(extract from my book ” Francois Gautier on On India, Hindu & @narendramodi “)
The British first established their capital in Kolkata, then shifted it to Delhi in 1912, though it was only completed by 1931. Delhi also had a strategic importance: all the invasions that wounded India throughout the ages, came from the North via the Khyber Pass, in today’s Pakistan. Delhi was the gate where they could be stopped. Indeed, it is said that there are seven cities below the present capital and that its history dates back to the Mahabharata, where it is mentioned under the name of Indraprastha, which means the “City of Indra”, capital of the Pandava Dynasty around 1400 BCE. The glory of Delhi continued for several centuries, notably through the Tomara dynasty in the 8th century of our era. Delhi has a particularly bloody history, precisely because of its strategic location, and it was often brutally assaulted, raped and butchered by various invaders coming from Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan etc… Even today the Encyclopaedia Britannica remembers the killing of 100. 000 Hindus in a single day, by Timur (1336-1405). In 1947, the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, kept Delhi as the Capital of India, in the same way that he borrowed everything the British had left: the democratic, constitutional, legislative, educational systems.
No doubt, Delhi, both the new and the old cities, are unique and beautiful, but it remains a capital which was made by the English for the English. The “masters” lived there in royal luxury, in vast bungalows with beautiful lawns and many servants ; their wives were able to drive in horse carts – and later in cars – along large tree-shaded avenues ; their children played in beautiful parks, such as Lodhi garden or Nehru park ; and the rulers, from their palaces, renamed after independence (South Block, North Block, Rashtrapati Bhavan etc…) kept an iron hand on their Indian Dominion, surrounded by pomp and martial music…
In time, Delhi has shown that it is not a capital fit for modern India. There are many reasons for that. Firstly, it is a capital which is far away, not only from South India, but even from Central India. If for instance you fly from Madras to Delhi, you find that the climate is different, the language is not the same, and so is the food, the habits, and the customs ; secondly, Delhi lives in a closed circuit: the intelligentsia, the media, the diplomats and some of the politicians, mingle there together and often repeat the same clichés, the same prejudices – secularism, Hindu fanaticism etc… ; thirdly, after the tragic assassination of Indira Gandhi and then her son Rajiv Gandhi, security has become very tight in Delhi, not only for the Prime Minister, but also for many of his ministers, MPs, and even MLAs. This has became a kind of status and unless you have at least two or three heavily armed police around you, you are a nobody in Delhi. This security syndrome has also been embraced by the embassies, which have become fortresses: whoever is seeking a US, British, Canadian or French visa, has to cross several levels of heavy and unpleasant security, before he or she is able to enter the core of the embassy.
Delhi is also the capital of bureaucracy. Jawaharlal Nehru also embraced a Soviet-like socialist system, that relied heavily on bureaucrats to implement its policies. This bureaucracy has become tentacular to the extreme: in the 90’s, when I was a young journalist, Shastri Bhavan, where the Press Information Bureau was situated, was a relatively decent place, not too crowded. Today, the number of cars parked inside the Bhavan complex has tripled! Which means that in thirty years, the number of bureaucrats has also TRIP ! Now, this bureaucracy has a particular mindset: it was fashioned by the British to serve them, regardless of the fact that most “Babus” were of Indian origin, whereas their masters were “white”. Today nothing has changed: top bureaucrats may be hard working and sincere, but they will serve in the same way, any master, whether he or she belongs to the Congress, the BJP, the Shiv Sena or the Trinamool Party! As you descend along the bureaucratic ladder, it becomes more and more tamasic, often indifferent to the welfare of people – and sometimes downright corrupt!
It is practically impossible for a minister, or even a Prime Minister, to govern India without the help of this “Babus”. Mr Modi himself tried in the early days to bypass them and even to reform them – but their power of inertia was such that he had to temporize and rely almost totally on them to control his ministers and govern India.
Has this nexus of bureaucracy, the diplomatic bubble, the intelligentsia and the media arrogance, coupled with a faraway location of Delhi, made it an unsuitable capital for a 21st century India? A few people thought that Mr Modi, who himself comes from a central state, Gujarat, and is deeply affiliated to the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) which is located in Nagpur, Maharashtra, also a central state, would have opted for another capital. But surprisingly, Mr Modi, who disliked Delhi in his days as Chief Minister of Gujarat, and was a stranger to the complex and intricate political, parliamentary and bureaucratic machinery of Delhi, decided not only to keep Delhi as the capital but also to build upon it: a new Parliament and Secretariat had been erected on India Gate, which will reinforce the immutable status as capital of India.
Yet, Indore, Ujjain, Nagpur, Bhopal, or even Pune, would have made a much more central capital, easily reachable by all, either from the North or the South – and where the Prime Minister would have been able to listen better to the heartbeat of India, as he could in Gujarat. It would also have broken the backbone of the bureaucracy, the diplomatic corps, the intelligentsia and the media, who would have all been disoriented in a Delhi deserted by the Prime Minister and his entire Cabinet.
The PM has an office in South Block, the massive Secretariat compound on the right side of the Presidential Palace, which was also built by the British and which has huge offices and great architectural beauty. It is a seven minute’s drive from the official residence of the PM of India, which is in Race Course Road (renamed now Lok Kalyan Marg). All the higher officials of the @BJP4India Govt, like the Principal Secretary, all the different Secretaries of the @PMOIndia the National Security Advisor etc, have their offices in South Block. But for different reasons, one being of course the security problem, Mr Modi having to move with a number of police cars and traffic being frozen for at least half an hour, the Prime Minister chose to make Lok Kalyan Marg, both his residence and his office. It is of course heavily guarded and particularly during COVID times, Mr Modi hardly stepped out of it and did most of his work and interactions online, via Zoom or other means and having his officers come one by one to his residence.
The COVID-19 has frozen us in many patterns, although it has passed, and for practical reasons, Mr Modi continues to live and work in his official residence, only moving out when there is some very important project to be inaugurated or for campaigning. You could say that the PMO has moved to Race Course Road and that all his trusted officers, such as the Principal Secretary P.K. Mishra or his Press Secretary, Hiren Joshi, spend most of their time with the Prime Minister in his house. In the process, Mr Modi may have lost the ear on the ground that he had when he was CM of Gujarat and met a lot of people, not only being in the center of India, but also more accessible to the common folk and experts from all fields. Today the PM needs to rely on his PMO and a few trusted aides to get reliable feedback and information on what is happening in his country and how his reforms are faring.
Having lived a long time in India, and having witnessed how Government officials, Ministers, peons and even devotees of Gurus, behave with their masters, it could be that Mr Modi does not get the accurate, sincere, and correct feedback that he should receive. The Bhakti (Yoga of Devotion) element in Indians, as well as a certain respect and fear of whoever is hierarchically above themselves, make these people tell their masters ONLY what they think he or she wants to hear. Does anybody tell Mr Modi that his Swachh Bharat program, though it did dramatically improve things, failed in many places? He should be also warned that his brilliant demonetization move has too stumbled: corruption is still rampant in India – it has become a habit rather than a need and the amount of black money is still tremendous after ten years of Mr Modi’s reign: if you want to buy any flat or land, you can be sure that at least 40 to 70% of the transaction will be in cash, and the amount of 500 rupees notes that people keep in their houses or offices, is staggering and frightening. In conclusion, Delhi is the WRONG Capital for Bharat @GarudaPrakashan
FRANCOIS GAUTIER 