Borges says that every great author creates his precursors. In other words, our reading of the epic is changed by our reading of the epigoni. This raises the question, can any text be classical save to Romanticism's backward glance? Equally one might invoke Bloomian misprision and speak of Literature, under the rubric of Print-Capitalism, as being a process of creative destruction.
Consider Churchill's 'History of the English Speaking People' which, in paper-back form, was affordable for ordinary people. Moreover, it was highly informative and written in an engaging manner and thus had a pronounced impact on working class or dark skinned folk like myself who had little knowledge of history. Dimly, Indian readers may have been aware that Churchill had modelled his style on Macaulay, the Liberal MP and classical scholar who, in turn, harked back to Gibbon.
Reading Churchill- a 'Tory Democrat' like his father- changes our reception of Macaulay & the 'Whig theory of History'. Where previously the former had appeared magisterial & the latter an ungainsayable empirical truth, we now apprehended, on the one hand, a politically partisan bigot, and, on the other an ipse dixit availability cascade founded on a confusion between causation and correlation.
Churchill was a nouveau pauvre ex-heir presumptive to a Dukedom- trying to make enough money by his pen to fund his American Mum's life-style- more particularly after she married a dude who was Winston's own age. Having been banished to India while his richer contemporaries were at University weaning themselves off Victorian sentimentality and sententiousness, his prose style remained derivative and innocent of irony- or the Edwardian valetudinarian attitude to such Victorian certainties as seemed set to endure. I suppose one might say Churchill's defection to the Liberal Party kept him safe from both the long pessimistic lysis of the Tory- as described by Saki in 'When William came'- or, when the Kaiser's War began, and Morley quit the Cabinet, the abrupt and fatal crisis of the irenic Whig. Unburdened by ideological anxieties he ebulliently bounced about, during the Great War, like an India-rubber ball.
My impression is that, for the Georgians, Macaulay's- or Mommsen's- heir could only be Marx. Gibbon may have spoken of the Roman Empire's decline and fall. But, in 1917, all Empire's fell. It was just that, by the sheer inertial force of its always farcical existence, the fall of the Raj preceded its decline. It was inertia too which put Churchill back in the Prime Minister's Office to preside over a slightly liberalized Fabian Socialism. With Viking Wit, the Swedes gave him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Three years earlier they had given it to Bertrand Russell who had spent time in jail during the Great War for his pacifist activism. Sadly, Stalin died before he could be similarly favoured.
Inertia also explains why the more intellectually rigorous strand of Benthamite Liberalism moved in a Socialist direction. Such is the inevitable Gadarene trajectory of such bildungsburgertums as commit to beamtenliberalismus- i.e. the liberalism of the bureaucrats.
It must be said, Churchill was neither faux Ciceronian nor foolishly Caesarian. He was a soldier whom fortune had translated into a competent enough man of letters but who, as all such who are utile must be, was but a pawn on a chessboard where the real battle, such being the futile fate of the White, was between vast Ant Armies armies- Red against Black.
If both Churchill and Niradh wrote like Macaulay, perhaps it was because he had shat so copiously on the forbears of both. Macaulay's animus against the first Duke of Marlborough, at least to my wholly ignorant eye, is of a piece with his malice against the Hindu Seth or other greedy, gaudy, Kulinist immigrants into the Golden Bengal of the Sena period. In the latter case, we may say he absorbed this prejudice from anti-Kulinist Brahmos like Raja Rammohan Roy & Dwarkanath Tagore- whose own creed was puritanical rather than eugenicist- but only apparently.
Be that as it may, in Macaulay we find nothing but the continuation of Hume's partisanship and refusal to endow upon historiography the dignity of empirical, or otherwise Alethic, discourse. This is Coke's 'artificial reason' without the reason.
If a great writer creates his precursors, a bad one destroys them. What appeared eloquence or, as the Holy Quran says, 'lawful magic', now appears a merely mechanical prestidigitation when it does not choke upon its own smoke or lose itself to the mise en abyme of its own mirrors.
Niradh Chaudhuri wasn't a great writer- unless his oeuvre was a wholly parodic jeu d'esprit. He provided an abject Echo to what was Narcissist in Churchill's more foolish perorations. Aliquando sufflaminandus erat- refers not merely to such 'uchvaas' bombast as ought to be curbed. It has also, as dhvani, Charles Lamb's assertion that though a male relative may occasionally have to be suppressed, this is not the case for a poor female. The dwarfish Niradh was just such a cunt. Let him vapour on to his heart's content till, like Enoch Powell's Sybil, the River Thames foams with much menstrual blood.
I suppose one may say Niradh belonged to the 'Grievance Studies' school avant la lettre. This isn't true. Some of the Dutts fall under that rubric. R.C Dutt popularised the drain theory while Rajani Palme Dutt became a leading ideologue of the Communist party. Niradh can't keep company with either because he was merely a jobbing journalist of a bird-brained, magpie-minded, wholly bigoted type.
Perhaps, Niradh, by reason of his low I.Q, debased and heteroclite 'adab' or literary culture, was always destined to be an impish sycophant and relentless spitter of bile. Not so, who in 1843, at the age of 18, his mind stuffed full of Milton & Bacon, was rudely translated from Hindu College to a Babu's berth in the Calcutta Treasury. In his 'Bengaliana- a dish of rice and curry and other indigestible ingredients' which was published in 1880 by Thacker & Spink in Calcutta- he invokes a glorious shade- that of Warren Hastings, a very promising Classicist- who was forced by his guardian to give up a scholarship to Christ Church and set off to India to work as a 'writer' for John Company. This was back in 1750. Hastings was but 17 years old at that time. Two years later, he was sent to Murshidabad where his duties were that of a 'banyan'- i.e. a merchant, buying and selling goods, much like Shoshee's own eldest paternal uncle- the founder of the Dutt family's fortunes. Shoshee's own official career was solid rather than splendid and his account of it touches on the sordid when it is not sardonic.
But Dutt redeemed himself. 'Young Bengal', at that time was not Hindu- it only became so at the time of Swamy Vivekananda- and by accepting Lord Jesus Christ as his personal God and Saviour (ishtadevam) Shoshee escaped nihilism and entrapment in a delusive, or wholly meretricious, oikeiosis. No Indian does not acknowledge the great role of patriotic Indians who, by the grace and blessing of Lord Jesus Christ, greatly helped, or sought to do so, all their fellow Indians.
The irony is not lost on readers of Shoshee - at least those readers who understand the reference to Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings- that whereas the latter's path to restoring the glory of his noble family went through a Calcutta counting house, Shoshee, a sprig of 'Young Bengal', taking the same route, would achieve less for himself than his comprador Uncles, while having to witness the position of his own countrymen decline relative to their churlish new masters who, as a rule, were unconcerned with Latin pentameters or Greek Anacreontics ; the summit of their ambition being to thrash a nigger when it was safe to do so, while extorting, or simply embezzling money, by fair means or foul. Sadly, it must be acknowledged, if us niggers didn't beat the Brits and send them packing, it was because we were more interested in robbing each other. This also explains why and how Rahul Gandhi- who is only one quarter Indian by ancestry- remains the lodestar of the INC.
Shoshee's voluminous published writings- like that of other members of the Dutt family- was intended to show the superiority of the high caste Bengali to the miscegenated Eurasian or the declasse 'country bottled' European. Moreover, as a matter of administrative efficiency, John Company needed to put an end to its practice of providing for drunkards and ne'er do wells from the home islands by giving them clerical berths in the administration. As in the first Afghan War, these useless 'camp followers' were an encumbrance and a possibly fatal source of weakness. During the Mutiny, 6,000 White people were killed. They were mourned but, truth be told, they were not missed. They had not made British rule more secure. They had merely irritated the native sepoy who took an ample revenge. The high cost of, first the Afghan War, and then that of suppressing the Mutiny, militated for a more streamlined administration overseen by a better class of officer. The East India Company had to go. Posts in India, as far as possible, would be filled with 'Competition Wallahs'. Otto Trevelyan, Macaulay's nephew, was one such. The book he wrote about his experiences as an ICS man in Bihar sold very well because of the facetious manner in which Classical Paideia was deployed. As a parallel one might point to Oliver Wendell Holmes' 'Autocrat of the Breakfast Table' which came out earlier and was infinitely superior.
It is said, Otto Trevelyan had lost a fellowship at Cambridge because a youthful jeu de esprit of his- 'Horace at the University of Athens'- gave offence to William Whewell. But a mind like his could not be left to rust in rural India- more particularly because he drew attention to the excesses of post-Mutiny 'Anglo Saxon' carpet-bagger especially in connection with the cultivation of indigo in places like Champaran.
Within three years of his Indian exile, Otto was called back to Blighty to become a Member of Parliament. However, he had already uttered a truth gravely inimical to the amour propre of the ageing Babus of 'Young Bengal'- : "There is not a single person in India who would not consider the sentiment that we hold India for the benefit of the inhabitants of India a loathsome un-English piece of cant.”
But this also meant that Indians had every reason to despise as traitors or dismiss as 'mimic men' such compradors or clerks or 'Vakils' or 'Dewan Bahadurs', who cultivated the English language and aspired to European culture and refinement. It was sheer cant to say they believed in Britain's civilizational mission. They just wanted to get rich the way the compradors of the age of Clive and Hastings had gotten rich.
One branch of the Dutt family resolved this dilemma by embracing Christ. After all, British rule genuinely was helpful to the evangelization of the Indies. Another branch went in a Nationalist and then, in the shape of Clemens and Rajani Palme Dutt, a Communist direction. The truth, however, as Tagore kept hinting was that Bengali Hindus needed the Brits to hold the Muslims at bay. This had been true in 1750 and it would remain true in 1950. East Bengali Hindus- Niradh was one such- had no future save in flight.
Niradh, like Shoshee, began his career as a Government clerk. He wrote quite a good short story in Bengali about 'office life'. A clerk dies and the Head Clerk arranges his 'antim sanskar'- or the last rites.
To my mind, the story shows Calcutta as being 'thirty years ahead' of my own ancestral Madras. Barriers of Caste and Creed had all but dissolved there. Civil Society was much more developed. However, it was the superior devotion to scholarship in Bengal which increased our reliance on the great minds of Calcutta who produced the authoritative text-books we used. Moreover, the Bengali savant was inquisitive and keen to do original research. On my bookshelf is a text published by a Bengali- written, it is strange to say in unreadable shuddh Hindi- on the rediscovery of a 'Samkhya sampraday'. The footnotes are in very erudite English and reveal the breadth of the author's knowledge of contemporary Western philosophy. It is true that scholars in other parts of India were rediscovering and publishing palm-leaf texts in Sanskrit or vernacular languages. However, the Bengali product tended to be qualitatively superior and was equipped with a first class scholarly apparatus.
Reading Nirad's story of 'office life', we note that manners and methods had greatly improved since Shoshee's days. The bhadralok had gained ascendancy in the lower ranks of the bureaucracy. The country bottled European or Eurasian had been uprooted. But, the mental atmosphere of Babudom had, if anything, become yet more suffocating. Niradh quit his well paid job to dabble in Nationalist politics and Bengali journalism. Sadly, over the course of the Thirties it became clear that the Das/Bose strategy was to concede everything to the Muslims while gaining nothing for the Hindus. There was a great danger that if Bengal remained united, the Hindus would become second class citizens even in Districts where they were the majority. At this point, it made sense to turn from Bengali to English or even Hindi.
During his Nationalist phase, Niradh wrote the official INC position paper on Indianizing the Army in 1935. But, after it became clear that the Bose brothers (Niradh was secretary to Sharat Bose) would play second fiddle to Fazl ul Haq, Niradh started getting published in the British owned Statesman. Then, he was hired by the Radio and moved to Delhi. In 1946 he started writing for the die-hard Tory New English Review. The stage was set, the persona had was being perfected, for his Autobiography which was meant as a riposte to that of Nehru. Sadly, Niradh remained an unknown Indian whereas Nehru established a dynasty. This was because Nehru was a Brahmin- a very numerous caste in Uttar Pradesh- and his mother tongue was 'khadi boli' Hindi- the Indian lingua franca. Bengalis or Madrasis or even Gujeratis were from the periphery. The Nehrus had served the Mughals in Delhi and then acted as Vakils of John Company. What was unexpected was that this dynasty would capture the Indian National Congress which had been created by Alan Octavian Hume- a vegetarian Vedantist.
Had Nehru been allowed by Congress to retire when he was 70, his reputation would be like that of George Washington. The 1962 military debacle caused Nehru's stock to fall. He had, as he said, been living in a make-believe world. Meanwhile, the stock of Nehru's critics- or those who were sceptical of India's achievements post-Independence- tended to rise. Niradh could have cashed in on this but by then he simply hated everything about India- Hinduism in particular though, unexpectedly, thanks to Swamy Prabhupada, it had started gaining converts in America and Europe.
Fortunately, at the age of 73, Niradh was able to emigrate to England where he soon began to receive 'intellectual affirmative action'. If it had become impossible to praise Enoch Powell- who was barking mad- then you could claim to be awed by Niradh's prose style. But it was Powell who had been a Professor of Classics. Niradh was but a sedulous ape.
It is certainly true that we can compare Nehru's autobiographical volumes with those of Niradh and say that both were polemical and far removed from fact. But Nehru was a successful politician. His heir, by primogeniture, still owns the INC. Niradh was merely a jobbing journalist who found a niche for himself as sort of late Victorian fossil with deeply racist convictions and a horror of 'Decadence'.
A question we may well ask is why the younger generation of Indian origin writers who had been educated at Public School and Oxbridge rejected a Latinate style. Consider Pico Iyer. His father was a Theosophist and must have been delighted that his son chose to go to Eton & Oxford- which is the education Annie Beasant had wanted for her 'Universal Messiah' Jeddu Krishnamurthi. Iyer likes Graham Greene and writes like a well-bred American. Salman Rushdie, who studied History at Cambridge, patented a 'masala' style of writing. Vikram Seth, it must be said, can produce prose of Jacobean intensity. What none have embraced is Augustan English. Is this because Niradh had shat on the thing so thoroughly? Perhaps. A simpler explanation is better. The British Empire had always been commercial, never civilizational. Market forces created it and market forces ensured its superannuation. It was folly to 'mourn the plumage but forget the dying bird' when what you were looking at was not the ruins of the Capitol but a decaying bungalow whose most colourful occupant could only have been the Mem Sahib's budgerigar- till the cat ate it. As for the bird that was and is dying, it is India-that-is-Bharat unless Modi fixed things while my back was turned. He may well have done so. Gujaratis are crafty buggers. I hear they are now trying to claim possession of not just Shyama Prasad Mookherjee and Swamy Vivekananda but also Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose! Who will Modi's next target be? Rabindranath Tagore? Mamata will beat him with her chappal. Mind it.
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