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Gateway to silliness

It's a common sight today: double-decker buses in Bombay painted with the colours, slogans and logos of the ever-mushrooming dotcoms. I haven't heard anyone objecting. Why would they, you want to know? Well, some years ago, some of those very buses were painted red, white and blue. That time, many people objected. We fought the British to get our freedom, they said. So it is shameful, they said, to have our public buses painted with the British flag.

Then, it was all part of an advertising campaign for tourism in Britain. As in many other ad campaigns before and since -- as with the dotcoms today -- several of Bombay's famous BEST double-decker buses had been painted. That time, with the British flag. It was this that put the cat among the patriotic pigeons who populate our civic and political circles. They wanted us to feel grossly insulted by the dressed-up buses. They seemed to think our sense of nationhood is so fragile, it will not survive a coat of paint. A coat of paint on a bus, at that.

Evidently, they forgot that two-storeyed buses are themselves a legacy the British left us. And today, when another decidedly foreign invention -- the web and its dotcoms -- is plastered all over the same buses, patriotic pigeon antennae don't seem in the least disturbed.

More on that in a bit; but apparently this is the half-boiled mush that passes for patriotism these days. And with the Union Jack no longer adorning our buses, it's the Gateway of India that the patriots seek to envelop in the mush.

Yes, the Gateway, that grand old symbol of Bombay. Parts of the monument have developed cracks and holes over the years, and apparently bits of it fall off daily. Concerned by all this, a group of people have put together a plan to carry out repairs to it. They plan to finish the fix-up job by Diwali this year. When they are done, they will celebrate the festival of lights by hanging the world's largest chandelier inside the Gateway for four days. This enormous lamp is crafted by Baccarat, the famous French crystal-makers. Ordinarily, it lights up their museum in France, but right now it is on a tour of the planet. It will come here from Japan, and such is the demand for it in that country that it will be ferried back there in time for Christmas. But for the privilege of the use of the Gateway for its chandelier, Baccarat will even contribute towards the repair work.

Amazingly, the chandelier set the cat among the patriotic pigeons again. How can we allow this "foreign agency", not-very-youthful Youth Congress activists blustered, to hang its lamp from a "national monument"? Several of them formed a "human chain" at the Gateway to "prevent" the chandelier. "Don't commercialise Indian heritage", warned one of their placards.

Seems Youth Congress ranks have learned lessons in small-minded chauvinism from across the political divide and learned them well. Still, they evidently forgot a small detail about the Gateway. This "national monument", our "Indian Heritage" as they say it is, is itself a legacy the British left us. In fact, it is substantially more than that. It was erected to commemorate the first visit to India by a King of England: George V, who came to see us with his Queen Mary in 1911. The Gateway certifies the welcome the Crown's Indian subjects gave the regal couple then. To that extent, it actually celebrates British rule in India. So if it is a "national monument", it is a national monument to foreigners, to their rule over us. It is a monument, above all, to everything we had fought against for decades by the time Independence came in 1947.

This is not to say that there is a contradiction in letting the Gateway stand for India. It is indeed our heritage, indeed a magnificent national monument. We need feel no shame in that. (After all, one lesson small-minded chauvinists never seem to learn is that our history, however distasteful it might seem at times, is our heritage). Still, it is more than faintly ironic that we are suddenly concerned about "protecting" this structure -- this particular structure, I mean -- from the designs of a foreign firm. That this hymn to British rule is a suddenly a treasured Indian icon.

Besides, if irony interests you, take a short walk from the Gateway when you next visit Bombay. You'll find irony stretches further than you think.

Why is Kala Ghoda -- the junction where you will find Bombay landmarks like Jehangir Art Gallery, Rhythm House and Madras Cafe's superb cups of coffee -- called Kala Ghoda? Because at that junction, there once stood a massive bronze statue of another English King, Edward VII, riding a magnificent black horse (thus 'Kala Ghoda', 'black horse'). Just as the Gateway does, this statue commemorated a royal visit: as Prince of Wales, Edward came to Bombay in 1875. And what happened to the statue? In a 1965 fit of anti-colonial rage, political workers -- undoubtedly patriotic ones, I'm sure -- damaged the statue. It was hurriedly carted away to a forgotten corner of the zoo in Byculla.

Walk on from there, down the little alley that leads between Elphinstone College and CJ Hall. You will come upon a dusty, unassuming asbestos shed. It's hard to see what's inside, but if you do make the effort, prepare to be startled. There are two larger-than-life statues of British kings in that shed -- George V and Edward VIII. These statues used to be near the Gateway, commemorating the very event the Gateway itself does: George V's 1911 visit.

Spare a thought for what you have learned on your walk. So offensive is the memory of British rule that we hide statues of two of its kings in a shed. We damage and whisk away another king's statue, erected to remember his trip to Bombay. Yet a memorial of another visit, by one of those very kings, must be treated as a "national monument." Certainly, nobody has yet proposed covering the Gateway in asbestos.

Really, what is this: Patriotism? Nationalism? Chauvinism?

Or just confusion?

The other day, I took a bus to get to the Gateway. Past Kala Ghoda and the asbestos shed it went, past several buildings and landmarks the British built for us. As we rumbled along, I mused about the irony all around: a shed, its statues, the statue that isn't there, a massive triumphal arch for George V and his Queen.

And I mulled over patriotism. Is Indian nationhood so insecure that a few statues and a flag on a bus threaten us? Or that a firm willing to help repair and illuminate Bombay's best-known monument must be rejected? Far more important, should patriotism be defined in these convoluted and rather banal terms anyway?

No time for answers, for I had to get off. Looked up at the bus. It was one of those double-decker dotcom-painted things. Annoyed by the Commercialisation of our Indian Heritage, I indignantly stamped my Reeboks.

Dilip D'Souza