KOHLI & CO: SWAGGER IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SUCCESS
so in Allahabad becoming Prayagraj, there is a kind of symbolic gratification. He has also felt excluded in the Anglophonic environment of Allahabad and so the only vengeance he can have now is symbolic because real change in the social balance of power will require more than a change of signage.”
Rai, however, also feels that this breeding ground of resentment eventually fed into the politics of the RSS-BJP. “But it has been prepared precisely by the self-centred and myopic Nehruvian elite – the Kashmiri Pandits, Kayasths, the Muslim aristocracy and the upper-caste Bengalis – which didn’t understand that there would be costs of its dominance,” he says. The Prayagraj project seems to be the assertion of a second-rung elite, mainly Brahmins, Khatris, Baniyas and Rajputs, against this first-rung liberal elite, he says.
Due to this tussle at the top, the popular history of Allahabad has been pushed to the margins. The Pasi people (a Scheduled Caste) of the city have, for example, been rendered invisible by the dominant discourses generated by this competition among its various elite groups. Ram Bahadur, a retired IAS officer from Allahabad, a Pasi , points out how even the numerical strength of his community [10% of the city’s population] has been denied in most official histories so as to underplay and undermine their potential for power. “The British paid the Pasis for their unrelenting resistance during the 1857 rebellion by the Criminal Tribe Act, 1871, and classified them as habitual criminals. It took 12 years after Independence for this Act to be repealed,” says Bahadur.
Allahabad remained a colonial city even after the British left, right until the heyday of Nehruvian liberalism, adds retired academic Manas Mukul Das, who also traces the alienation and displacement of the traditional elite by the particular nature of Allahabad’s modernity, something that was determined by how English you could be. It also helped to be plugged into the usual networks. Chintamoni Ghosh’s The Indian Press was the publisher of all mainstream litterateurs in the late 19th century. “Besides 87 titles of Tagore, we printed the first Hindi literary magazine, Saraswati; Premchand’s first Hindi novel and Nirala’s translation of Tagore,” says Kalyan Ghosh, Chinatamoni’s grandson, who lives in a palatial bungalow in Georgetown, a posh colony. A dumpster now sits outside his house. The road outside is full of potholes. Sangam is a half hour drive from his home. “I’ve seen at least 60 Kumbhs, it wasn’t a problem before but this time, all roads have been dug up to widen roads for this Kumbh. As for the new name, what’s in a name? A lot of Bengalis still call Calcutta, Calcutta, don’t they? But things change, my entire neighbourhood has. I don’t know half my neighbours, where they are from….”
Dhiraj Kumar, his security guard, is , however,team Prayagraj. Originally from a village outside the city, he stays in a rented home nearby. His is a mixed neighbourhood, of “old-time Allahabadis and people like us from the village. We do not visit each other’s homes but there is no quarrel either.” He says he dreams of moving into one of the big bungalows that a decrepit Allahabad is still known for one day. And that day, he feels he may understand why it’s such a big deal for some people that Allahabad should stay Allahabad.
The Prayag of rivers, Sangam, funeral rites, I understand. But Prayagraj is a Brahminising move. The whole sound and spectacle of a ‘teertharaj’ somewhere pleases the Brahminical Hindu...