‘Lamentation was raised in the realm. Day by day, the people were being looted. No one listened to their complaints. All the wealth of the countryside was being drawn into Lucknow and squandered on prostitutes, jesters, and other kinds of vilasita (decadence). Day by day the debt to the English Company kept growing. Day by day the blanket grew wetter and felt heavier. Because there was no proper administration in the country, even the annual revenue was not received. The [British] resident repeatedly gave warnings, but people here were besotted with the drunkenness of vilasita; no one had the least idea what was happening.’

Shatranj ke Khiladi (The Chess Players) by Premchand. First published in 1924.

 

LIKE its literary symbol, Ruswa’s Umrao Jaan – the much chronicled (and courted) courtesan – modern Lucknow exists as perspective. These range from a lost Venice of the Orient for Romanticists pining to find some glamorous reference to recent North Indian history, to a doomed Babel for anthropologists tracking the weighty matter of urban planning and development (or lack of it) in modern India. Alternatively, it becomes a New World beckoning parochial parvenus in search of their share of India’s ‘new economy’ or a ‘second paradise on earth’ for members of a new triangular elite representing the working nexus of crime, politics and commerce.

The ‘indigenous’ culture of Lucknow was historically destined for exactly the kind of state it is in. The city of Lucknow and the larger tehzib and adab of Awadh that we hear so much of today as a nostalgic poser, were merely a repository for the declining values of one power (the Mughals in Delhi), and an expectant recipient of another empire (the British in Calcutta). In such a circumstance, Lucknow was already speeding towards a crisis of identity. Even as the capital of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow can no longer exhibit a culture of its own, such as Benaras, never severed from its ancient religious roots can, or Kanpur, unashamedly and convincingly commercial and industrial does.

The dismantling of ‘Old Lucknow’ began with the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. However, the traditional hypothesis that partition was singularly responsible for the decline of Lucknow, as a city of intangibles such as ‘high culture’, learning and social grace, cannot form a basis for any scientific inquiry into its urban decline. The period between 1947 and 1987 was a sterile interlude in the city’s existence. No major architectural innovations were added to its skyline; nor was it at the centre of any significant movement whether literary, political or of any other kind. Certainly, no economic ‘boom’ came its way and Lucknow did not become a point of reference for India’s New Economy such has its counterpart in the Deccan, Hyderabad.

There is much between the two cities that merits comparison. Break-away factions of the imperial Mughal court founded both cities in the 18th century. Both were ruled by rulers belonging to minority communities (Muslim), ruling over subjects belonging to majority communities (Hindu). Both cities witnessed social violence in the aftermath of the partition of India, Hyderabad significantly more so in 1949 with its accession to the Union of India. Yet, sixty years after independence both the method and measure of how the two cities have developed cannot be starker.

 

It is not a tradition of political activism that keeps Lucknow alive in the national mind. The cause for Lucknow’s continuity as a city of any significance was and continues to be its political location. As the capital of Uttar Pradesh (which alone accounts for almost 15 per cent of the total seats in Parliament), it is the seat of administration for India’s most populous state with the largest state assembly in the country. The social complexities of Uttar Pradesh, whose caste demographics reveal an almost even proportion of upper-caste Hindus, Muslims, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Castes, make it a political (though not cultural) melting pot. If we look at two political movements, which symbolised national politics in the last decade – the Mandal agitation and the Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid movement – it is notable that neither of these located themselves in Lucknow and nor did they use the city as a centre, though they were centred in North India. Yet, the political activism of a large section of the leadership central to the mobilization of both these agitations had their roots in Lucknow.

 

Indeed the former BJP Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee represents the Lucknow seat in the Lok Sabha. Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati and Kalyan Singh are names that are synonymous with the political culture of Uttar Pradesh and, therefore, the political economy of Lucknow. Their protégés, some of whom are Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA’s), serve the dual purpose of filling up seats in the state assembly and managing the commercial interests of their respective bosses. In an urban environment where the commercial interests of senior politicians can only be safeguarded by criminal methods, law enforcement becomes peripheral if not obsolete. A self-pitying shield of nostalgia and motley bundles of recollections that represent the collective values of the elite of ‘old Lucknow’ are an inadequate protection against the highly motivated industry of ruthless self-preservation being run by the operators of its new political economy. Protest, opposition and any prospects of confrontation against the new order seem unlikely.

The situation of those who lament the new order is not unlike that of the former aristocracy of Awadh who, ‘Unable to withstand the pressure of changing times, the later nawabs of Awadh turned inwards. They sequestered themselves in a realm of their own imagining, behind walls, behind the gaze of the invader. Here, they invented a world of fantasy – with its own language, logic and meaning…There was no place for such a vision in the age of the Industrial Revolution, and the brutal world of international power politics.’¹

The only difference for them is that the Industrial Revolution has been substituted by caste devolution, and the ‘brutal world of international power politics’ has been replaced by the worst aspects of parochialism. What remains of ‘Old Lucknow’ exists only as symbol or metaphor. Therefore, while the building that houses the Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh is an impressive structure that can compete in architectural style and beauty with perhaps any other construction designed for government use, the members who use it prefer to rip out its furnishings during some of their more violent proceedings, as happened in 1996.

 

Perhaps a far more serious illustration of Lucknow’s urban veering is provided by its geographical features, or their present function. The river Gomti, a curvaceous water body without beauty – once it enters the city limits of Lucknow – is the city’s only natural water source and now enjoys the distinction of being the only natural repository for its accumulated waste. The city’s real estate industry has never flourished as it does today. It runs on an extensive and complex network of back channels for evaluation, sale, purchase and construction. Most of the builders and contractors (perhaps in some imitation of the traditional practices of the Awadh court) pay a section of their earnings into the coffers of the land mafia as ‘obeisance’. Alternatively, mafia-bosses or politicians or indeed those who combine both professional traits may retain ownership of part of the new constructions they have sanctioned, felicitated or legitimized. It is not unlike the criminal dynamics of construction contracts so reminiscent of Bombay in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Major General Claude Martin the founder of Lucknow’s world-renowned public school, La Martiniere College,² would perhaps not have felt out of place among the present day elite of political brokers and real estate magnates who breeze in and out of myriad secretariats, hotel lobby’s and MLA hostels. Described as, ‘an immensely rich man, whose wealth in part was founded on property and the buying, selling and renting of houses in Lucknow,’³ Martin was a member of the early European set at the Awadh court and his fortunes rested on a combination of militarism, brokering and personal access to the king. Latter day Martins in Lucknow are no less enterprising than their French-Awadhi forerunner (though undoubtedly their social graces do not bear resemblance). Today, neither conscientious staff members of public school institutions trying to counter campus politics nor charming society hostesses objecting to the verbal molestations of criminal youth may confront the rising tide of crime without losing their lives.

 

Significantly, for the young of Lucknow, whether literate or half-educated, one of the most popular career paths on offer is entry into the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) or other corners of state officialdom. Not in Lucknow the pressing competition of jobs for the IT sector or even call centres. Every vacant space in the city that can hold it advertises the expert attentions of training centres for entry into the IAS or other government services. Schools operating out of residential colonies run four, sometimes six shifts a day in a bid to prepare the young to fill in the boots left behind by colonial empire-builders.

The advantages are obvious. Nowhere else is the exhibition of the ‘perks of power’ more evident than in the streets of Lucknow. An inquiry into the ratio of ‘VIP vehicles’ to ordinary cars in the city will make for an interesting case study, if only to demonstrate the disproportionate allocation of state resources from Pradesh to Pradesh. While their husbands indulge in the intrigues and counter intrigues of Lucknow politics, like the zenana women or courtiers of old, the wives and families of government officers make full use of their power of patronage and access to ministers, often felicitating or brokering commercial or even governmental transactions.

 

In his memoirs recalling his stint as the Governor or Uttar Pradesh in 1996, Romesh Bhandari records: ‘I soon found out that transfers had in fact become a business. Officers were now accustomed to having their postings changed through powers wielding influence in Raj Bhavan, or with the chief minister when there was a popular government.’⁴

Furthermore, he continues to list the most prized postings and jobs: ‘I made my own inquiries and found that there were some clear posts which were greatly in demand. A district magistrate, preferably in one of the important cities, vice chairman or executive officers of development authorities, chief development officers (CDO) in districts, the chief medical officers, and ADM’s dealing with finance and revenue. On the side of the police, the post (sic) of SSP or SP in charge of a district was the most prized one.

‘As one can see in all these posts, there is great power and patronage. Large expenditures are controlled by these officers. The pattern was that for a posting, the "patron" would be either given a down payment, promises of favours to be done, or in some cases monthly doles.’⁵

The reason it was necessary to cite that particular quote so extensively is that there is perhaps no other official observation on record that is so candid and forthcoming in its assessment of the ‘system’ and how it works in Uttar Pradesh, and therefore in Lucknow.

 

And so the ‘New Triad’ prospers, its membership circulating between the realms of crime, politics and commerce, infecting every sphere of public life in Lucknow. Each member brings with him dependants and thus more migrants awaiting their chance to carve out their share, to have their slice of Lucknow, as it is, without its historical accoutrements, without the complicated references to tehzib and adab. Each migrant comes to Lucknow on the shoulders of a preceding migrant – that used to be the way in which all great cities grew. Unlike those other cities, civilizations in themselves, Lucknow does not have the energy to mould its inhabitants into its own culture. Instead, it has allowed them to shape her, style her and deface her.

When Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula moved his capital from Faizabad to Lucknow in 1775, he did so with the view of recreating a new empire, borrowing from the old Mughal and infusing into it the innovations of Europe and the West. Architecturally he partly succeeded. Yet within a span of 80 years, Awadh (Oudh) had been annexed by the East India Company and its capital Lucknow reduced to virtual rubble. The consequence of nineteenth-century courtly decadence was the loss of a fledgling empire. The consequence of twentieth-century public apathy, for Lucknow, is the reason it is destined for mediocrity.

 

Footnotes:

1. Lucknow: City of Illusion, The Alkazi Collection of Photography & Prestal Verlag, 2006, p. 8.

2. Opened in April 1845.

3. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones in Lucknow: City of Illusion, op cit., p.13.

4. Romesh Bhandari, As I Saw It, Har-Anand Publications,1998.

5. Ibid.