‘The Reverse Swing by Ashok Tandon’: Anecdotal narrative of India-UK relations

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

India-United Kingdom relations have been summed up in a deft narrative in ‘The Reverse Swing’. The author, a veteran journalist who served as the London correspondent of the news agency, Press Trust of India, from 1988 to 1995, was the media adviser to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during the 1999-2004 term. He says he had picked up vignettes on the changing equations between the two countries, which is a strange bonding based on ambivalence from both sides.

Two examples that Tandon includes in this collection of 24 pieces are that of Mahatma Gandhi and Rolls-Royce. Citing declassified Cabinet notes during war-time Britain presided over by Winston Churchill, we get to know the unvarnished hostility of Britain’s war-time hero towards the Indian freedom struggle’s hero. Churchill is recorded to have said in one of the meetings, “Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting. We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died.” Tandon notes the change in the British official attitude towards Gandhi decades later. In 2014, Gandhi’s bronze statue found a place of honour in the Parliament Square in London along with South African leader Jan Smuts, who had imprisoned Gandhi in the early phase of his political agitation in South Africa, and that of Churchill. Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne told Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “As the father of the largest democracy in the world, it’s time for Gandhi to take his place in front of the mother of Parliaments.”

The Rolls-Royce’s India connection has its own twist. Tandon recalls the familiar story of the Maharaja of Alwar avenging the slight of the salesman at the Rolls-Royce showroom who asked him to leave because he thought the casually dressed Indian was a nobody. The Maharaja wanted an appointment with the manager of the showroom and placed an order for all the seven vehicles on display. And there was the condition that the cars, when delivered in India, should be accompanied by the salesman. Once delivered, they were converted into garbage vehicles. It is a nice anecdote, and though known, it carries an element of sweet revenge in the retelling.

Years later, Rolls-Royce still remains the favoured status symbol for many Indians, including filmstar Amitabh Bachchan and former cricket captain MS Dhoni. But Rolls-Royce has an agreement with the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the maintenance of the Adour aircraft engine for the jet trainer Hawk, which Rolls-Royce makes in partnership with the French company Turbomeca and is named after a river in France.

There is also a commercial angle. Tatas have placed an order for 40 of Rolls-Royce’s aircraft engine Trent XWB-97 for Airbus 350-900/1000. The total order was for 840 aircraft. There was the flip side to the India-Rolls-Royce connect, however. It was revealed that bribes were paid to public servants and the price increased, and one of the entities involved in the sale of the Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer was Rolls-Royce, the maker of the engine for the Hawk. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) alleged that Rolls-Royce had paid bribes to tax officials in India.

Tandon paints a rosy picture of the India-Britain relations, of the growing economic ties, and the rise of people of Indian origin to positions of eminence in British society and polity. And like a good journalist, he digs out the exact number of Indians who have won from the Labour and Conservative parties. The chapter ‘The Indian Diaspora — Soft Power & Vote Bank’ is a fact-file of the Indian community in Britain.

The last section, ‘From the Author’s Personal Diary’, includes anecdotes of Indian dignitaries visiting Britain during his time there. An interesting one narrates how the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao sent a “private request” through the London representative of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mohit Sarobar, to know how the British Prime Minister’s private office worked. And an “informal account” was sent to Rao!

The book makes for interesting reading and gives a better picture of the India-Britain relations in an easy-to-grasp narrative.