The First Castrato

About two weeks ago I finished reading Manohar Malgonkar's book 'The Men Who Killed Gandhi'. The work was first published in 1978, but somehow, had not come to my attention. I have read Malgonkar's fiction; 'The Combat of Shadows'  being the first. It is a passionate novel, set in the tea plantations of the North-East, with revenge as its theme. Malgonkar writes with ease and felicity. His understanding of the Indian mind is second-to-none, and his characters come alive in the narrative. Later I also read 'The Devil's Wind', a novel set around the 1857 Sepoy Revolt, whose main protagonists are the leaders of that revolt. 'A Bend in the Ganges' is also set in the times before Indian independence and the Partition that let loose a river of blood across the subcontinent. All Mangonkar's fiction is full of passionate drama, with many melodramatic scenes of cinematic intensity. I have always wondered why no film-maker has attempted to bring 'The Combat of Shadows' and 'A Bend in the Ganges' to life on the silver screen. These two novels are admirably suited to the medium of cinema and would make for excellent viewing in the hands of a good craftsman.

'The Men Who Killed Gandhi' has been reprinted in 2008 by Roli Books and this new edition has been richly enhanced by some, hitherto unpublished, documents and photographs of the many characters involved in the actual conspiracy, and the subsequent trials. There are also photocopies of the statements made by the indicted people as well as by the investigating agents. There are photocopies of the actual Air India tickets bought by Godse and Apte when they embarked on their deadly mission from Bombay to Delhi. There are also copies of the entries made in the Visitors' Index book maintained by Hotel Marina, New Delhi, where Godse had stayed in Room No. 40 when the first attempt on Gandhi's life was made on 20th January 1948. There are also pictures of the two firearms procured by the conspirators to perpetrate their foul deed, and a complete account of how these came into their possession.

'The Men Who Killed Gandhi' is a painstaking journey that began in 1960 as an assignment from Life International, and it came out as a story in its February 1968 issue. But, by then, Malgonkar had realised that his story and the research behind it warranted a book, much more than just a magazine article. So, he sat down to enlarge the story with inputs from several sources, of which the Kapur Commission's report proved to be most invaluable. The edition that was finally published in 1978, was until then, perhaps the most factual account of the conspiracy that led to the assassination of Gandhi. But, as Malgonkar writes in the preface to the 2008 edition: "The book first came out when the country was in the grip of the 'Emergency', and books were subjected to a censorship of the utmost ruthlessness. This made it incumbent upon me to omit certain vital facts such as, for instance, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar's secret assurance to Mr. L. B. Bhopatkar, that his client, Mr. V. D. Savarkar had been implicated as a murder-suspect on the flimsiest grounds. Then again, certain other pertinent details such as the 'doctoring' of a confession by a magistrate whose duty it was only to record what was said only came out in later years." This edition, according to the author, "is the complete single account of the plot to murder Mahatma Gandhi." The edition brought out by Roli Books has been a great success which can be ascertained from the fact that between 2008 and 2011, it has undergone five impressions.

After having read and pondered over this wonderfully produced volume, I moved on, quite by chance, to read an almost innocuous novel titled 'The Last Castrato' by John Spencer Hill. The story is set in Florence, Italy, a city that is said to overawe visitors by its sheer volume of culture. Situated on the banks of the silvery river Arno, the city has a domineering influence on people when they first espy Brunelleschi's Dome, or Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. The quaint, fairy-tale-like Ponte Vecchio straddles the river like a magical bridge promising some wonderland on the other side. Florence can be both  intimidating, and yet captivating.

The novel recounts a saga in which the victim of a crime committed almost three decades ago, exacts his revenge on the wrong-doers, by slitting their throats and severing their vocal chords. The victim, it appears, was criminally castrated by a group of aspiring musicians who called themselves the Camerati Dell'Arte, the Companions of Art. In their attempt to restore Renaissance opera to its original roots, they decided that they needed the voice of a castrato. They abducted a young peasant boy, plied him with laudanum, and then proceeded to emasculate him. However, they were unable to market their music because the recording companies guessed that the boy had been criminally assaulted and did not want to have anything to do with the group. The boy, however, never forgave the Camerati and exacted his revenge upon them in the most macabre manner that he could devise.

There is obviously no connection between these two books, one a factual account of a  conspiracy launched by five fiercely patriotic individuals who, although they held Gandhi in high esteem, felt that he had betrayed the cause of the Hindu majority, and therefore, had to be violently removed from the scene. In the end, their fanaticism got the better of their patriotism, and they succeeded in killing Mahatma Gandhi, who, if he had lived, may have 'changed the shape of India's polity and society'. The world, according to Pramod Kapoor, the editor of the volume, may not have been as violent as it is today. The second is a totally fictional work, in which a wronged individual seeks revenge for personal satisfaction.

However, it is rather ironical that Italy played a small role in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. Of the two guns that Godse procured for the deed, it was the 9mm Beretta, an automatic pistol, made in Italy, that fired the fatal shots. The pistol had found its way to India from Ethiopia after the Second World War. Fate had decreed that an Italian weapon would be used to remove the Apostle of Peace from this earth.

Ironically, it was again the connection with an Italian; this time an individual, that brought down another Gandhi. The unhealthy influence of Ottavio Quatrocchi was chiefly responsible for turning Rajiv Gandhi from an able Prime Minister into a commission agent, thereby destroying his credibility with the common man and bringing his government down from the heights of unprecedented majority to an ignominious minority, within the period of just one term. Quatrocchi was able to peddle his influence only because he was an Italian, the nationality of Rajiv Gandhi's wife.

The destructive Italian connection continues twenty-one years (and counting) after the downfall of Rajiv Gandhi and his untimely and tragic assassination by a Sri Lankan suicide-bomber. Sonia Gandhi, his widow, continues to control the Congress Party as its longest-serving President, and the country as an uncrowned Empress who commands almost Caesarian, unconstitutional authority. The constricting embrace in which she holds the Party has made it into a lifeless, spineless organism, almost a brain-dead creature. The government she heads (as the Chairperson of the UPA) is prostate at her feet and its Prime Minister, like the peasant boy of the novel, seems to have become the first castrato in the Opera Macabre that she is conducting in New Delhi, with the Indian media playing their diabolical orchestra from the wings. In his final statement, Nathuram Godse had this to say about the Indian press: "The Press had displayed such weakness and submission to the High Command of the Congress that it allowed the mistakes of leaders pass away freely and unnoticed and made vivisection easy by their policy." We can see that nothing has changed since then.

Will India survive its fatal Italian connection?

Lessons from US & India: How not to Win Friends and Alienate People?

Joshua Hersh’s “Afghanistan: The Long and Winding Roads” featured by Huffington Post on 9^th October, and updated on the 13^th, chronicles yet again the failure of the American administration to understand and answer the simple question that another celebrated American, Dale Carnegie, had asked a few decades ago: “How to win friends and influence people?” Sixty-six years have elapsed since the publication of Carnegie’s book, yet the world seems to have learnt nothing since then. Hersh’s column is one more eye-opener for the American administration to look afresh at Afghanistan and look for a sustainable solution to its myriad problems that appear to be intractable given the current mind-set in Washington DC and its European satellites. The experience in Korea and Vietnam in the last century, and Iraq in the current one, should have demonstrated, without any doubt, that hard, military solutions and the expenditure of astronomical sums of money can neither bring lasting peace, nor social and economic development in the areas of conflict.

Documenting an American Development worker, Andrew Wilder’s findings during his foray with a team of researchers in several provinces of Afghanistan in 2008-09; inspecting development projects; having one-on-one dialogues with tribal leaders; analyzing data from military and civilian officials on the ground; Hersh came to the conclusion that most of the work carried by USAID, involving billions of dollars, had yielded practically no visible advancement in the battle for the “minds and hearts” of ordinary Afghans. On the contrary, a massive infrastructure had been erected that would be impossible for the locals to fund and manage. Wilder wrote that “rather than generating good will and positive perceptions”, the development projects “were consistently described negatively by Afghans”. The problem with big development projects is that they attract mostly predatory elements that see them as an opportunity to make vast sums of money that the taxpayers usually have no control upon. Halliburton in Iraq is a case in point. Afghanistan has seen hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars going down the drain while making a few individuals abominably rich.

This “big-brother-knows-all” mentality seems to infect all global and regional hegemonic powers and aspirants. It is the same mentality that saw India land into a quagmire in Kashmir. First, you interfere in the election process, and then send in military boots to quell the insurrection there, knowing fully well that a hostile neighbour has been waiting for years for such an opportunity to lend armed support to an indigenous rebellion. The battle for the “minds and hearts” of ordinary Kashmiris was lost when the first innocent bystander got caught in the crossfire. The billions of rupees that India has spent in Kashmir has bought an uneasy peace at the most, but the young generation that is now in its twenties has seen nothing but armed conflict, cordon-search-seizure operations, and indefinite curfews. These young men have not seen the inside of a school and all the education they received was from frenzied clerics poisoning their minds with religious zeal and jihadi fanaticism. It, of course, suits the political classes in Kashmir and India to keep the fires burning as the conflict continues to generate huge amounts of money in the name of development that disappear in the mazes built by entrenched bureaucracies and end up in wholly undeserving pockets.

It is the same mentality that made India to agree to send a Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka during 1987-89, ostensibly to end the civil war between the militant Lankan Tamil separatists and the Sri Lankan army. The morons who agreed to send this contingent did not even think once about the absurdity of juxtaposing Peace and Force in the same phrase while giving the contingent a name. The consequence of the misadventure was the brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by the Tamils even after he had demitted office following the defeat of his Congress party in the general elections.

The response of the Indian government continues to follow the same pattern whenever conflict situations occur anywhere in the country. The presence of the armed forces in the North-East with special draconian powers has built a constituency of resentment over decades of neglect, while all development funds sent by the Central government are pocketed by local politicians (mostly from the Congress) who manage to win elections with the twin weapons of bribery and intimidation.

Contained within the euphoric story of the recent economic growth of India is the narrative of acute deprivation and abject poverty that merits a few lines in some obscure pages of a newspaper when a farmer commits suicide, or when children are sold in slavery because the parents are unable to feed them. The marginalization of tribal populations across the length and breadth of India, whose ancestral lands and livelihoods are being ravaged for their mineral and other natural wealth, has led to the creation of a militant guerrilla movement that has spread to almost one-third of the country. But is there any attempt at winning the hearts and minds of these disenfranchised citizens? Instead, the mighty arm of the state is arming itself with attack helicopters to counter these poor and hapless countrymen.

While Afghanistan needs schools, hospitals and roads, and the freedom to pursue happiness in its own way, it also needs an understanding of what Plato called thymos, the human desire for “recognition” that is an important constituent of human psyche. What a war-ravaged country needs for its redevelopment cannot be decided and settled by a few bureaucrats and politicians in Washington or Whitehall. Development has to be a sustainable model that the local people can manage and continue to benefit from after the “stabilizing” forces have left. The schools and hospitals can function only if a large pool of trained teachers, doctors and health-care givers has been created over the years. Similarly, business enterprises for export-oriented products should have been set up, using local skills and materials. The Afghans are traditionally very good at weaving woollen carpets. This skill could have been channelized and co-operative centres could have been opened across Afghanistan providing training to young weavers and ensuring that their products received preferential treatment in markets in the West and elsewhere. The orchards of Chaman were once famous for their grapes, pomegranates, melons, pine nuts and other such delicate produce. Babur, the first Mogul Emperor, always pined for the melons of Kabul, and if he had a kingdom back in Fergana or Kabul, he would never have settled in India. Indian history would have had an entirely different trajectory if the Mogul had even a small city-state like Samarkand to rule. He hated the heat of Hindustan and found its fruit inferior to anything found in his beloved Kabul. Babur disliked India so much that he preferred to be buried in Kabul than anywhere else.

Development funds could be deployed more fruitfully (pun intended) in boosting investment in horticultural produce for which preferential tariffs could be introduced by the consumer nations. A large population of local Afghans could be rehabilitated on these farms that would provide them with a self-sustainable future. A community engaged in farming and working the land is less prone to become rebellious and take to the gun. Conversely, they will fight all those who will try to take them away from their lands. Jihad would find it difficult to get more recruits.

The traditional picture of the Afghan is so endearingly captured by Tagore in his short story ‘Kabuliwalla’. This is the picture of an itinerant Afghan immigrant travelling through India, charming one and all with his stories of home while selling the dry fruits of Kabul. His friendship with a little girl of Kolkatta makes the narrative part of the story, while establishing in the minds of the readers the image of an extremely compassionate human being totally untouched by any kind of religious fanaticism. The Kabuliwalla is a diametric opposite of today’s Taliban. The Great Game that began between Britain and Russia entered its final phase with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the arming of the Mujahideen by the Western powers. The denouement is now visible for all. A gentle, humane people have been reduced to stone-age conditions of survival; their lands carpet-bombed and littered with millions of mines, while the media continues to portray them as barbarians. No wonder the fundamentalist Salafis have found a treasure chest of converts to their form of faith! The Kalashnikov toting Afghan today bears no resemblance to the itinerant Kabuliwalla with his sling bag of goodies from the gardens of Chaman.