Jay Bhattacharjee: The real farce is the Commonwealth
India's membership of an institution that is a legacy of the Raj has brought it no benefits, while Britain decided decades ago to align with Europe
Jay Bhattacharjee / New Delhi Aug 15, 2010, 00:46 IST
Amidst the brouhaha and the stench of corruption and skulduggery in the Commonwealth Games preparations, there is a strange reluctance to discuss the really substantive issue. This is the notion of the Commonwealth itself and the rationale of an absurd and farcical organisation that still talks of the British monarch as its head.
The ruling coterie in Delhi probably realises that it is an impossible task to justify India’s association with, and membership of, a mothballed and well-past-its-shelf-life slapstick, whose raison d’etre is to provide a certain illusion of grandeur to the resident of a crumbling mansion in central London and her dim-witted progeny. This accounts for the strange omerta, or conspiracy of silence, to suppress the uncomfortable queries that are bound to surface sooner or later.
Why should our impoverished country spend around Rs 30,000 crores (give or take $6.5 billion) to commemorate and celebrate this risible vaudeville? This is being done at a time when all the economic planners and babus are going around saying that the nation’s coffers cannot provide enough funds for the basic needs of the vast majority of the populace. The shoddy logic being touted is that long-term benefits will accrue to the economy because of the investments being made for ‘the Games’.
This is an egregious and dishonest piece of logic, since the expenditure will all be in Delhi and the infrastructure in terms of sports facilities will only generate indirect economic returns. Therefore, the ‘multiplier’ effect, as the economics grandees in the capital are so fond of declaiming, will be limited. Moreover, the scaling down of the benefits will be very pronounced, because of the siphoning-off factor, where a significant portion of the investment budget is not spent on asset creation but is lost while the loot is stashed away.
This brings us back to the mothballed and skeletal organisation, the Commonwealth. How did this Tammany Hall agency influence India’s decision in 1948-49 to stay on as a member of an Empire residue? Who took the step that went against the very essence of ‘purna swaraj’? The finger of suspicion clearly points at Nehru, who overruled Sardar Patel and others, to strike a deal with the British for a Republican India to continue in the ‘British Commonwealth’, while recognising the British sovereign as the head of the organisation. This abject surrender provided Whitehall with enormous relief, and the wounded psyche of the establishment in Old Blighty was provided a healing balm.
Later, certain fig-leaves were devised by both sides. The prefix ‘British’ was gradually dropped from ‘Commonwealth’ and the status of the UK sovereign was carefully repositioned as a ‘symbolic’ head of the club, from the earlier exalted position of ‘The Head’. For desi eyes and ears, this certainly sounded better, but the whole skeleton was carefully swept under the carpet, so that generations of proud Republican Indians were not aware of this infamy.
Accepting the Commonwealth tag was also in line with retention of the last Viceroy as independent India’s first Governor-General. Furthermore, British officers were kept as Commanders-in-Chief of the country’s three armed forces, with the Air Force and the Navy being ‘Indianised’ only in 1954 and 1957 respectively. Mountbatten’s duplicitous role in Kashmir was exposed a few years ago in a well-researched book, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947-48 published in 2002, and authored by a respected Indian diplomat, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta. According to this study, Mountbatten, aided and abetted by two successive British commanders-in-chief of the Indian Army, systematically stymied the efforts of the Indian government and its armed forces to repel the Pakistani invaders in Kashmir in 1947-48. Strangely, Dasgupta’s study did not generate the debate that it merited, even though he had been India’s envoy to the UK and clearly had access to documents that were not readily available to other researchers.
The true secrets underlying India’s Commonwealth choice lie buried in the British archives in Kew, in the section that will be made public only after 300 years, a long-enough interregnum to wipe out most collective memories. The nagging question is why Prime Minister Vajpayee took the decision to bid for the Commonwealth Games in 2003. Surely, he was not a member of the Old Empire Club, like Nehru was, nor a wannabe Anglophile, aiming for some crumbs from the Whitehall high table? This utterly irresponsible decision now means that both ends of the country’s political spectrum are connected by a strange umbilical cord.
For more than 60 years, this country’s Commonwealth membership has brought it no tangible benefits at all, except for employment opportunities for serving and retired babus in the central bureau of the organisation. Britain itself took the practical decision, decades ago, of aligning with Europe. There is little nostalgia there for its old empire. However, for us, the Commonwealth continues to be a silent and expensive passenger in the journey of this ancient land towards regaining its earlier pedestal.
What can account for our decision to hold this extravaganza? The Asiad in 1982 made sense, and the Olympics, too, are worth going for. But the Commonwealth, for Pete’s sake! Were all our mandarins out to lunch? Now, the juggernaut of graft and sleaze rolls on. If this had been corporate India, there would have been some measure of self-control and course-correction. Company bottom lines soon act as red flags, except in totally weird cases like the Satyam imbroglio.
In a national balance sheet, there are innumerable corners where fiddles are parked. This is, of course, happening now, when the spotlights are exposing the cadavers and those caught with their hands in the till are looking for cover.
One can almost hear Kipling’s ghost cackling away and the old Empire wallahs knocking back their pink gins.
The author is an industrial and corporate analyst based in Delhi
"Egregious and dishonest piece of logic" is often advanced in the case of our plan-expenditure too. For instance, during the first five-year plan, a mini-dam (not in a good catchment area) and a community hall on a remote hill, were built in our village, because unless the budgeted fund was utilized, within the time-frame and for the intended purpose(s), it would lapse and that many of our unemployed villagers got work for around two years in building these, which however continue to be in disuse: the dam is dry, except during monsoon, and the hall is in a dilapidated condition. The fate of many planned projects in India may be the same. Long live our strong army of Planning Commission, which is fighting against poverty!!
It's called Athletics, Mr Bhattacharjee. It's called Tourism. When you build facilities and invite lots of people from abroad to use them, then these people from abroad are helping to pay for your construction of the facilities. Unfortunately, Indians have only learned how to skim and embezzle money, so it undermines the whole purpose of it all. Indians certainly aren't reknowned for winning athletic competitions or medals. We foolishly jabber about being a superpower, but if you look at the amazing show China put on for the Beijing Olympics and compare it to what India is capable of, we're really just a quasi-African country by comparison. Let's just admit that's what we are - a quasi-African country with delusions of grandeur.
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