My blood boils in patriotic protest. How dare Britain demand a visa surety of only Rs 2.7 lakh as if we are "mango people in a banana republic" as a privileged mleccha once called us? He should know that's peanuts in the big league of mega-scams involving thousands of crores.
India isn't to be trifled with. Akhand Bharat included Afghanistan. Another mleccha but a "friendly" one (A L Basham's self-description) says Hindus taught Southeast Asians writing. George Coedes called the region (and his book about it) Les Etats hindouises d'Indochine et d'Indonesie, The Hindu States of Indochina and Indonesia. Pseudo-secularists turned it into The Indianised States of Southeast Asia. Bracketing us with breakaway states such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, Ravana's bailiwick or sub-Saharan Nigeria and Ghana is racist and discriminatory. Only Pakistani agents say there is more poverty in this land of milk and honey than there.
Kolkata is London. Darjeeling is Switzerland. Singapore, South Korea and Japan are desperate to catch up with Vibrant Gujarat. True, Ahmedabad is plastered with advertisements for cheap fares, visas, college admission and residence permits. But ambitious young Gujaratis yearn for Australia, not overcrowded England where they already comprise nearly half the immigrant population.
Yet, British vanity believes Indians are dying to live in England. "Now you can stay here for life," David Ennals, then Britain's home secretary, retorted triumphantly to my complaint of harassment at Heathrow on arrival to represent my Indian paper in Britain. He looked nonplussed at my saying I didn't want to. When I fell ill in London 35 years later and it was touch and go whether I could fly back before my visa expired, friends in the British Foreign Office graciously changed my status. "You can apply for citizenship after five years," said the officer stamping my passport. He looked as bewildered as Ennals when I explained my son is the fifth generation of the family to study in Britain and return happily to the homeland.
My new status meant awkward airport encounters every time I went back. To the "you've been away a long time" of accusing immigration officers, I explained I lived in India and Singapore. "You're supposed to live in the UK," they snapped. Eventually, I surrendered the special visa, to the chagrin of a well-known Indian academic who thought I was "demoting" myself. A cousin who spends part of the year in the US found such experiences so harrowing that she took American citizenship. Each time she flew to New York, US Immigration threatened to cancel her Green Card. "People become Americans to live in the States," she wailed. "I had to become American to live abroad."
The British thought they were throwing us a crumb of comfort by saying the new rule would "affect only a few hundred people". The mother of democracies doesn't know only the few matter here - not the teeming masses. Hegel recognised "the Orientals knew only that one (the ruler) is free". Against six under-employed, unemployed, unemployable and superannuated male Windsors, only one not-so-young man in India's first family is looking for a job.
With two students named Gandhi and Nehru, the principal of Britain's first Atlantic College didn't need any more Indians. The late D F Karaka made the same point. "Daddy", asked The Current's talismanic little boy when Vijayalakshmi Pandit went to Moscow as ambassador, "why aren't there more women ambassadors?" Daddy: "Nehru's other sister is busy looking after her husband."
Never speak disrespectfully of the elite, Lady Bracknell might have warned. "Only people who can't get into it do that." Napoleon believed every French soldier's knapsack contained a marshal's baton. Barack Obama personifies every American schoolboy's presidential hope. Every Indian aspires to see his name on airport boards as the only private person excluded from security checks. The right spouse helps - not being England-returned.
England being a state of mind rather than a country (quoting Alan Bennett), it isn't necessary to go there to know it, as Nirad C Chaudhuri established. An American visa - which my cousin squandered - is different. Narendra Modi couldn't get it. But the world is flocking to Gandhinagar to learn development at his feet and his inspired Innovas - much smarter than L K Advani's creaking rath - performed miracles in Uttarakhand.
Not that Modi wants to step out of Hindutva. But it's a shame wasting those all-expenses-found invitations. David Cameron would rebut Dean Acheson's cruel jibe about Britain losing an empire and not finding a role if he could manage that. Modi handsomely rewards middlemen, spin doctors and other benefactors. Ask Ratan Tata.
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