India (62 page)
Authors: Patrick French
In earlier times, the times when the opportunities to flower and flourish were limited to very few, those with a similar aptitude to Srikanth might have perished. A celebrated example of someone who nearly disappeared but had a moment to show his unusual talent was S. Ramanujan, the mathematician. Born in 1887 to a Tamil Brahmin family in Erode, he was a quiet man with a plump, pock-marked face and a conventional attachment to religion. Seeking to find others who might understand his ideas about mathematics, he sent some of his theorems to academics at Cambridge University, who were so stunned by what he had written that they arranged for him to come to England and study. Since Ramanujan was working outside the context of academic life, he had made proofs of problems that had already been solved, and in some cases had reached solutions by a new route. He was also making mathematical leaps that would be studied decades later. In 2007, two number theorists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison solved or expanded Ramanujan’s “final problem,” which concerned intangible numerical expressions known as mock theta functions.
46
Despite his lack of formal training, Ramanujan is regarded now as one of history’s finest ever (known) mathematicians. Arriving at his house one day after a taxi ride, his friend and colleague G. H. Hardy remarked that the cab’s licence number, 1729, was rather dull. “No, Hardy,” said Ramanujan. “It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”
47
And it was: 1729 was equal to 12
3
+ 1
3
, and to 10
3
+ 9
3
. Ramanujan was not a practical man. Coming from the hot and humid south, he was always cold when he was in England, and P. C. Mahalanobis, who was studying at a neighbouring college in Cambridge, noticed he slept on top of his bed wearing an overcoat. Mahalanobis realized Ramanujan had not understood that the blankets tucked tight on the bed could be peeled back and used as a covering. So he showed him how to do it.
48
Ramanujan lived a lonely life: each morning he would change into a dhoti, apply a caste mark to his forehead and perform a puja, before wiping off the naamam and getting dressed in a suit to walk unmarked on the streets of Cambridge.
At the close of the First World War, he returned to India, sick. He had been staying in an icy sanatorium in England. His mother took his horoscope to an astrologer in Triplicane, who studied it and deduced that it was “the chart either of a man of worldwide reputation apt to die at the height of his fame, or one who, if he did live long, would remain obscure.”
49
Nehru was one of many who was affected by the pathos of Ramanujan’s death at the age of only thirty-two from tuberculosis, seeing it as symbolic of the conditions facing the many Indians who were restricted by their lack of education, lack of opportunity and lack of good employment. “If life opened its gates to them and offered them food and healthy conditions of living and education and opportunities of growth,” Nehru asked from his prison cell during the Second World War, “how many among these millions would be eminent scientists, educationists, technicians, industrialists, writers and artists, helping to build a new India and a new world?”
50
PART I
RASHTRA • NATION
ACCELERATED HISTORY
1.
Author’s interview with Tashi Norbu, 31 August 2008. Some of this material is taken from my article “India With Altitude,”
Telegraph Magazine
, 7 February 2009.
2.
Author’s interview with T. S. Saravankumar (pseudonym), 26 January 2009.
3.
Author’s interview with Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, 19 May 2010.
4.
Dhananajaya Singh,
The House of Marwar
, New Delhi, 1994, p. 185.
5.
V. P. Menon,
Integration of the Indian States
, Hyderabad, 1985 (first publ. 1956), p. 116. See Ian Copland, “The Princely States, the Muslim League, and the Partition of India in 1947,”
The International History Review
, Vol. 13, No. 1, February 1991, pp. 42–43.
6.
Singh,
House of Marwar
, pp. 185–99.
7.
Alex von Tunzelmann,
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
, London, 2007, p. 221.
8.
Menon,
Integration of the Indian States
, p. 117. Some accounts of this episode suggest the Maharaja of Jodhpur transformed a fountain pen into a pistol, using his skills as a magician.
9.
See ibid.; Singh,
House of Marwar
, pp. 185–99; Ian Copland,
The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire: 1917–1947
, Cambridge, 1997. It is disputed whether Hanwant Singh was married to his third wife, the actress Zubeida Banu (later known as Vidya Rani). Their story was fictionalized in the 2001 movie
Zubeidaa
. See
www.royalark.net/India/jodh16.htm
.
10.
Nayantara Sahgal (ed.),
Before Freedom: Nehru’s Letters to His Sister
, New Delhi, 2000, p. 383.
11.
Jawaharlal Nehru,
The Discovery of India
, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1946), pp. 70–71.
12.
Ibid., pp. 258–59.
13.
Ibid., pp. 51–52.
14.
I have written about this in greater detail in
Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division
, London, 1997.
15.
Quoted in B. Krishna,
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel: India’s Iron Man
, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 296–323.
16.
Private information.
17.
Menon,
Integration of the Indian States
, p. 476.
18.
Quoted in Balraj Krishna,
India’s Bismarck: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
, Mumbai, 2007, p. 149.
19.
Alan Campbell-Johnson,
Mission With Mountbatten
, London, 1972 (first publ. 1951), p. 322.
20.
This account is drawn from
The Day India Burned: Partition
, a BBC documentary produced
and directed by Ricardo Pollack in 2007, on which I was the historical consultant; Urvashi Butalia,
The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
, London, 2000, pp. 163–82; Gyanendra Pandey,
Remembering Partition
, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 84–91.
21.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
Speeches
, Lahore, 1989, p. 16.
22.
V. P. Menon,
The Transfer of Power in India
, Chennai, 1957, p. 407.
23.
Author’s interview with Nayantara Sahgal, 14 March 1996.
24.
Constituent Assembly debates, Vol. V, 20 August 1947. The Constituent Assembly debates, published by the Lok Sabha secretariat in New Delhi in 1950, are available in full on the Indian Parliament website,
www.parliamentofindia.nic.in
.
25.
Ibid., Vol. I, 9 December 1946.
26.
Ibid., Vol. IX, 22 August 1949.
27.
Ibid., Vol. XI, 22 November 1949.
28.
Ibid.
30.
Constituent Assembly debates, Vol. V, 25 August 1947.
31.
The number of speakers of Hindi and Urdu, and the similarity or difference between the two languages and other north Indian tongues, remains a subject of academic and popular argument.
32.
Constituent Assembly debates, Vol. IV, 23 July 1947.
33.
See Granville Austin,
The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation
, Oxford, 1999 (first publ. 1966), pp. 28–32.
34.
Dhananjay Keer,
Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission
, Mumbai, 1990 (first publ. 1954), p. 409.
35.
See
The Constitution of India
, Parts III and IV.
36.
Constituent Assembly debates, Vol. VII, 4 November 1948.
37.
Walter Crocker,
Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate
, London, 1966, p. 168.
38.
Author’s interview with Nayantara Sahgal, 22 May 2010.
39.
Quoted in Austin,
Indian Constitution
, p. 45.
40.
Irfan Ahmad,
Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami
, Ranikhet, 2010, p. 18.
41.
Quoted in Judith M. Brown,
Nehru: A Political Life
, New Haven, 2003, p. 281.
42.
Author’s interview with Mohammed Yunus, 11 March 1996.
43.
Quoted in Sarvepalli Gopal,
Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography
, London, 1975–84, Vol. 2, p. 14.
44.
NCERT,
History and Civics: A Textbook for Class VII
, New Delhi, 1979, pp. 27 and 66.
45.
Quoted in Girish N. Mehra,
Nearer Heaven Than Earth
, New Delhi, 2007, p. 796.
46.
See Ramachandra Guha,
India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy
, London, 2007, pp. 365–70.
47.
Durga Das (ed.),
Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945–50
, Ahmedabad, 1971–74, Vol. 10, p. 19.
48.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Our Only Colonial Thinker,”
Outlook
, 5 July 2004.
49.
Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.),
Hindu Nationalism: A Reader
, Delhi, 2007, p. 15.
50.
See ibid., pp. 12–17.
51.
Quoted in Lawrence Wright,
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda’s Road to 9/11
, London, 2007 (first publ. 2006), p. 151.
52.
This section develops ideas outlined in my article “The Power of Possibility,”
India Today
, 20 August 2007.
53.
Austin,
Indian Constitution
, pp. 140–43.
54.
Quoted in Crocker,
Nehru
, p. 151.
55.
Edward C. Sachau (ed.),
Alberuni’s India, Volume One
, London, 2000 (first publ. 1910), pp. 19–181. Some scholars believe Al-Biruni never visited India but interviewed captives who had been brought out of the country to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni.
56.
Zahir Uddin Muhammad Babur,
Babur Nama: Journal of Emperor Babur
, trans. Annette Susannah Beveridge, London, 2006, pp. 275–76.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
1.
Pupul Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi: A Biography
, New Delhi, 1995 (first publ. 1992), p. 164.
2.
Quoted in ibid., p. 176.
3.
Quoted in ibid., pp. 68–71.
4.
Katherine Frank,
Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
, London, 2001, p. 150.
5.
Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, pp. 116–17.
6.
Frank,
Indira
, pp. 202–3.
7.
Indira Gandhi,
My Truth
, New Delhi, 1980, p. 43.
8.
Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, p. 145.
9.
Vinod Mehta,
The Sanjay Story
, Bombay, 1978, p. 24.
10.
Bruce Chatwin, “On the Road with Mrs. G.,”
What Am I Doing Here
, London, 1989, p. 339.
11.
Mehta,
Sanjay Story
, pp. 40–44.
12.
Quoted in Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, p. 157.
13.
Mehta,
Sanjay Story
, p. 52.
14.
Dorothy Norman,
Indira Gandhi: Letters to a Friend 1950–1984
, London, 1985, p. 103.
15.
See Frank,
Indira
, pp. 275–93.
16.
Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, p. 187.
17.
Quoted in Meghnad Desai,
The Rediscovery of India
, New Delhi, 2009, p. 347.
18.
See Sudipta Kaviraj, “Indira Gandhi and Indian Politics,”
Economic and Political Weekly
, Vol. 21, Nos. 38 and 39, 20–27 September 1986.
19.
Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, p. 274.
20.
Mehta,
Sanjay Story
, p. 63.
21.
Girish N. Mehra,
Nearer Heaven Than Earth
, New Delhi, 2007, p. 645.
22.
Author’s interview with Khushwant Singh, 26 February 1998.
23.
Author’s interview with Maneka Gandhi, 1 September 2004.
24.
See Frank,
Indira
, p. 406.
25.
Chatwin, “On the Road with Mrs. G.,” p. 331.
26.
See Frank,
Indira
, p. 403.
27.
See Gandhi,
My Truth
, pp. 146–47.
28.
Romesh Thapar, “Cong (Indira) to Cong (Sanjay),”
Economic and Political Weekly
, Vol. 15, No. 22, 31 May 1980.
29.
Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, p. 418.
30.
See Khushwant Singh,
Truth, Love and a Little Malice: An Autobiography
, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 296–99; Frank,
Indira
, pp. 458–59.
31.
Some Sikhs do drink alcohol: I once spent a nine-hour flight seated beside two who had three legs between them and drank canteens of whisky mixed with lager.
32.
Frank,
Indira
, p. 492.
33.
Author’s interview with Sarabjeet Singh, 15 November 2009.
34.
Author’s interview with Amrit Kaur, 21 November 2009.
35.
Author’s interview with Sarabjeet Singh, 15 November 2009.
36.
See Pranay Gupte,
Mother India: A Political Biography of Indira Gandhi
, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 58–59.
37.
Author’s interview with Vichitra Sharma, 7 April 2010; Gupte,
Mother India
, pp. 56–61.
38.
Jayakar,
Indira Gandhi
, pp. 490–91.
39.
Sonia Gandhi,
Rajiv
, New Delhi, 1992, p. 13.
40.
The portrait of Indira Gandhi is drawn from Jayakar, Frank and Gupte. Unsourced background information and quotations about the Emergency and the activities of individual members of the Gandhi family come from off-the-record interviews I did while researching two articles, “The New Gandhi,”
New Yorker
, 16 March 1998 and “The Accidental Figurehead,”
Telegraph Magazine
, 29 October 2005.
THE CENTRIFUGE
1.
J. B. Kripalani was arrested at the start of the Emergency and then released.
2.
L. K. Advani,
A Prisoner’s Scrap-Book
, New Delhi, 2003 (first publ. 1978), p. 94.
3.
This document was published for the first time in
Mainstream
, 22 November 1975.
4.
Author’s interview with L. K. Advani, 20 January 2009.
5.
L. K. Advani,
My Country My Life
, New Delhi, 2008, p. 373.
6.
Dawn
, 7 December 2009.
7.
Private information.
8.
Vikram Seth and Leila Seth,
Times of India
, 30 January 1993.
9.
Amartya Sen, “The Threats to Secular India,”
New York Review of Books
, 8 April 1993.
10.
Author’s interview with Yusuf Ansari, 18 January 2009.
11.
Kuldip Singh, “Obituary,”
Independent
, 27 December 2004; private information.
12.
Election Commission of India, New Delhi,
Statistical Report on General Elections
, 1996.
13.
Indian Express
, 14 February 1998.
14.
Author’s interview with Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, 19 May 2010.
15.
Gandhi,
Rajiv
, p. 11.
16.
See my article “The New Gandhi,”
New Yorker
, 16 March 1998; Vaiju Naravane, “In Maino Country,”
Frontline
, 25 April–8 May 1998;
www.britannica.com
.
17.
Gandhi,
Rajiv
, p. 1.
18.
Author’s interview with Chris von Stieglitz, 13 September 2004.
19.
Bal Thackeray,
Calcutta Telegraph
, 4 March 1998.
20.
Narendra Modi made these remarks in Hindi in a speech in Vadodara on 20 August 2002, and there are different versions of his words. See
Outlook
, 30 September 2002; see also
www.rmaf.org
.ph, 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, Biography of James Michael Lyngdoh.
21.
Private information.
22.
Star TV, interview with Vir Sanghvi, actuality footage.
23.
Aaj Tak, actuality footage.
24.
Author’s interview with L. K. Advani, 2 September 2004.
25.
Author’s interview with Maneka Gandhi, 1 September 2004.
26.
Some of the background information and quotes regarding Sonia Gandhi are taken
from research and interviews I did for the two articles cited in the previous chapter, “The New Gandhi” and “The Accidental Figurehead.”
27.
India Today
, 6 September 2004.
28.
Rediff.com
, 23 February 2004.
29.
IBNLive.com
, 4 May 2006.
30.
Rediff News
, 5 June 2006. See also
Outlook
, 19 June 2006; Mayank Austen Soofi, “Fact: I Was Inside Pramod Mahajan’s Residence,”
DesiCritics.org
, 9 June 2006.
31.
Open
, 13 March 2010.
32.
Author’s interview with L. K. Advani, 20 January 2009.
33.
Author’s interview with Ashok Chowgule, 2 February 2009.
34.
See Christophe Jaffrelot,
The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics
, London, 1996, p. 339.
35.
See p. 55.
36.
Author’s interview with Ashok Chowgule, 2 February 2009.
37.
www.bjp.org/content/view/2844/428
.
38.
Author’s interview with Murli Manohar Joshi, 5 May 2009.
39.
Author’s interview with Manoj Shrivastava, 29 April 2009.
40.
Varun Gandhi’s poetry, and his selected thoughts, can be found on his interesting website,
www.varungandhi.net.in
.
41.
Daily Telegraph
, 17 March 2009.
42.
Indian Express
, 29 March 2010.
43.
Author’s interview with Manoj Shrivastava, 29 April 2009.