Great Lives: A Century in Obituaries
Edited by Ian Brunskill,
Times, ? 20

When V.P. Menon died, the Times, London, wrote, quoting from memory, that beyond the call of duty, there must have been a certain personal satisfaction for a former 75-rupee-a-month clerk in the Madras courts to bring down one by one the proudest dynasties of an ancient land. In the same vein, it noted the sainted Mother Teresa?s ?shrewd eye for publicity.? Menon?s obituary does not find a place in this slightly eccentric collection but a similar insight into the subject distinguishes those that do. From Kitchener to Pope John Paul II, they make delightful reading. If Disraeli was right to recommend biography as opposed to history since it presented ?life without theory?, obituary must rank even higher as biography exorcised of the fear of libel. The dead can?t sue. It?s all the more enjoyable reading about them when the smoothly rounded prose of professionally welded collective effort makes only a formal genuflection in the direction of de mortuis nil nisi bonum ? speak no ill of the dead ? piety.

Among the world?s newspapers, the Times (once called the Thunderer) has always claimed a pre-eminence ? ?Top People read the Times? ? that others accepted. Witness the butler in Arthur C. Clarke?s Childhood?s End who announced, ?Three reporters, m?lud, and a gentleman from the Times!? Walter Bagehot believed that the Times ?has made many ministries?. It?s final verdict on the good and the great is therefore of some interest, though infallibility need not be taken too seriously. It despatched C.N. Anndaurai when the DMK politician was still living, albeit in a coma. When this was pointed out, a Times editor admitted to another howler: an Indian prince?s obituary appeared on the same day as his name graced the Court Circular as His Britannic Majesty?s guest.

Even Homer nods. There is no reason to take umbrage at snide remarks or attributions to anonymous others, which is the paper?s way of avoiding a frontal assault that might still invite retaliation. Thus, though many revered Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as a great moral teacher and a great Indian patriot, ?others? thought he was a ?victim of na?ve self-delusion? who personified austerity but on whom wealthy supporters showered comforts. Yasser Arafat was an exhibitionist and opportunist ?in the opinion of some?. George Orwell revelled in ?socialist propaganda?. Bernard Shaw, the unscrupulous idealist, was ?an intellectual Father Christmas?.

What emerges is less a political position than an upper class anglocentric (what Nancy Mitford would have approved of as U) worldview. It?s naturally conservative and not untinged with racism. The paper can burble ecstatically about Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and find little that is wrong with Richard Nixon whose ignominious exit from Vietnam and crawling to China are hailed as acts of daring statesmanship that more than compensated for any possible lapse of ethics. Demonization of Ayatollah Khomeini?s ?decade of revolutionary turmoil and economic mismanagement which has set back (Iran?s) development by many years? implies that the repressive Shah Reza Pahlavi whom he overthrew was the paragon of enlightened progress. But, then, His Imperial Majesty was Britain?s faithful friend. Menachem Begin?s valedictory glosses over Ariel Sharon?s role in the massacre of innocents in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. If Begin himself merits more censorious treatment over the Deir Yassin massacre of far fewer women and children, it must be remembered that the Irgun terrorist was Britain?s avowed enemy. He gloated over the British soldiers he had hanged.

The seemingly innocuous comment that Jackie Kennedy?s Bouvier family was ?the American equivalent of aristocracy? gives the game away. It implies that the world?s real, perhaps only, aristocracy resides in England. And when she herself is called ?the nearest thing they had ever had to a queen?, it is almost as if the Times is shedding a tear for a nation that is so deprived as not to have its own royalty.

But institutions, like people, cannot be judged out of context. That is also what the paper tries to do in assessing such personalities as Stalin, Nasser or Mao whose appeal to their own people and services to their own country are taken into account. This results, in Hitler?s case, in a backhanded compliment that devastates the entire German nation. Though he was the apotheosis of wickedness and caused greater human suffering than any other man, Hitler was also ?a propagandist of the first order, and his uncannily subtle and acute understanding of the mind of his own people was the ultimate source of his power for evil?. After that indictment (or is it exoneration?), let no German dare to single out the Nazis for blame.

We in this country need no introduction to the attitude that Times obituaries reflect. But we cannot avoid admiring the painstaking research, determination to be fair and mellifluous style. The Times is not what it was (what is?) but its obituaries still hark back to the lofty heights it once occupied. It?s no less relevant that while Britain?s media as a whole have succumbed to the terrible disease of triumphalism and squanders time and talent on writing pointlessly about itself, this is one genre that continues to thrive. Other papers ? the Guardian, Independent and Daily Telegraph ? vie with the Times in honouring and analysing the dead. Once upon a time Morgues (as obtituary departments are called in journalistic parlance) were an important feature of papers here too. Many reasons can be advanced to explain why they languished. The obvious one is that the obsession with current affairs leaves editors with little time to bother about those from whom no return can be expected. Another is the preoccupation with by-lines which rules out anonymous cooperative effort.

Finally, competence. When the veteran, Sham Lal, was lamenting that no one wrote about art and someone mentioned a fellow editor who devoted entire issues of his publication to paintings and painters (building up quite a collection in the process), Sham Lal murmured that to be able to write about art one had first to be able to write.