The waiting class

Mamata and West Bengal

With Mamata Banerjee making it clear that her future interest is in ruling West Bengal and not running trains from Delhi, there is speculation about the fate of two groups that have benefited from 30 years of Left Front patronage.

One is the tribe of businessmen and promoters who get land virtually for the asking; the other the peculiarly Bengali phenomenon of Marxist intellectuals (or is that tautology?) who rake in capitalist loot.

Actually, both will continue to flourish. A Bengali writer boasted in 1857 that he was prepared for whichever side won by wearing a dhoti over his trousers. The dhoti could quickly be discarded if the British prevailed; no one would know of the trousers beneath if the Sepoys won.

I was reminded of this opportunism at a dinner for Lord (Chris) Patten, the chancellor of Oxford University, when a Marxist thinker who once wrote venomously against Indo-British cooperation in the fellow-travelling journal, ‘Now’, complained that Indian students were deprived of the Oxford experience for lack of funds.

He was begging for British money so that Indians could study in England. The Marxist mayor of Kolkata who wanted the American consul-general to twin his city with San Francisco (ignoring Kolkata’s existing twin, Odessa) where his son lived was more discreet. But with time running out, the regime’s cultural hangers-on can dispense with reticence.

Full-time communists are also spectacularly self-contradictory as the Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, noted after meeting young Indian communists in England, worshipping at the feet of Rajani Palme Dutt, the British communist party’s half-Indian half-Swede but wholly upper class English guru. He “did not realise how untypical they were of their societies... the elite of the elites of the ‘native’ colonial populations.”

Like Indira Gandhi’s one-time confidant, Mohan, son of the zamindar of Kumaramangalam (as he styled himself though others remember him better as Dr P Subbarayan), they illustrated how in the absence of an hereditary aristocracy, the haute bourgeoisie rule the roost. Hobsbawn called it a ‘bizarrerie.’

Its highlight was the Christmas dinner the CPI’s Renu Chakravorty hosted in Calcutta. Hobsbawm was served ham and turkey from the Calcutta Club (where her cousin was secretary) followed by biryani, and then plum pudding, also from the club.

A titled Englishwoman representing a British philanthropic trust told me how nervous she was about calling on Indrajit Gupta, then home minister in H D Deve Gowda’s government. North Block was uninviting and Gupta’s room bleak as she awaited her first encounter with a communist. Then her eyes lit on a framed photograph of King’s College, Cambridge, and all fear vanished. Mohan, son of the zamindar of Kumaramangalam, was also a King’s, Cambridge man.

Dominant ideology

If, returning to Hobsbawm, “the dominant ideology of every society is the ideology of the dominant class,” its lifestyle is the prize that inspires the masses. Some are born bourgeois like Brinda Karat with her zamindari and westernised boxwallah background.

Others become bourgeois like the revolutionary actor who hired an interior decorator to create two sitting rooms in his house — one upstairs in black leather and white wrought iron with a bar for society; the other downstairs with rough benches for party hoi-polloi. Gupta could afford to distinguish between ‘gentlemen of privilege’ which he spurned, and ‘gentlemen of the people’ which he claimed to be.

A fiery young radical who threatened to call his book about yesterday’s revolutionaries ‘The Lost Generation’ himself scaled dizzy corporate heights under Left Front benevolence. Those he held in contempt but whose ranks he joined also became managing directors of public sector units, chairmen of statutory bodies, university vice-chancellors and Rajya Sabha members. As the baddie in John Le Carre’s ‘The Night Manager’ says, “Today’s guerrillas are tomorrow’s fatcats.”

Businessmen and promoters may have suffered socially when Jyoti Basu retired since his successor doesn’t hob-nob with them over a whisky at the Tollygunge Club. But their interests remain secure. Even revolutionary parties need funds which tycoons provide in exchange for permits and licences. The revolution that will never come has been mortgaged in advance to them.

That nexus will continue. Judging by Mamata Banerjee’s astute demeanour at meetings organised by chambers of commerce or major Bengali publications, she wants to prove that  rabble-rousing is only for street rallies. Her serious side should command middle and upper class allegiance. Scenting power, the classes are ready to oblige.

Neither intellectuals nor promoters need produce an Indian version of ‘The God That Failed’ whose promotional tag read “Six famous men tell how they changed their minds about communism.” The Indian God is Mammon in whom no one ever loses faith. Moreover, Trinamool Congress’ rhetoric is comfortingly progressive.

It’s like the Vicar of Bray in an 18th century satirical song about someone who changes beliefs and principles to stay in favour with authority. The chorus explains his  philosophy of survival:

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!
The CPM’s goons were the first to make the move. Industrialists and intellectuals are following them.