INDIA: The Back of the Dinner Jacket

In 40 centuries of Indian history empire after empire had risen in a glorious blaze of peacock plumes and glinting spears only to founder in dark blood and ignominy. Last week British rule in India was ending; surprised applause followed its dinner jacket out the door.

The Recessional. As 400 million Indians (one-fifth of mankind) became self-governing, the British recessional was well begun. From lonely outposts in Kashmir, looking nervously north to the Russian border, from lush Assam where tea bushes grow in the spectral sau trees’ shade, from residences deep in central India’s jungles, from gay and airy Bangalore, more than 60,000 Britons had served notice that they were leaving the land which had been Britain’s treasure and shame, her pride and her increasing care.

The Bombay Royal Yacht Club, where no Indian could tread even as a member’s guest, was about to close; the Government had refused to renew its lease. No more would the pink pukka sahibs and their leathery memsahibs stare glassily over the glassy bay. Gone from most of the smart hotels were the signs “Europeans only.” In cool Simla, Indians now jostled along the Mall where 20 years ago no person in Indian dress would have been allowed.

At many a plush hotel where the British dinner jacket once gave the evening scene the aspect of a penguins’ conclave, the dhoti (loin cloth), sherwani (tunic), jibba (smock) and achkan (long coat) now held pride of place. Rohini Kumar Chowdhry, Assam’s long-haired, wild-eyed member of the Constituent Assembly, demanded a special clause in the new Constitution’s bill of rights to forbid any hotel displaying “Evening Clothes Only.”

Indians were erasing the memory of British rule from the very place names. Calcutta’s Clive Street (India’s Wall Street) had been renamed Netaji Subhas Road to honor the late Bengal leader, Subhas Chandra Bose. He was a traitor in British eyes for helping the Japs; but to Indians Bose was a patriot. The holy Ganges would revert to the Sanskrit form, Ganga. Madras would become Chennapatnam. The city of Rajahmundry would become Rajamahendravaram, which would be harder to spell, but since 87% of Indians could not write that would not matter so much.

The Residue. History, sloppy as usual, had decreed a fade-out rather than a blackout of the British Raj. No longer Viceroy, Mountbatten would become Governor General of Hindu India and chairman of the commission to split the nation’s assets between Moslem Pakistan and Hindu India. Sir Patrick Spens, * India’s Chief Justice, had been assigned the unenviable job of arbitrating all constitutional issues between the two stormy new nations. For a while, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck would be Supreme Commander of both Pakistan and Indian armies.

Virtually the entire British commercial community was staying. With a capital stake estimated at four to six billion dollars, British tea planters in Assam, jute mill owners in Calcutta, heads of shipping and insurance companies in Bombay preferred the dozens of servants and the abundant food to the prospect of doing business in the deepening drabness of postwar Britain.

Quite suddenly, Britons were more popular than they had ever been in India. In Calcutta, Hindus dragged eleven Moslems from a train, hacked them to death. At Amritsar 120 were killed, hundreds injured in rioting between Sikhs and Moslems. But none attacked the once-hated British, who could thank two men for the heightened prestige of their graceful exit.

Prime Minister Attlee had cut through India Office red tape and personally conducted most of the crucial discussions which finally led to a settlement with Indian leaders. With little enough to boast about at home, Attlee might get a salute from history for his handling of the Indian problem. Viscount Mountbatten’s tact and informality had brought agreement where none seemed possible.

The Balance Sheet. What after two centuries could be said of British rule in India? Credits & debits were both enormous. About as much land is irrigated in India today as in all the rest of the world. The Empire’s biggest iron and steel plant is at Jamshedpur. The British had built up in India an incorruptible judicial system, a good police force, a vast (if substandard) network of roads, and the world’s fourth largest railway system.

Yet Indians were still among the world’s poorest people. Seventy-five percent hovered perpetually between gnawing hunger and outright starvation. Malaria, bubonic plague and a host of other diseases made an Indian’s life expectancy at birth the world’s lowest — 27 years.

On the whole British despotism had been benevolent. Amid this week’s flag-waving celebrations of their independence, thoughtful Indians wondered what new conquerors might be coming over the hill, and whether they would be as helpful.

-“Gude Sir Patrick Spens” in the old Scottish ballad was “the best when sailor that ever sail’d the sea.” Nevertheless, when the King assigned him to command a bad-weather cruise to Norway, gude Sir Patrick asked a question his namesake may have cause to repeat: “O wha is this has done this deed and tauld the king o’ me?”