
It is tempting to see Mrs. Moore, or, perhaps, Professor Godbole as standing in some particular, wholly Spiritual, relationship to G.E Moore, whose ethical philosophy encrypted in certain personal relationships that undefinable summum bonum which Forster was foremost in championing.
It is also tempting to ask if Bloomsbury's Post-Christian creed could reinvigorate the Empire? Forster arrived in an India where Theosophy had gained political salience. Motilal Nehru had hired an English theosophist to be his son's tutor. Then, in 1911, the Theosophists announced that a young South Indian boy- Jeddu Krishnamurti- was the new universal Messiah. Mary Lutyens- a grand-daughter of a Viceroy- was an eager convert to this creed. Annie Beasant became the President of the Indian National Congress in 1917. She and Tilak had launched the Home Rule League the previous year. Tagore, it must be said, was sceptical. He warned his Bengali readers that the departure of the British would mean the Hindus would lose their property, perhaps even their lives, in East Bengal. Still, like the Mahatma, Tagore too talked in terms of a Monist God and a universal spirituality.
When Mrs. Moore first comes to India, she finds herself constantly mentioning God. In particular, she detests her son, the District Magistrate's, belief that the English were in India to do a job- that of a House Master in an English Public School who needs to be irascible and to display a paranoid suspicion of 'beastliness'. The 'beaks' aren't meant to make themselves popular. India is not a drawing room. It is a Prep School dormitory to be tightly policed.
Will Mrs. Moore shape up to be a sort of Annie Beasant without the Socialism, or the Feminism, or an earlier and vulgar Atheism which Beasant had recanted?
“I’m going to argue, and indeed dictate,” she said, clinking her rings. “The English are out here to be pleasant.”
There had been Viceroys- like Ripon- and senior Royals, like the Duke of Connaught, who had that belief. Many a Prince was touchingly loyal towards an affectionate British tutor or Political Agent. Indeed, some senior Indian judges and engineers and medical men considered their British colleagues to be their intimate friends. Motilal Nehru was one such Indian.
“How do you make that out, mother?” he asked, speaking gently again, for he was ashamed of his irritability.
“Because India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth in order to be pleasant to each other. God . . . is . . . love.” She hesitated, seeing how much he disliked the argument, but something made her go on. “God has put us on earth to love our neighbours and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding.”
Some English women- like Mirabehn, who joined Gandhi in 1924- certainly thought so.
He looked gloomy, and a little anxious. He knew this religious strain in her, and that it was a symptom of bad health; there had been much of it when his stepfather died. He thought, “She is certainly ageing, and I ought not to be vexed with anything she says.”
“The desire to behave pleasantly satisfies God. . . The sincere if impotent desire wins His blessing. I think every one fails, but there are so many kinds of failure. Good will and more good will and more good will. Though I speak with the tongues of . . .”
He waited until she had done, and then said gently, “I quite see that. I suppose I ought to get off to my files now, and you’ll be going to bed.”
“I suppose so, I suppose so.” They did not part for a few minutes, but the conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it.
Though, for many in India and England, it was the realest thing in their lives. Still, I suppose there is a price to be paid for higher education and a concern with the modish, if not the modern.
Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life. Then he would say in respectful yet decided tones, “I don’t think it does to talk about these things, every fellow has to work out his own religion,” and any fellow who heard him muttered, “Hear!”
Forster thinks Ronny is intellectually sub-par. He went to a good enough Public School but wasn't smart enough to go to Oxford or Cambridge. He was the product of London University and a year at a crammer. In other words, the fellow had no soul worth speaking of. Worse yet, he lacked savoir faire. He should have mobilized his considerable 'social capital' to seal the deal with the fair English maiden- or if not 'fair' exactly, then one with a decent enough pecuniary 'competence'. If she wants caves get the Nawab Sahib or some other such dignitary to provide the elephants and mahouts while sending your own munshi to make sure the bundobust is pukka. See if the Collector's Sahib's Mem will grace the occasion. Hint this will help push forward the marriage. Miss Quested is bound to have an Uncle who was a Bishop or a Director of the Great Western Railway or something of that sort. That's the sort of thing a rising young man on the Judicial side should play up.
What harmed Ronny was the fact that he had let his own mother and intended bride go gallivanting off with a junior Indian Doctor disliked by his boss, the Civil Surgeon. The fact is Ronny belonged to the ICS. The Indian Medical Service was a lower cadre as was the IPS and Fielding's Education Service. The only bigger faux pas Ronny could have made was to let his Mother befriend an Eurasian lady.
Mrs. Moore felt that she had made a mistake in mentioning God, but she found him increasingly difficult to avoid as she grew older, and he had been constantly in her thoughts since she entered India, though oddly enough he satisfied her less. She must needs pronounce his name frequently, as the greatest she knew, yet she had never found it less efficacious. Outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence. And she regretted afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that had caused her to visit India—namely the relationship between Ronny and Adela. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming engaged to be married?
Something happens to both Mrs. Moore & Adela at the Marabar caves. They become infected with an echo. Mrs Moore knows what it is- and it causes her to cease to be Christian. She even stops caring about personal relationships. She just wants to go home. Sadly, she dies somewhere on the Red Sea. Sadder yet, her two other children are consigned to India's fiery maw. They will be part of the English establishment in India. Fielding too will turn into a typical servant of the Raj.
Mrs. Moore, thanks to the Governor's wife's sympathy for Adela, is able to get a good cabin on a homeward bound ship.
So Mrs. Moore had all she wished; she escaped the trial, the marriage, and the hot weather; she would return to England in comfort and distinction, and see her other children. At her son’s suggestion, and by her own desire, she departed. But she accepted her good luck without enthusiasm. She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time
England was little. India was wider than the world- which is why it was littler. Little England, on the other hand, might be made merrier and there was some point in working towards that end.
I suppose Forster's generation had a horror of Victorianism's horror vacui. Theism was over ornamental. It left no space for 'a room of one's own'.
—the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved. If this world is not to our taste, well, at all events there is Heaven, Hell, Annihilation—one or other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires, blue or black air.
Which our horror vacui has called into being. But, what's so wrong with empty space? Why should it terrify?
All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background, just as all practical endeavour, when the world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words can be found; we can neither act nor refrain from action, we can neither ignore nor respect Infinity. Mrs. Moore had always inclined to resignation. As soon as she landed in India it seemed to her good, and when she saw the water flowing through the mosque-tank, or the Ganges, or the moon, caught in the shawl of night with all the other stars, it seemed a beautiful goal and an easy one. To be one with the universe! So dignified and simple. But there was always some little duty to be performed first, some new card to be turned up from the diminishing pack and placed, and while she was pottering about, the Marabar struck its gong.
What had spoken to her in that scoured-out cavity of the granite? What dwelt in the first of the caves? Something very old and very small. Before time, it was before space also. Something snub-nosed,
i.e. non-Aryan
incapable of generosity—the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice, she had not entertained one large thought, she was actually envious of Adela. All this fuss over a frightened girl! Nothing had happened, “and if it had,” she found herself thinking with the cynicism of a withered priestess, “if it had, there are worse evils than love.” The unspeakable attempt presented itself to her as love: in a cave, in a church—Boum,
Oum is the sacred syllable in Hinduism. 'Bum' is the sound of the dhumru drum associated with Lord Shiva and signifies annihilation. Forster has run them together because having a Godbole say 'bum bum bole' would be fucking hilarious even though it just means 'Praise to the Lord!'
it amounts to the same. Visions are supposed to entail profundity, but—— Wait till you get one, dear reader! The abyss also may be petty, the serpent of eternity made of maggots; her constant thought was: “Less attention should be paid to my future daughter-in-law and more to me, there is no sorrow like my sorrow,” although when the attention was paid she rejected it irritably.
This was not G.E Moore's- or Forster's- credo. Both remained Pacifists- Forster was a conscientious objector during the Great War while Russell, who, along with Moore, had overturned the Hegelian idealism previously in vogue, had been sent to jail for trying to persuade the Americans not to come to the aid of the British and the French.
If Mrs. Moore does not stand for G.E Moore, what of Prof. Godbole? Like G.E Moore, he was a very good singer- or so his own people thought. It was his song which created the ontological anxiety Adela complained of. He is a devotee of Tukaram- the poet-Saint most associated with the rise of the Marathas. The Brits had taken over custodianship of the Grand Moghul from the Marathas. If Britain left India, perhaps they would take over the place once again- or so Aziz fears. Forster's own ancestral Evangelical Christianity, together with Benthamite Utilitarianism, had provided the ideology of the Raj. The Tagore family's 'Brahmo Samaj' was a Unitarian sect which expressed this ideology in an Upanishadic idiom. But, perhaps, the thing was un-Indian and was bound to be swept away. What Forster does not mention is the Bolshevik threat which, by the time his book was published, had become apparent to all. Indeed, Forster himself, as a vice-president of the Society for Cultural Relations, was spied upon by British Intelligence. I suppose, Forster was hinting that if the English could get rid of the 'colour bar' (as Viceroy Reading wanted) and conciliated the Aligarh Muslim and the Deccani acolytes of Tukaram, then there could be a united front against the Red Menace.
Godbole, however, is a Theist. Like Mrs. Moore, when she first arrived in India, he thinks we serve each other when we pray or, in his case, sing and dance the ecstatic hymns of Tukaram.
It was long before the tiny fragment of Professor Godbole that attended to outside things decided that his pince-nez was in trouble, and that until it was adjusted he could not choose a new hymn. He laid down one cymbal, with the other he clashed the air, with his free hand he fumbled at the flowers round his neck. A colleague assisted him. Singing into one another’s grey moustaches, they disentangled the chain from the tinsel into which it had sunk. Godbole consulted the music-book, said a word to the drummer, who broke rhythm, made a thick little blur of sound, and produced a new rhythm. This was more exciting, the inner images it evoked more definite, and the singers’ expressions became fatuous and languid. They loved all men, the whole universe, and scraps of their past, tiny splinters of detail, emerged for a moment to melt into the universal warmth. Thus Godbole, though she was not important to him, remembered an old woman he had met in Chandrapore days. Chance brought her into his mind while it was in this heated state, he did not select her, she happened to occur among the throng of soliciting images, a tiny splinter, and he impelled her by his spiritual force to that place where completeness can be found. Completeness, not reconstruction. His senses grew thinner, he remembered a wasp seen he forgot where, perhaps on a stone.
It was Mrs. Moore who had seen the wasp. Is Forster's novel about telepathy? But why stop there? Why not speak of 'tuirgen'- or investigative birth seeking? All must become every other soul before any can exit the maze. I suppose, the novel is a sort of 'tuirgen'. We glimpse the inward life of the inhabitants of its make-believe world.
Going to hang up her cloak, she found that the tip of the peg was occupied by a small wasp. She had known this wasp or his relatives by day; they were not as English wasps, but had long yellow legs which hung down behind when they flew. Perhaps he mistook the peg for a branch—no Indian animal has any sense of an interior. Bats, rats, birds, insects will as soon nest inside a house as out; it is to them a normal growth of the eternal jungle, which alternately produces houses trees, houses trees. There he clung, asleep, while jackals in the plain bayed their desires and mingled with the percussion of drums.
“Pretty dear,” said Mrs. Moore to the wasp. He did not wake, but her voice floated out, to swell the night’s uneasiness.
Perhaps, Godbole had seen a different wasp or perhaps there is only one Consciousness which pervades the Universe. Godbole had participated in Mrs. Moore benediction of the wasp or was it the other way around? According to the Brahma Sutras, methexis is reciprocal. Heraclitus put it differently, Gods and men live each others' deaths, die each others' lives.
He loved the wasp equally, he impelled it likewise, he was imitating God.
No. He was an 'amsha'- a limb- of the Lord
And the stone where the wasp clung—could he . . . no, he could not, he had been wrong to attempt the stone, logic and conscious effort had seduced, he came back to the strip of red carpet and discovered that he was dancing upon it. Up and down, a third of the way to the altar and back again, clashing his cymbals, his little legs twinkling, his companions dancing with him and each other.
Forster's ancestors had been ultra-respectable members of the Clapham Sect. Godbole's religion is more like that of the 'Shaking Quakers' or 'Shakers'. His was a 'Society of Friends' which danced in ecstasy as an imitatio Dei.
Covered with grease and dust, Professor Godbole had once more developed the life of his spirit. He had, with increasing vividness, again seen Mrs. Moore, and round her faintly clinging forms of trouble. He was a Brahman, she Christian, but it made no difference, it made no difference whether she was a trick of his memory or a telepathic appeal. It was his duty, as it was his desire, to place himself in the position of the God and to love her, and to place himself in her position and to say to the God, “Come, come, come, come.” This was all he could do. How inadequate! But each according to his own capacities, and he knew that his own were small. “One old Englishwoman and one little, little wasp,” he thought, as he stepped out of the temple into the grey of a pouring wet morning. “It does not seem much, still it is more than I am myself.”
This is the problem with Godbole. He diminishes himself. The school he was supposed to preside over in this Princely State has been turned into a granary. He is a teacher who has no students. Instead his job is to arrange, or improvise, religious ceremonies. Perhaps that is for the best. Stalin got his start as a seminary student. It would have been better for everybody if the only instruction he had received was in dancing and singing.
Adela, it seems to me, better represents G.E. Moore. She gains impressions but can go beyond them or, rather, she can return to the place where she was at home before receiving those impressions.
(Fielding) learnt that the engagement had been broken by Ronny. “Far wiser of him,” she said pathetically. “I ought to have spoken myself, but I drifted on wondering what would happen. I would willingly have gone on spoiling his life through inertia—
this is the 'contatus' of the Scholastics. Moore's 'personal relationships' offer a dialectic which is not 'idealist' (i.e. there is only one Spirit pervading all) such that what is valuable in itself can burgeon. But this is an ideographic, not a nomothetic, matter. Common sense can prevail only where people have something in common.
one has nothing to do, one belongs nowhere
one lacks 'oikeiosis'- i.e. some natural way of appropriation.
and becomes a public nuisance without realizing it.”
I suppose, the Bloomsbury group were acutely conscious that some of the new ideas they entertained had that potential.
In order to reassure him, she added: “I speak only of India. I am not astray in England. I fit in there—no, don’t think I shall do harm in England. When I am forced back there, I shall settle down to some career. I have sufficient money left to start myself, and heaps of friends of my own type. I shall be quite all right.” Then sighing: “But oh, the trouble I’ve brought on everyone here. . . . I can never get over it. My carefulness as to whether we should marry or not . . . and in the end Ronny and I part and aren’t even sorry.
Adela was going to make a bad marriage. Godbole's song unsettled her and then there was the echo in the cave which infected her with some ghastly type of ontological dysphoria. But, the outcome is happy. She returns to England and, henceforth, will be at home there.
Ronny's mistake was to bundle his mother out of the country. He was a Magistrate. The proper thing to do was to bring in a public prosecutor from the State Capital. The fact that the Defence had hired a clever barrister was warrant enough to do so. The Superintendent of Police made a hash of the prosecution. He gratuitously mentioned Mrs. Moore though, by the Rules of Evidence, this opened the door for the Defence to insist she be called to the stand. Justice must be seen to be done. If the D.M gets his own mother out of the way so that a prosecution against someone he might be jealous of can proceed, then the Court over which he presides is brought into disrepute. Had an experienced prosecutor been brought in, he would have reported that Adela was not fit to take the stand. Either the case must be dropped for that reason or it must stand or fall upon other testimony.
The Superintendent's legal mistake causes the cry 'Esmiss Esmoor!' (i.e. the demand that Mrs. Moore be produced as a 'witness' (which is what the word 'martyr' or 'shaheed' means) to be taken up by the crowd. Hearing this invocation, Adela's mind clears. She is able to visualize what happened when she entered the cave. Oh dear. She had been mistaken. She says as much. Her echo disappears.
In this manner, Adela, with whom the reader is just as annoyed as they are with Aziz and Godbole, redeems herself more particularly when she reveals she will return and be at home in England. She had been foolish to think she could make a life for herself in India. Britain's role there was ending. But, in England, women were taking up more and more social and political responsibilities. Adela, herself, might prepare herself for a profession. There is something of the school-mistress about her but there were other professions opening their doors for women. Forster suggests that Adela, by her candour, has risen to a position of equality with Fielding- a man in forties.
A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air.
In Howard's End, Helen hears the 'fate knocking on the door' motif of Beethoven's fifth, as 'goblins walking quietly over the universe'. One is tempted to see this as an Analytical 'factorization' of German Idealism. Fate is merely the activity of little goblins or gremlins prowling around.
Both man and woman were at the height of their powers
they had little in the way of power. One was a School Principal. The other had the air of a particularly obtuse school-mistress.
—sensible, honest, even subtle. They spoke the same language, and held the same opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet they were dissatisfied. When they agreed, “I want to go on living a bit,” or, “I don’t believe in God,” the words were followed by a curious backwash as though the universe had displaced itself to fill up a tiny void, or as though they had seen their own gestures from an immense height—dwarfs talking, shaking hands and assuring each other that they stood on the same footing of insight.
Dwarves are jolly creatures. Let them shake hands by all means. It is goblins or gremlins that we fear.
They did not think they were wrong, because as soon as honest people think they are wrong instability sets up.
Moore was very down on scepticism. But, when you keep attacking a thing, people get the idea that it must be very powerful.
Not for them was an infinite goal behind the stars, and they never sought it.
The Cambridge Apostles was founded as the "Conversazione Society" at the University of Cambridge on 1 April 1820. At that time, the English did not know of the Qingtan 清談. 'pure conversation' Chinese philosophical school. One conceit- made famous by Pound's translation of Li Po was that of the tavern at the end of the river of stars where all such pure conversations, interrupted in this life, can be taken up again and continued indefinitely.
But wistfulness descended on them now, as on other occasions; the shadow of the shadow of a dream fell over their clear-cut interests, and objects never seen again seemed messages from another world.
The Japanese art critic, Okakura- a student of Fenelossa whose manuscripts Pound used for 'Cathay'- had been instrumental in putting Rothenstein and Tagore in touch. The cult of Tagore spread very quickly thereafter. But, everywhere you looked, Oriental mysticism was in the air. Christendom had destroyed itself in a fratricidal war between Emperors. By 1922, England had to admit defeat in Ireland, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey and Russia. It was merely a matter of time before Dyarchy in India was replaced by autonomy and then full independence. Messages from other worlds had been piling up in England's letter box. What they had to say was unsettling. England may be at home to itself. It could no longer be at home everywhere across the seven seas.
Other Nations may have a rendezvous with Destiny- even Nehru's India made such a tryst six years after Forster's book was published. But what England had was a 'faux-bond'- a stood up date. Adela had come to India to meet 'real Indians'. There were none to be found- every thing and every body was imaginary or oneiric. Aziz is the sort of Islamic fantasist of whom Akbar Illahabadi said
Payt masroof hai clerki meinDil hai Iran aur Turki mein.
'tis but the belly makes necessary the clerk's white collar
The Heart never forsakes Janissary & Ayatollah.
“I think it’s a marvelous piece of writing. Don’t you agree with me?”
Forster didn't know that this was also J.C Squire's opinion. Both appreciated Chaudhuri's mastery of Latinate diction and his deep immersion in European literature. Yet what was priceless about his work was that he could lift the veil on village life. He noticed the very things we would want to notice but which the 'emic' narrator would not find worthy of mention- if he noticed them at all.
At once it came to me that he’d fallen for it. I couldn’t help saying to myself that Forster was no different from any other Englishman. The book had obviously pleased him, satiating his desire to read something that idealised British culture, and denigrated Indian tradition and heritage.
Chaudhri's book is valuable to urban Indians. It gives us the material by which we can imagine our own rural origins. A great-grandfather of ours is bound to have been an advocate in some such village. It is from there that we got our start.
The rain had started to batter the window panes with a drumming sound made me come out candidly without any reservation.
“I beg to differ, Sir. I honestly feel it is a horrific piece of writing — almost blasphemous.”
Chaudhuri ends his book by pleading with the White Man to come back and rule over Bengal. But then, his family was from East Bengal just as Kumar's family was from West Punjab. The price of Independence, for tens of millions, was having to run away from one's ancestral land. 'Habb al-watan'- love of your natal place- may be part of the true Faith, but if it means your love is over here and your watan is over there- what good is it?
My statement made him sit up, face glowing with a tinge of petulance.
“You have a right to your opinion, Mr. Kumar, and I understand your feelings.
Forster's question is 'does Chaudhuri write well?' There is only one possible answer. He writes very well.
'Don’t forget that I love India, but we should take a book for what it is. I repeat that it is an outstanding piece of work, regardless of its harshness towards Indian sentiments.”
Forster was right. I suppose it was a bitter pill for Public School, Oxbridge graduates like Forster or Squires that an 'unknown' Indian should write with such erudition and precision in their own language.
I responded, “Sir, before I explain my reaction to the book, let me say that I happen to know the author personally. He was my colleague at the All India Radio, where he was Talks Officer, with his office next to my room. I used to have tea with him almost every day, and we used to engage in long conversations. Nirad is a dwarfish man, not more than four feet two inches who tries to appear larger than life. He would always come to office dressed in a three-piece suit, a hat on his head and neatly polished suede shoes.
Chaudhuri understood that literary 'dandyism' went hand in hand with the creation of an authorial persona. This was a familiar theme to English writers. Max Beerbohm had explored it in some depth.
Most of my colleagues used to call him a bore, because he'd often pull out a bunch of photographs of his children. I remember how he once took out a photograph of his son, Dhruv. ‘This is my son who is now eighteen. Even when he was five, he enjoyed listening to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. And he could enumerate all the elements in the solar system. When he grew up to be sixteen, he began to play the piano, and his favourite music was Western. He could talk about British painters, musicians and philosophers.’”
Dhruv was an excellent photographer. His second son, Kirti, became a Professor of Economic History at London University. Being Bengali, he naturally misunderstood mathematics. He held that 'the "axiom of choice" in mathematical set theory can used to show that even the great deserts of Asia can be included in the "set" Indian Ocean through the logic of dialectical opposition.' Sadly, it can also be used to turn anything into an infinite collection of itself. This is the Banach Tarski paradox which is very mystical. I suppose, from the strictly mathematical point of view, it is merely counter-intuitive and not a paradox at all.
At this point, I paused for a while as I’d almost run out of breath.
Just say 'Bengali Kayasthas are too fucking brainy for their own good. Still, at least they aren't Baidyas- like the Sens.'
Pulling myself together, I continued, ‘let me at this point say that I don’t agree with T.S. Eliot when he says, ‘Honest criticism should confine itself to a work of art, not the man behind it.” No, I won't buy that statement because I earnestly believe that the man behind a book is as important, if not more than his work.
Niradh's two volumes of autobiography were about himself. Was he a good man? Yes. He was a faithful husband and gave his children a good start in life. The English came to adore him more particularly after he settled in England.
Let me here add that if Macaulay had been alive today, he would have adopted Nirad as his dream child.
No. He'd have adopted Jawaharlal Nehru. Macaulay was a politician. He wrote books so as to make enough money to stay in Parliament. Indeed, it was the need for money which caused him to take up an appointment in India. But the view he was championing was that of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore.
I assume you'd recall Macaulay's historic minute of 1838 which said that ‘By imposing English upon Indians, we’d rear up a crop of Indians who would be Indian in colour but British in thought and temperament.’
But, Niradh could not understand English, as spoken by Englishmen, when he first came to Calcutta as a student of Ripon College. He had more in common with his batchmate- Bibhuti Bhushan (author or the Apu trilogy filmed by Satyajit Ray)- than with 'Brown Sahibs' like the Nehrus.
So here is a typical child of the British colonial dream.”
He was a typical child of the Brahmo dream of Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore. The Brits preferred aristocratic polo-players whose English would be just sufficient for military purposes. They came to hate the educated Bengali 'Babu'.
I paused for a moment. “But I haven’t explained to you Nirad’s real motivation in writing this book. Indeed, he’s a man of encyclopedic breadth of knowledge, and he handles the English language with superb skill and confidence.
This is a tribute to the Bengali education system. The 'Gaudas' had been revered for their erudition and 'navya nyaya' logical thinking for many centuries.
I once asked him, as executive officer at All India Radio, to write a talk on Panini. Instantly he asked me, ‘Which Panini? There are two Paninis, one the grammarian and the other the sage.
Chaudhuri was wrong. There is only the grammarian who may also have been a wandering sage.
So which one do you want me to write on? I was indeed amazed by this man's learning. Mildly I said, ‘let it be Panini, the sage’. On another day, I requested him to write an article on Indian birds. The very next day, he brought a six-page piece on all kinds of birds.
The Punjabi is paying an honest tribute to the erudite Bengali. Yet, he wants Forster to think ill of him. Why?
But in spite of his skill at writing and his versatility, he was ignored by his principals at All India Radio. For several years, he held the same position, with no promotion or increment.
Ronny Heaslop may mention this to Burton or Turton as an indication that the man in question was not 'pukka'.
It made him feel he’d been brushed aside by the establishment as non-entity. He wanted to rocket into fame by writing this book, and bring himself into the limelight — an ‘unknown’ Indian now too well-known.
He could have simply have written a book about the suffering of the East Bengali Hindu. That way, he would have got his point across. Indian independence may have been a wonderful thing for India's new masters. But it had meant poverty and exile- if not a fate worse than death- for tens of millions.
Since he’d been ignored by his Indian friends and bosses, he decided to take shelter in British culture and tradition.
Actually, it was the French who first came to his aid when All India Radio refused to give him an extension of service.
To him, the Englishman and the British empire were his pedestal on which rested all his loyalty and dedication.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore had lobbied Westminster to send more White people to Bengal. Why? This would keep the Hindus safe from the Muslims. But Dwarkanath's grandson, Rabindranath, makes the same point in 'Ghare Bhaire'.
No wonder, his Autobiography of An Unknown Indian was dedicated to the British Empire. The venomous things he’d to say against India! Permit me to read out from the book a paragraph.”
To be fair, like most Bengalis, it was the shortcomings of the Bengali bhadralok which envenomed his quill. He thought Nehru might be all right because he wore pajamas- which were almost trousers- rather than a dhoti. To his credit, Niradh continued to wear a dhoti while working in his garden in Oxford.
I understood that Mr. Forster did not interrupt me in the seemingly interminable stream of words because he was a very courteous Englishman. I also divined that Mr. Forster was more with Nirad, than with me.
“I beg your pardon again, Mr. Forster, for blabbering away. But being a sensitive Indian, I had to open out my heart to a gracious person like you.
Forster smiled. “Mr. Kumar, you say you’ve come here to do your doctorate. I feel you should take to writing instead. Your graphic description of Nirad C. Chaudhuri sounded like an interesting character portrayal in a novel.”
Forster is right. Kumar could be a character from 'Passage'. Like Aziz, he impulsively invites Forster to his lodgings but then remembers that they are too squalid and ill furnished to provide hospitality to a great man of letters. Fortunately, Forster has too much tact to take up the invitation. Later, Kumar was elected President of the Cambridge Majlis and was able to invite Forster to a banquet it hosted. He discussed his aversion to Radhakrishnan with Forster.
Mr. Forster too had reservations about the esteemed guest from India. “Do you know, I never thought much of him as a philosopher.”
Radhakrishnan was an old fashioned idealist. The ideas of Russell & Moore hadn't reached India when he was doing his Masters. Later, he rose thanks to Tagore. At a later point, he unexpectedly hit it off with Stalin in Moscow where he had been sent as India's Ambassador. That made him worthy of promotion to the Presidency.
I then told him about another Indian personage who had disappointed me like Nirad C. Chaudhuri and Sir Radhakrishnan. “I’ll tell you about my experience with Pandit Ravi Shankar, the sitar maestro. You are interested in music, so you must have heard of him.” I remembered Ravi Shankar because he had been my colleague at All India Radio from 1948 to 1949. If Nirad C. Chaudhuri had his room to my left, Ravi Shankar had his office to my right. A wooden signboard outside his office announced him as Music Producer. Since we shared a love of music, I used to meet him quite often. During our conversations, he would blow his own trumpet, like Nirad C. Chaudhuri, about his creative talent. He’d tell me about the new ragas he’d created for All India Radio.
He had already composed the music for a film by Chetan Anand which won a prize at Cannes. Still, from the point of view of bureaucratic New Delhi, he was merely of the rank of Under-Secretary. If he kept his nose clean, he might retire at the level of Director. It would be going too far to appoint a strummer of sitars to a Joint Secretary level post.
During my stay at Cambridge, I learnt that he’d resigned from All India Radio and had become something of a travelling performer.
What sort of fellow gives up Gazetted employment to become a nautanki-wallah? Chee, chee!
He gave concerts in London, New York and Paris. An year later, when I went to attend a seminar in Santiago, I learnt that Ravi Shankar was staying there. I wanted to revive my association with him that went back to our stint at All India Radio. To my great disappointment, when I telephoned Ravi Shankar, someone from his family came on the line: “Of course, Pandit Ravi Shankar remembers you. But he regrets he cannot spare any time for you.”
That's harsh. The Shankar family was highly educated. Perhaps, what was meant was 'on this occasion, Punditji's crowded programs forbids him the pleasure of meeting you and reviving warm memories.'
It was another disillusionment about human beings that came to me in Santiago. Back at Cambridge, I got absorbed in my research, though I took time out for the Majlis. As President of the Majlis, I decided to invite E.M. Forster to our Diwali celebrations. He readily accepted my invitation. He said he would be delighted to revive memories of the festival of lights he had enjoyed when he was in the Dewas State. With the approach of Diwali, I made the arrangements for a banquet and cultural programmes. A variety of Indian sweet dishes were ordered. On Diwali evening, I took personal care to have candles lit both outside and inside the Taj restaurant which we used as a venue for our public functions. While my friends lit the candles inside the central hall, I stepped out to have the candles lit all along the pavement facing Trinity. Passersby stopped to watch. An elderly Englishman walked up to me to wish “Happy Diwali.”I invited him, “Thank you, Sir, and please join in our festivities.”“My dear young man, I’d love to but I’ve an appointment.” He looked at his watch. “I must move on.” A few minutes later, an octogenarian English lady stopped in front of the hotel. She stared at the signboard outside the Taj Restaurant.“A nice name,” she said. “You know, I’ve been to the Taj in Agra. The mausoleum raised in marble by the Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, is an immortal symbol of pure love.” I felt like telling her that it was not pure love, but lust. The Moghul Emperor let his wife bleed through thirteen pregnancies till she died in childbirth.
That is love, not lust. Women want to have babies with the husband whom they love. Death in child-birth is more glorious than death on the battlefield.
Another hiatus between illusion and reality. I held myself back, because Diwali is not the time to say anything unkind about anyone. “Yes, ma’am, the Taj will always be looked upon as an enduring symbol of love.” I smiled at her. “Won’t you come in to taste some Indian sweets?”“Oh, I’d love to! What do you’ve inside? Rasgullas, Jalebis, Burtis and papadams?'“Everything for you, ma’am. Just walk in. We’ll be honoured to have you as our guest.”
Punjabis are chivalrous and courteous. Sadly, they have to share a country with Bengalis and Madrasis.
It was time to start the Diwali celebrations. The crowd had gathered inside the restaurant. But I still waited outside to receive E.M. Forster, our chief guest. When he appeared round the comer, I was bowled over to see him dressed in a sherwani, with Jaipur shoes on his feet.“You look an Indian prince, Sir,” I complimented him.Forster gently inclined his head in acceptance of the compliment. “Thank you. I wanted to look like one of you,
he would have looked more like Pundit Nehru.
especially on a great occasion like this.” I led him inside to his chair on the dais. Next to him was a chair for me as President of the Majlis. The first item on the programme was a scene from the love episode between Jawaharlal and Edwina Mountbatten. I’d identified an Indian friend of mine who bore a close resemblance to Nehru. He appeared in a Nehru jacket, a rose in his third buttonhole and a Nehru cap on his head. On the other side of the table sat an English young lady who was to act as Edwina. The entire audience was thrilled to see the couple. Edwina opened up, saying, “Very painful to feel that we’d be leaving India tomorrow. Will it be the end of our love affair?”“It was never an affair,” mumbled Jawaharlal Nehru. “My love for you will remain eternal till the snows on the Himalayas melt away and the Ganges dries up.”“Beautiful!,” she sighed. “You know, darling, Louis could never say such a beautiful thing.”“Well, husbands tend to take certain emotions for granted. I’ve always looked upon Louis as a gentleman.”“That’s a gentleman speaking. That’s my Jawahar, my lover poet, not the Prime Minister of India. I also never came to you as the wife of the first Governor-General.”Smiling, she quipped, “I know, Jawahar, it was you who held him back in India as the first Governor-General of the free republic, otherwise, both of us would have been packed off just a day after you got your Independence.”
Mountbatten, a Naval man, was very good at getting through the files in double quick time. Even Azad, very grudgingly, had to admit his efficiency. Nehru retained him because he was very good at his work. Jolly Jack Tar had created the Empire. Now a Naval man was winding it up with dignity and dispatch. Mountbatten remained Nehru's closest adviser on defence policy till Nehru died. After that, neither India nor the UK had much use for him.
As the scene ended, Forster turned to me to ask, “Who wrote this piece?” Crimsoning, I responded, “I wrote it.”
Crimsoning is Babu. I don't 'crimson'. On the other hand, my complexion retain tints of strawberries and cream- but only because I am a messy eater.
“So I wasn't wrong when I said the other day that you had in you the making of a writer — a poet or a novelist.”
Forster also liked 'the dark dancer'- a silly novel written by an IFS officer belonging to my caste. It features an Iyer bride and groom sleeping with a naked sword between them. Apparently he had been a fellow at Trinity, Cambridge, before taking up diplomatic assignments. I like to think that his wife beat him. But then, I like to think that everybody's wife beats them. Marriage, it seems to me, offers little to a woman above and beyond the secretive pleasures of spousal abuse.
The audience applauded with the clapping of hands. A voice came from the gathering asking me to recite a ghazal. Instantly, I recited a love ghazal from Mirza Ghalib in which the poet accepts his beloved as his goddess, and assigns to god a secondary place.
There is no such ghazal. The Punjabi Hindu did not understand the Haqiqi/Majazi distinction. Uranian love transcends the physical. It is the ultimate 'personal relationship' which ends when everything goes to destruction save the face of God. It is this to great end that we should 'only connect'. Did Forster grasp this? His creed shared a common Platonic lineage with that of the Sufi. He would have known the story of Sarmad and Abhay Chand. Ghalib, under the influence of Ross Masood's grandfather, was more rational and supportive of Western science. The question was whether Iqbal and the new nation of Pakistan would converge to the Western model in the manner of Ataturk's Turkey. Under Ayub Khan this appeared to be happening. West Pakistan was growing more rapidly than Nehruvian India. But, it must be said, the Punjabi refugee in India rose up through hard work and enterprise. One such young man at Cambridge in the mid Fifties was Manmohan Singh. If India has greatly overtaken Pakistan, thanks must go to him. History will remember him kindly.
As for Forster, he was a gentleman. If 'Passage' is unkind when it isn't clownish, the fault lies with those portrayed. The British Raj had been utilitarian and it had created an oikumene for Indians. But did they want it? I believe one branch of Ross Masood's family is in Pakistan while the other has achieved equal distinction in India. I hope they remain connected. Forster would certainly have wished it. Adela, on the other hand, if she attained as great an age as Forster, would have been involved in Social Work- perhaps helping working class women from the sub-continent or Ugandan refugees- and whatever unpleasant 'impressions' she received in India would have been sublated by useful work for her own 'little' England, whose greatness would only gradually unfold. My reference, of course, is to the great British freedom struggle during which I fasted to death three times a day. Then Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister and I started to wonder whether I should apply for a German passport. It isn't that I have any prejudice against Punjabis. It's just Hindus I can't abide.
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