60 years ago a man in
Here, though I must take a minute of your valuable time to point out that the previous world war was led by men with moustaches resembling the prairies and to arrive at the rather paradoxical conclusion that the previous paragraph makes no sense at all....facial hair failure, or lack of it cannot be a cause of war. That however is not the point. The point is Bwana Hitler gave the British a pretty sound thrashing, thwarted only by the arrival of those pesky yanks from across the
!No wait,thats not the point either!
The point is that Indians took notice.” Hang on, we said,” Lets give the British a pretty sound thrashing too”. Which we then proceeded to spectacularly fail to do. The war weary British ,hewever,were by them tired of trying to convince us and the world at large that Britannia was the "in " thing and so decided to pack up and leave !!!So it was that 15ht August 1947, Indians awoke to find that an Indian had replaced the Queen as our supreme ruler and that it was now solely our responsibility to bungle up our future and we could no longer blame a faceless foreign monarchy!!!!!!
Hang on, that’s not the point either! The point is what would have happened, if we, like the good folk across the seas in
What if, to this very day,
Let’s take a look shall we!!!
To begin with we'd have suffered. We would have been, in no uncertain terms, strangers in our own country, forced to bend to every whim of a small island nation far away. The press would continue to have been heavily censored and revolutionary bombs would have continued to fly. And the communal hatred we witnessed pre -partition would have continued unchecked ,creating utter chaos within the subcontinent.But, and this is a very big but, for how long??
How long would it take before the 20th century caught up with the Raj.How long would it take before the entity we know as political correctness reared its inevitable head? And how long would it take before
Not very long is what I would say.
As the 20th century would roll inexorably on, and intellectualism would rise,
And here’s the clincher....not only would we have given every opportunity we asked for, we would have been given more.oh yes. We’d have become the SC/STs of the
We'd have reservations in institutions across the Empire, maybe even elsewhere. No longer would someone need CVs the size of large rolls of toilet paper or a bank account rivaling the healthcare budget of small African nations no one has even heard of, to get into a venerable and esteemed institution. A slip of paper, say a passport maybe, proving that you’re one of the downtrodden races, and voila..... youre in
We'd never have been partitioned,and,in the absence of cross border terrorism(there would have been no borders, remember), return trips from Kashmir would no longer have to be undertaken at public expense in a black body bag in the colour of your choice.
It’d have been
And with the RAF taking care of our air force, we’d no longer be crashing Mig 21s into each other, we’d be crashing top of the line Eurofighter jets into each other.
Our politicians wouldn’t be uncouth, illiterate, ruffians who’d spend their time running organized crime rackets from their back gardens and spend their time misappropriating public funds ,they’d be educated, articulate gentlemen who'd spend their time running organized crime rackets in their back gardens and spend their time misappropriating public funds!!!!
It wouldn’t have been Jyoti basu who’d have closed down the jute mills and rendered thousands jobless, it’d have been Margaret Thatcher and no political debate, or even normal everyday conversation, come to that, could have begun without a cursory discussion on the weather!
The famous British tradition of understatement would have been the buzzword for the day with the Boxing Day tsunami being described as a bit of a puddle and the Orissa cyclones being referred to as an annoying draught!!
In the proudest traditions of
And who wouldn’t like to see Shibu Siren trussed up in a tuxedo to attend parliament!!!
We wouldn’t have traffic jams characterized by boiling tempers and the choicest of Hindi abuses.Oh no , we’d have traffic jams where drivers would sit quietly doing the crossword and occasionally taking time off to comment on, you guessed it, the weather!!!!!!
Price Charles would compete with Mithunda or maybe Rajani for the title of
NO longer would we have cows docilely sitting in the middle of busy thoroughfares, causing the inevitable traffic snarls..Theyd be mad cows and they’d sit restlessly in the middle of busy thoroughfares, occasionally leaving their self proclaimed posts to take pot shots at assorted foolhardy pedestrians or to punch neat round holes in the bodywork of passing cars!!!!
And maybe, just maybe, we’d have picked up the famous restraint the British used to show towards sex and stopped copulating like porn star bunnies on viagra!!!Oh and with a bit of luck their quaintly polite set of manners too!!!We'd have to pay the government to sit in their traffic jams but errant auto drivers and seemingly blind pedestrians would be pulled into shape!
Of course there would have been setbacks. His Toniness would have invited the yanks over to use our country as a base for bombing the Afghans and Rahmania would sell fish and chips, not to mention Baadshah which would be selling boiled vegetables in mint sauce, specially prepared to make any other form of culinary experience seem in comparison, almost heavenly.
Our railway trains would no longer have their destination written on the sides of the carriages, but only on the front of the engine as dictated by Royal Railways custom. this would naturally entail a stampede of humanity heading for the front of each train because lets face it, no one wants to go to Ernakulam when they wanted to be in Nongpoh.Of course there wouldn’t be a stampede, theyd be orderly queues but that’s hardly any consolation, we’d still lbe muddled up and get carted off to Darjeeling in December with a suitcase packed for a nice relaxing trip to Goa!!!
The thing is though that while we may be better off in lot of ways and be inconvenienced in a great many others, all of this pales in the light of the fact that we'd have lost our identity. We’d have become Anglo Indians and not Indians and Tagore would no longer have his songs sung as national anthems, with the efforts of a great many of our revolutionaries going to a shameful waste! All things considered, no matter what the Singaporeans said, id rather live in a muddle that’s patently Indian rather than one that reeks of stiff upper lips!!!!
So, on to the rather unexpected conclusion....Jai Hind!!
For those of you who are curious....I meant this to be a bit unusual and slightly prophetic ,not unpatriotic and I hope u can see it thus too!!!!No I don’t believe in political correctness and refuse to call Black jack, African American Jack! AND I don’t sport a mustache either!!
Thank you Rama for poisoning my young and innocent mind with the seeds of this post...May u be eaten alive by mutant three headed baby goats!!!!
