Used as we are to a republican monarchy, Indians in London cannot have failed to detect in last week’s Coronation fiesta the open inclusiveness of what Tennyson called a “crowned republic”. Where else would an Indian-origin comedian like the Malayali Nish Kumar get away with calling Rishi Sunak “irresponsible” and the anti-immigration home secretary, Suella Braverman, “reprehensible”? Or the historian, Zareer Masani, storm out of an after-dinner speech by India’s high commissioner for not appearing to take “autocratic tendencies” in India seriously enough?
Hearing of the protest, a friend in India wondered whether Masani knew “that he would have had a visit from a Central probe agency if the walkout had occurred in India.” Not only in Delhi. My correspondent went on to recount that Jadavpur University’s Ambikesh Mahapatra “was beaten up, spent some time behind bars and had to move court for redress.” Nothing like that is imaginable under the newly-crowned King Charles III. Although 64 republican protesters were arrested last weekend, the police must answer some tough questions by a parliamentary committee chairwoman, Dame Diana Johnson. Moreover, one still heard the full-throated “Not Our King!” booming on television. What one didn’t hear (and barely saw) was the earlier generation ‘Spare’, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, who cannot wear a uniform or call himself ‘Royal Highness’ since being sacked by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, as a ‘working royal’. Yet, the disgraced prince must be credited with one of the most incisive comments on India by a visiting foreigner.
His brief speech at a reception hosted by Sanjay Wadhwani, then Britain’s deputy high commissioner in Calcutta, claimed that whatever else Britain may or may not have given India, it left behind a bureaucracy. “And you developed it!” he chuckled. And how! My wife and I had to spend wearying hours day after day arguing about the nuances of the word, ‘termination’, with a legion of pleasant, polite but persistent customs officers when we returned from Singapore. I had been teaching at a university there for exactly a year and been assured by India’s high commission, travel agents and Air India that our scanty possessions would attract no duty. It was with every expectation of sailing smoothly through immigration and customs, therefore, that I produced my teaching contract and passport (Indian, naturally) whose endorsements confirmed that I had left Singapore within days of the contract ending to fly to Calcutta.
The passport and contract merited only a cursory glance. The officials were far more interested in what they called a ‘termination certificate’. What was that? I had never heard of such a document. They very kindly gave me the relevant baggage law to read. It confirmed that Indians who had worked in a foreign country for up to a year and returned to India on the ‘termination’ of employment abroad were entitled to certain duty-free privileges. The law seemed designed for me. Quite so, they said, but only on presentation of my ‘termination certificate’. My employment contract had ended after a year, I explained. I needed a ‘termination certificate’ to prove that, they replied. It would also prove that I had returned to India on termination. But I was standing there as living proof of return. A ‘termination certificate’ would validate my presence. Who would issue one? They didn’t have a clue. I telephoned the dean of the faculty in Singapore where I had taught. “We can certainly say that your contract ended on a certain date,” he assured me. I took that offer back but it wouldn’t do. It wasn’t quite ‘termination’. What do they want? exclaimed an exasperated dean when I called again. Should we say that you were sacked? The problem was eventually solved not through logic or linguistic exactitude but pressure from above. The higher authority to whom I appealed when all else failed used his discretionary power to let us through since we were not obvious smugglers or terrorists. “But remember to bring a ‘termination certificate’ next time!” he warned.
Carolean Britain’s contradictions are not rooted in the same obsession with precision. Nor is its default position that appellants must be wrong. Britain’s inconsistencies reveal a society that is diluting its traditionally majoritarian identity in the interests of social stability and cultural harmony “to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely” to quote the Archbishop of Canterbury who prostrated himself at the Jallianwala Bagh memorial as easily as Narendra Modi at the Ramjanmabhoomi temple. If any sangh parivar zealot grumbles that the Hindu priest in Westminster Abbey had no Coronation role, his presence itself was evidence of an ecumenical enlightenment that should shame Hindus who spurn a Muslim cap. An art historian’s suggestion that a portrait of the king “eating a Scotch egg in a pub” would highlight his common touch took me back 54 years to his investiture as Prince of Wales. “I.B. Jones,” said the mayor of Caernarfon, announcing himself Welsh-style, at an informal reception the day before. “I be Charles!” replied the prince, plunging the room into laughter. My investiture chair, designed by Lord Snowdon, is a memento of that occasion. This time, too, guests were invited to buy the chairs they sat on.
Inevitably, reverberations from the world beyond seeped into the Coronation rituals. King Charles set the trend by responding to complaints of colonial injustice and the mutterings of Caribbean prime ministers who find a British monarch irksome by demanding intensive research into historic links between the monarchy and the slave trade. Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, took time off from the Abbey to demand Vladimir Putin’s arrest for war crimes. Caught in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma, Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, was scolded for attending the Coronation, sponsoring a ‘fawning’ resolution on the event, and for not declaring ‘God Save the King’. A gigantic Tricolour draped over the façade of India House in Aldwych was meant to rebuke Khalistanis who had vandalised the original flag.
Bruised by a ferocious drubbing at the hustings, Sunak, who took his own oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita, read a passage from the Bible. His wife in a frock was seen to curtsey during Sunday’s concert in Windsor. Sarees were not in evidence but the BBC’s Anita Rani says she wore one for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. Sunak’s Illegal Migration Bill, which will abolish asylum, thumb a nose at the European Court of Human Rights, and rescue refugees in leaky, overcrowded boats and pack them off to blood-drenched Rwanda, means a thundering indictment of the desperation of Indians who comprise the second biggest group, after Afghans, to brave the hazards of surreptitiously crossing the English Channel. Afghans risk drowning because they have nothing left at home to live for. Punjabis and Gujaratis do so because the world’s most populous country that also claims one of the world’s highest growth rates has no jobs for them. The number of Indians caught attempting illegal entry into the United States of America through Mexico soared last year to 16,000 — more than citizens of any other country — from only 77 a decade ago.
Last week’s celebrations highlighted a vital difference between a republican monarchy and a ‘crowned republic’. Keir Hardie’s complaint of “an orgy for the display of wealth and senseless spending” aptly describes the bombast of populist politicians whose pride in the world’s largest diaspora (slightly trimmed by Canada’s decision to deport 700 Indian students with fake visas) proclaims the Indian State’s failure to feed, clothe, house and educate its people while accounting (with the US, China, Britain and Russia) for 62% of the $2.24 trillion that the world squanders on weapons. The Coronation solemnised the concept of service at the heart of the pageantry that surrounds a ‘crowned republic’.
