The grand old man of Delhi

by  M P Bhandara

He is 94 years old. He is perhaps India’s most widely known English columnist, novelist and translator of Urdu poetry. His remarks are polemical, arrow-straight and honest. His pen as a newspaper columnist can make the mighty shiver in their boots. His short stories can compare with the best of Maupassant and the very best of Manto. His longer novel, written half-a-century ago — Train to Pakistan — is a classic: it probably ranks in the top ten in its genre of sub-continental writings in English; in the anguish of this novel he tries to come to terms with the tragedy and bloodshed of Partition.

His journalism of the past half century can be read today, long after the subject matter is of little consequence, for its brevity, wit and recreated relevance. His writings are singularly devoid of jargon. He calls a spade a spade. He is still highly productive, churning out a widely read weekly column for The Hindustan Times; he is more alert than most men half his age.

The man is Sardar Khushwant Singh. A renaissance man; an iconoclast, an agnostic, a free-thinker, he shocks you, makes you laugh (he has published joke books), titillates you, and can also bring tears to your eyes. He is irreverent, unsparing and takes sex out of the bourgeois shadows. He has widened the mental horizons of generations of Indians (and also Pakistanis). He lashes out against meanness, snobbery and religious fanaticism. The truth is often hard to swallow, but he makes one accept it not by bursting eyes but by opening them. His oeuvre is staggering; it ranges from a classic History of the Sikhs in two volumes and translations of the Hymns of the Sikh Gurus (though an agnostic, he has great respect for all religions). Now in his tenth decade he has absorbed himself in translating Urdu poetry into English and in the process has delved deep into the Urdu language. He is a great admirer of Iqbal, who he considers the greatest poet after Ghalib. He can quote profusely from Ghalib, Iqbal, Zauq, Faiz, et al. as well as Shakespeare, Milton and other great English poets. He is also an avid naturalist and can identify every bird, tree, shrub, butterfly and wild animal not only of his beloved Punjab but beyond.

His newspaper obituaries are famous. He will not spare the dead out of a bourgeois sentimentality; but, he will balance the bad with the good. His one- liners reverberate in India: for example on L K Advani, “He neither smokes, drinks nor womanises. Such men are dangerous.” During the anti-Sikh riots after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, he protected himself with personal guards but never cowed under death threats from extremist Sikhs and Hindus. He remains for ever high on the hate list of Hindutva extremists. He detests them with a passion. His The End of India is a magisterial denouncement of Hindu fanaticism, which he thinks will undo India. He is openly pro-Muslim, as he swims against the current on most populist issues. Says he, “The bullet is the last argument of a person who knows he has lost the debate… I will prove that the pen is mightier than a Kalashnikov or a self-loading rifle.”

The Sardar was born in Hadali (district Khushab). He comes from a distinguished lineage. His father, Sir Sobha Singh, was one of the builders of Imperial New Delhi. Khushwant was married to the beautiful Kaval and one of the prominent guests at his marriage in 1939 was Mr M A Jinnah, who lived nearby. He is a Lahori at heart, perhaps, the last representative of that golden flowering of Lahore of the late 1930s and early 1940s, which produced some of the greatest writers, artists and poets of the subcontinent. Faiz Ahmad Faiz was his senior by two years at Government College.

Khushwant’s detractors have accused him of promoting or abetting sexual license. Many of his stories narrate the sexual adventures of his protagonists in real life and fiction. Traditional Indo-Pakistani culture denies the role of sex as something improper, vulgar or non-existent. He exposes this sanctimonious denial, which of course leads to other hydra-headed forms of hypocrisy. If truth is the bedrock of belief, nothing human is alien. Khushwant makes us laugh at our foibles, absurdities, and fecklessness in our grey, kill-joy culture.

His greatest friend, whom he cherishes as a role model, is the late Manzur Qadir, and I take the liberty of quoting Khushwant on Mr Qadir: “. . . He did not give a tinker’s cuss about money. It was commonly said, ‘God may lie, but not Manzur Qadir.’ Though godless, he had more goodness in him than a clutch of saints. . . We came to judge the right or wrong of our actions by how Manzur Qadir would react. He was the human touchstone of our moral pretensions. . . “

Admirers from all over the world throng to meet him. But, true to his style, he sternly guards his privacy.

A notice by the non-descript door of his modest apartment reads: “Do not ring the bell unless you are expected.” This diwan–e–khas is only open for an hour at 7 p.m.; by eight the shutters are down. But if you are expected, you will be greeted warmly by this Tolstoyan sage, and if you happen to be from Pakistan he will want to know the latest of his beloved Lahore.

Sir, from my dear old home you come

And all its glories you can name;

Oh, tell me – has the winter plum

Yet blossomed o’er the window frame?

–(The lament of an unknown Chinese poet)

Published in the NEWS