Forgotten promises and the age of anger

For several years now, I save all the big, fat books I never find the time for during the rest of the year for these long, languorous summer days. They are all books that frighten the reader by their sheer size and deep content. The other day, I picked up another one to add to this pile: a new biography of Atal Behari Vajpayee by Abhishek Choudhary that has attracted many admirers. The occasion was a panel discussion between the young author and two political personalities who are a joy to hear Shashi Tharoor and Swapan Dasgupta. The moderator, Manisha Pande (wonder if she’s a Pahari like me), is a journalist.

The hall was packed, despite the heat outside, although many familiar faces were missing, possibly because they were out of town. This hefty volume is Part I of Choudhary’s biography and traces Atalji’s life from his birth in 1924 to 1977. The subsequent volume will track his life and career from 1977 to 2015 or so, when he officially retired from public life. Unlike many political biographies, Choudhary has chosen to not write a mere hagiography but tackles the growth of Vajpayee from an RSS pracharak to holding the office of the Prime Minister, juggling the NDA coalition with skill and an ‘insaniyat’ that won him admirers even among his political rivals and critics. More importantly, it traces the ascent of the right-wing party from its Jan Sangh days to its present avatar, backed by first-rate research and interviews with a wide spectrum of characters.

Choudhary was awarded the prestigious New India Foundation fellowship that has a special project helmed by eminent academics (such as Ramachandra Guha and Niraja Gopal Jayal) on researchers working on contemporary history. It promises to be a delightful read since it is history written with a lay reader in mind, distinct from the polemical treatises by those historians who write for each other in a convoluted and heavily biased prose that is seriously off-putting. And often not very honest either. A lot of the audience was what Shashi Tharoor describes humorously as the ‘Tik-Tok generation’, backpacked, baseball-capped and wired to their mobiles. They are unlikely to either buy or read it, yet it was good to see young people on an occasion like this. The discussion between Tharoor and Dasgupta traced the rise and fall of the ‘original’ right-wing Swatantra Party (Minoo Masani et al). Dasgupta also explained how there was always a right-leaning cabal even in the Nehru Congress. The left turn that the Congress later took probably explains how it has now been depleted of several members unable to accept this turn. One can argue with this but it struck a chord in people of my generation who can recall those fearless speakers and some brilliant parliamentarians, such as Piloo Mody. That’s one Modi that I think Rahul Gandhi forgot in his tirade against the rest.

The other big, fat book is one that came out a few years ago: William Dalrymple’s ‘Anarchy’, a brilliant and delightfully readable account of the loot of India by the East India Company. Again, it is an absorbing story, written with no bias and so well-researched that it takes your breath away. The reader can almost hear Dalrymple’s Scottish voice speak to her as he uncovers the shameful tale of those natives who betrayed their own motherland for a few pieces of silver. Incidentally, the word ‘loot’, he tells us, entered the English language from this shameful plunder of a land the English left impoverished and shattered. From the Kohinoor to the shiploads of gold, silver and precious stones to paintings, manuscripts and heaven knows what else. Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and others like them have much to answer for. It is not surprising that the wealth of 19th century England that many now believe came from the Industrial Revolution was the loot that destroyed the flourishing crafts and textiles here. Human rights? What are those?

The third one is the oldest in this series, Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Age of Anger: A History of the Present’, and brings this trio lying in my study to a close. This is the hardest to read as I have discovered over the last few summers. Mishra’s canvas is huge: from 200 years of European imperialism to the rise of the Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram. His argument is that the roots of anger in our age lie in the forgotten promise of freedom, equality and dignity through growth, industrialisation and nation-building. The traumatic social and economic changes these led to created a vast population of betrayed and rootless youth, who were in search of wealth, a secure future and a reliable messiah. It is only through an understanding of this that we can begin to comprehend the rise of militant movements, lawlessness and a self-destroying anger that has spun out of control.

To build a future that will appease this anger, we will have to go to the past and create a present that provides dignity and safety to all. And although this is easy to write about, where are political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln whose lessons have been forgotten and twisted out of recognition? The Age of Innocence never existed, it seems, except as a dream that we have been fed by self-serving politicians.