MJ Akbar
NEW DELHI: This is not a story about alcohol. It is a story about hypocrisy.
Motilal Nehru was campaigning for his seat in the central legislature when a provocative heckler asked whether he drank alcohol. Alcohol was not considered ‘polite’ in conventional Indian society, and Mahatma Gandhi made it a non-negotiable sin in Congress when he took over the national struggle in 1920. A teetotal culture was one of those points upon which Hindus and Muslims could easily agree; and each vote counted in the limited franchise under British rule. Only 2.8 per cent of Indians were eligible to vote in that pseudo-democracy, a right determined by wealth as measured in taxes.
Motilal Nehru replied in the thunderous tones that had intimidated many a witness in court: “Jee haan main peeta hoon. Mere pahle mera baap peeta tha aur uske pahle mera dada. Mera beta peeta hai aur main ummeed karta hun ki uske baad mera pota bhi piye ga. Aap ko koi itraaz hai? (Yes, I drink. Before me my father used to drink, and before him my grandfather. My son drinks and I hope my grandson will do so as well. Any objections?)” The English language cannot do justice to the heavy irony, anger and rebuke in the Urdu phrase koi itraaz hai?
The heckler was silenced. Motilal won without any more fuss. He and his generation were above pretence or pretention.
A classic history
The story is told with panache by Braj Kumar (BK or ‘Bijju’) Nehru, who was brought up by his granduncle Motilal in Anand Bhawan as an intrinsic part of the joint family. Nice Guys Finish Second is not just another mere memoir albeit culled from a phenomenal memory; it is a classic history of a niche elite within the north Indian gentry of the 20th century. For nearly three decades this book had been on the periphery of my reading list; when eventually I did open the book, I could not put it down. The personality of Motilal is the prism that adds sparkle and dimension to social history, reflecting the mores, passions and beliefs of a generation that laid the foundations of freedom.
After 1920 Mohandas Gandhi became the architect who built upon that base, shaped the soul of nationalism and set the ethical rules for self-government which, alas, evaporated within a decade of the Mahatma’s assassination in 1948.
Motilal, patriarch of a family which remains in active quest of power a century later, built his fortune through a fabled legal practice, while simultaneously rising as a star of India’s incipient urge for freedom. He was the ultimate self-made success story, an eminent public figure long before Gandhi returned to India in 1915.
Motilal disagreed with much of Gandhi’s political theology. He was contemptuous of shibboleths like celibacy and teetotalism, dismissive about panacea like village-centric self-sufficiency and bewildered by non-violence. As he told his family, he would have preferred to tear apart the racist, exploitative British ruler, although such animosity never extended to the foreign individual. Motilal preferred Western dress and diet, and lauded the social reform and education which had propelled economic advance. He admired Gandhi’s genius, sacrifice, commitment and command over the Indian imagination. He accepted Gandhi’s leadership but refused to kowtow to every preachy whim. Gandhi, in turn, was too astute to impose his will beyond a point on patriots who wanted their own intellectual space.
‘A man of destiny’
Motilal did not hide paternal pride when his spartan son began to overshadow the father, and proclaimed to family and friends that Jawaharlal was, to use a Victorian phrase, a “man of destiny”. As India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal married quarter-baked Gandhian ideas to half-baked Marxist notions of state control over the economy to create a curious hybrid that trapped India’s economy in the fetters of licence raj till released into the modern era in the 1980s and 1990s. Hindsight provokes a question: Would Nehru have served India better if he had been more faithful to his father Motilal’s economic instincts than to godfather Gandhi’s recipes or uncle Karl Marx’s authoritarian theories? I do not know the answer, but that does not dilute the question.
As a young man Jawaharlal both enjoyed and resented his princely inheritance and tried to compensate by being contrarian. There were flashes of early petulance, flinging a jar at a retreating servant because it was jam when he had asked for marmalade. Motilal gave his children the best Western education. Jawaharlal had an English private tutor before going to Harrow; his sisters had an English governess. Jawaharlal’s clothes were fashioned by the British King’s tailors; when he took to smoking, his cigarettes were rose or violet-tipped. Home culture was a synthesis. A Kashmiri Pandit cook prepared traditional fare; a Muslim cook made the Western meal (soup, fish, meat, sweet dish) that was de rigueur on Motilal’s table.
But there was never the kind of decadence exhibited in the home of a grandee and fellow Allahabad lawyer Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, whose second son Trijugi Narayan played tennis with majestically minimal running. Ball boys placed the tennis ball on his racket or in his hand when he had to serve, since he considered it too undignified to lift the ball from the ground. When the game ended a servant would rush up to push his arms through the sleeves and head through the neck of a sweater. The blazer was draped in similar fashion. A servant put a cigarette in Trijugi’s mouth and lit it. The Sapru princeling did do his own inhaling, however.
Motilal disagreed with much of Gandhi’s political theology. He was contemptuous of shibboleths like celibacy and teetotalism, dismissive about panacea like village-centric self-sufficiency and bewildered by non-violence
Gandhian transformation
The indulgent lifestyle in Anand Bhawan ended in 1920 with the transformation to Gandhian denial. Jawaharlal conscientiously switched to the poor man’s gram at teatime and abandoned silk shirts for coarse handspun. Motilal, only ready to go thus far and no further in his homage to Gandhism, switched to handspun but ordered the finest weave from Andhra. When a “dear old Kashmiri lady” asked Motilal what Jawaharlal’s contribution had been to their fabulous home with every modern facility, Motilal replied: “Woh janab tainchoo nikaltey rahtey hain (That gentleman keeps being a nitpicker).”
When furniture was ordered from Tomlin in Calcutta (at a staggering sum of 16,000 rupees when a day’s rate at the Taj in Mumbai was 23 rupees), the son insisted that it be “plain, plain”. Jawaharlal tried to “de-class” himself with the ideological impetus of a man who had surrendered to Gandhi and remained captive to Marx. Abstinence could be petulant. When he returned from Europe in 1927, Jawaharlal cut down dinner by one course. What father and son agreed upon was a domestic environment governed by rationalism, agnosticism, and spiritual freedom, rather than devotion to rituals or caste rules. Motilal refused to preserve high-caste ‘purity’ by doing prayashchit on return from his first trip abroad.
Motilal’s wealth was the fruit of long working days that ended at around 8.30 or 9 in the evening, when was heard the war cry of the British Empire: “Koi hai? (Is anyone there?)” The question mark was irrelevant: it was a summons, not a query. The ever-present valet Bhola would respond: “Hazir! (Present!)”. A bottle of Haig’s Dimple Scotch would appear along with Abdulla cigarettes made with fine Turkish or Egyptian tobacco, rather than inferior Virginia. Motilal’s official quota was two drinks. The size of each drink however remained unquantified and a fly would often mysteriously be found in the diminishing second glass necessitating a third.
Six-month imprisonment
Son persuaded father to turn teetotal so that both could become sober soldiers in Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. But the patrician past came to the rescue in unsuspected ways. Motilal, legal luminary and monarch of the courtroom, became, to use his own amused expression, a jailbird when they were sentenced to six months simple imprisonment for challenging British rule. The residence changed but not the resident. Motilal would give orders to the British warden in jail with the same exuberant confidence that he exercised at home. He sat on the floor on a dari instead of at a table, but welcomed visitors every afternoon with a large spread of fruit and sweets. There were no restrictions. Word spread that the best afternoon tea in Lucknow was available in jail.
The sound of Motilal’s famous qahqaha, or belly laugh, reverberated through the prison. The reason, as the patriarch explained, was because he knew the Governor of the United Provinces, Sir Harcourt Butler, very well. Both had enjoyed the “rivers of champagne” at parties hosted by landlords, taluqdars and zemindars. Jawaharlal’s spells in prison in the 1930s, after his father’s death, were far less salubrious.
In 1925 Motilal went back to his Dimple Scotch after the death of his great friend CR Das, who had also given up drinking in the zeal for Gandhi. Motilal’s logic was persuasive, at least to himself. Das had died because the sudden denial of alcohol had acted as a shock to his system. Motilal had no desire for a similar fate.
Civilised elitism was part of clan culture, even if finances in every wing of the extended family could not always match the luxury levels set by Motilal. BK Nehru’s father Brijlal took an MA from Exeter College, Oxford and ate the required dinners at Inner Temple to become a barrister, opted for the Imperial Civil Service, was selected for the finance department and posted to Allahabad in 1908. Naturally, he lived at Anand Bhawan with wife Rameshwari, daughter of Dewan Narendra Nath of Lahore.
(To be continued…)
What father and son agreed upon was a domestic environment governed by rationalism, agnosticism, and spiritual freedom, rather than devotion to rituals or caste rules
