Rahul Jacob: Look back in wonder

Read Nehru's letters closely and you come away with a view of him as much more in touch with the realities of India than his critics allow

Just a couple of years ago, I used to be teased by friends for criss-crossing Hong Kong for a one-and-a-half hour  yoga class every Sunday afternoon. Fish and chicken and an abundance of salad leaves were all that entered my kitchen. Eighteen months since the Narendra Modi government assumed office, being an objector to its divisive politicking — “poli tricks” as a Guyanese character in a Rahul Bhattacharya novel described it — has made me a different person.

The close association of Baba Ramdev with the government’s North Korea-styled mass yoga session at India Gate put me off yoga altogether. Better to be hopelessly inflexible than to be like Baba Ramdev. In any case, I am not certain that kapalabhati breathing exercises or exertion of any kind (without first putting on the misnamed but sold out Vogmasks) makes sense when New Delhi’s air pollution this winter is worse than ever; how does one measure worse than the worst in the world? An Indian-born American medical expert said this week that we need to shift from researching the damage carcinogens in the air do to our lungs to understanding the damage the pollution does to our hearts. My attention drifted often during the prime minister’s very long extempore speech at Wembley. One expected more on the government’s admirable push for reforms since the Bihar election loss. I recall him saying India had a lot to teach the world about environmentalism, somewhere before or after tracing an astonishing alliterative arc from James Bond to Brooke Bond and the claim that over the past year every school in India now has separate toilets for girls. The speech prompted Manmohan Singh to remark, “Jahan jaate hain, vikas ke naam par apni dukandaari chamkaane ki baat karte hain (Wherever he goes, he peddles his wares in the name of development).”

If abandoning sun salutations was not foolish enough, I am back to eating red meat — which is to say buffalo meat — despite all the potential havoc it will cause to my health. Check the latest World Health Organization warnings on red meat and you will understand that the government cares about our health, not just its electoral prospects. I recently asked my part-time maid if she would mind if I bought buffalo meat once a month; I promised to marinade and cook it myself. She looked at me utterly bemused and replied that her family ate it too.

Being an unconscientious objector to the rantings of what is euphemistically referred to as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s fringe has not been all bad. I spent last Saturday mostly reading a stunning collection of Jawaharlal Nehru’s letters to chief ministers, edited by Madhav Khosla and published last year. In honour of Nehru’s birthday, I had intended to matha teko on November 14 at the Teen Murti Memorial, Nehru’s tasteful residence with surprisingly contemporary-looking art and sculpture and stunning gardens, but the government had commandeered the place to bring his 126th birth anniversary celebrations to an abrupt end. I look forward with a sort of ghoulish fascination to the memorial’s future hoisting of neglected national leaders onto stilts as well as shows, as promised, that tell us what a smart city really is. If we produce one a fraction as well planned as Chandigarh was by Le Corbusier and Albert Mayer at Nehru’s behest, I vow to move there.

Read Nehru’s letters closely and you will come away with a view of him as much more in touch with the realities of India than his critics allow. He dismisses the notion that the government appeases Muslims as “complete nonsense”. Famously and correctly, he points out that they are “so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else… We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State”.

After dinner last Saturday, a few of us read from Nehru’s books. In one passage from The Discovery of India, Nehru recalls being described by Iqbal as a “patriot” whereas Iqbal called Jinnah a “politician”. Nehru’s sense of detachment made him uncomfortable with this praise. “Greatly attached as I am to India, I have long felt that something more than national attachment is necessary in order to understand and solve even our own problems, and much more so those of the world as whole,” Nehru writes. “But Iqbal was certainly right… that I was not much of a politician, although politics has seized me and made me its victim.”

Another passage from Discovery seemed all the more moving in the context of the Bihar elections.  “Sometimes as I reached a gathering, a great roar of welcome would greet me: Bharat Mata ki Jai — ‘Victory to Mother India.’ I would ask them (the crowds)... what they meant by that cry, who was this Bharat Mata, Mother India, whose victory they wanted? My question would amuse and surprise them.”

In those days, the cry that greeted him as often as not was “Jawaharlal ki jai.” But, Nehru, a democrat to his core, reflects with a self-effacement that makes one wish the Uber app could occasionally summon a time machine: “Bharat Mata, Mother India, was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people. You are parts of this Bharat Mata, I told them, you are in a manner yourselves Bharat Mata, and … their eyes would light up as if they had made a great discovery.”

Twitter: @rahuljjacob