Sunday, February 20, 2000		Article

Legacy of the Raj
Speaking generally
By Chanchal Sarkar

THE finest example of marching that I have ever seen was on television, on the day that the British handed Hong Kong over to the Chinese. Britain had a small garrison in Hong Kong and most of the marchers were Gurkhas and Chinese. The Beating of the Retreat in front of Rashtrapati Bhavan flanked by the two Secretariat blocks is also remarkable but not if compared to that Hong Kong march. Here, too, in Delhi many of the marchers were Gurkhas. As an Indian proud of our Independence and of the lifting of the British yoke, I cannot restrain admiration for the British as passers on and trainers of tradition.

The spectacle of the Raj Path parade and the Beating of the Retreat owe so very much to the British. Similarly the name of Rashtrapati Bhavan is a change name from. Viceroy’s House as in the case of Kingsway and Queensway. Changing a name is the cheapest way to capture credit. We have nothing to show to compare with the splendid setting of the majestic, rolling sweep of Raj path down from the Viceroy’s House through to India Gate. We have built magnificent temples, the TajMahal, Golcunda Fort and the Lal Quila. But today we can only build mediocre stuff like Krishi Bhavan, Vigyan Bhavan and the Income Tax Office, there’s no majesty about them, no compelling dignity.

We imitate the British but cannot uphold traditions. Take the ethics in medicine and law, the disciplining of those who break the code of ethics—we simply have imitative bodies but they do not dispense justice. Our judiciary has shed the wigs of a hundred years ago but they have also shed their probity and dignity. The atmosphere in the halls of justice is not what it should be for a democracy where all are supposed to be equal. Justice is expensive in this country.

In memory of spirited songs

With freedom, the spirit seems to have gone out of our songs. TV is given to putting on patriotic songs but they are wooden and full of desh and Jana but they don’t get the tears flowing. The singers, too, are expressionless. The old songs composed before Independence are much more powerful. I never knew that Subhas Babu was a good singer. In the old black- and-white Bengali film Subhas Chandra the young Subhas sings with his fellow students in memory of Khudiram Bose (who was hanged for trying to shoot a British Governor) and in the film, there is a very moving rendition of the song composed for Khudiram. Again Subhas sings while on a boat in the Ganges at Murshidabad, having visited Plassey when India lost its freedom with the defeat of the last Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula, by Robert Clive.

Something of the singing came through in the performance of the Calcutta Youth Choir. Very evocative was the famous song of Kazi Nazrul Islam: "Dustar giri kantar moru bistrito parabar hey, longhite hovey ratri nisithe, jatrina hoshiar". (High are the mountains, there are stretching plains, deserts and wide seas, we must cross them by dawn, sentries beware). We still have nothing new in our songs like this which set out blood tingling. Here at least we have no need for imitation.

Shankar’s dream

One of Shankar the famous cartoonist’s dreams is, I read, likely to come through. Somewhere on the outskirts of Delhi there will rise a complex for children where children from all over India will come to stay and play together. Of course knowing our time frame it may take many more years, if not an eternity.

Long before the Dolls Museum was built Shankar’s office was in a rambling war-time building which was demolished, to accommodate the Connaught Circus parking lot, Shankar had once described his dream to me. He wanted to build groups of villages resembling those of Kerala, Bengal, Maharashtra, Nagaland and so on. There children for all over India would come to eat the food of the regions and hear the languages of the regions, play the game of the regions and sing the songs of the regions. It would be a melting pot, a unifier of the nation.