Book Review
Of A Certain Age: Twenty Life Sketches by Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Penguin/Viking, 234 pages, Rs
499)
As a grandson of Mahatma
Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari, Gopal Gandhi could well have joined the ranks of
those Indians who are famous for being famous. Pedigree, however, is the least
of his accomplishments. A distinguished public servant, diplomat and man of
letters, he brought to the various posts he held a great measure of old world
charm, civility and erudition—commodities in woeful short supply in a country
that measures achievement by the individual’s ability to be sharp-elbowed.
A professional life as
interesting as Gandhi’s merits a detailed narration—and I hope he takes the
hint and starts work on his memoirs. For the moment, however, he has been
content with a short book of pen portraits of 20 individuals he got to know
well, both socially and professionally. Given his way with words, it is a
compelling and easy read—highly recommended for a lazy Sunday or a
trans-continental flight.
The life sketches were
initially written for newspapers and, consequently, suffer from an excess of
brevity. Just when the subject starts to enthral, the word limit forces a premature
conclusion leaving umpteen question marks in the mind of the reader. This is
unfortunate because many of the fascinating lives encountered in the book are
completely unknown to a generation that was born after the 1970s.
As a schoolboy in Calcutta,
I grew up reading M.Krishnan’s fortnightly ‘Country Notebook’ in the pages of
the Sunday Statesman. Subsequently,
one of my earliest responsibilities as a journalist was to proof-read Krishnan
before the galleys were sent to the press.
Yet, how many people not ‘of a certain age’ will be able to grasp the
contribution of that unassuming nature lover in just 1,200 words or so? Without
minimising the sheer pleasure this book has given me, Gandhi would have done
well to flesh out his sketches for the benefit of an uninitiated generation.
Of course, there are two
distinct ways to approach the book. It is possible to read the 20 potted
assessments in isolation—a sort of great-men-I-have-known exercise the author charmingly
describes as “that inchoate bonding which, like a slow log fire in a hill
station, warms those who are of a certain age.”
More rewarding, however, is
to take the cue from the author and view the life sketches as a backdrop of an
age—what Gandhi calls the ‘Gandhi-Nehru age’. I disagree profoundly, but only
on a chronological detail. Apart from Mahatma Gandhi, Harilal Gandhi, Abdul
Ghaffar Khan and, to a lesser extent, Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharya J.B.
Kriplani who straddled the ages, the other 15 defined another era: the
Nehru-Gandhi age. Except that this Gandhi was Indira Gandhi.
Gandhi’s collection of
truncated biographies is also a wonderful commentary on the conviviality that
bound the politico-bureaucratic and cultural elite from Independence till the
dawn of coalition politics in 1989. Of course, Nehru was the symbol of this
association of shared assumptions but despite the rough edges of her
confrontational style, even Indira chipped in with her contribution.
The most striking feature of
this consensus was an almost blind worship of a seemingly progressive state
and, by implication, progressive politics which separated the ‘enlightened’
from the cretin. What bound the refined bhadralok sensibilities of a Jyoti Basu
and Hiren Mukherjee (both cardholding Communists) with the Fabianism of K.R.
Narayanan and the public service Brahminism of R.Venkatraman and J.N. Dixit was
the common reverence for an activist state. This faith in an enlightened
despotism, legitimised through the ballot box, was based on noble intentions
and a shared disdain of vulgarian capitalism, particularly of the Yankee
variety. This is where aesthetes such as Pupul Jayakar and Kamaladevi
Chattopadhyay stepped in with their devotion to indigenous crafts and
handlooms. They ensured that India’s socialist elite weren’t infected by the
grim and grey realism of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
But, at the same time,
‘progressive’ also meant being a committed friend of the Soviet Union which all
these worthies were. It meant that when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, a
part of what they had lived for was lost. President Narayanan wasn’t being
churlish when he gracefully questioned the unipolar world to a visiting
President Clinton: he was echoing his own anguish.
What Gandhi’s book misses
out is that this consensus produced its dissenters. The awkward elements
weren’t packed off to a Gulag, but they were ruthlessly ostracised from an
Establishment that drew its sustenance from the conviviality of the
like-minded. Kriplani, for example, was barely tolerated by the ‘progressives’
and they barely protested when JP was dubbed a fascist.
The omission is striking
because one of the most prominent heretics of that age happened to be Rajaji,
his maternal grandfather. I would have loved to have read Gandhi’s take on the
man who questioned the fundamentals of Nehruvian existence—and was vindicated
by history.
I would have also loved to
know why Gandhi’s roll of honour didn’t include anyone in business or involved
in the generation of wealth. It might explain why this charming collection
often reads like an elegy to an India that, hopefully, is history.
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