Great burden

“Is there any law in the country that bans the erection of statues of living leaders, and can funds be spent only on erecting statues of dead leaders and not the living ones?” says Mayavati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. She is right: there is no law forbidding the misuse of public money to indulge in self-glorification. Several chief ministers do so by advertising themselves as pioneers of the progress being made in their states, with their own photographs as illustrations. But you, behenji, you have outdone all of them on the silver jubilee of the Bahujan Samaj Party. You had asked your public relations department to take out full-page advertisements in all the newspapers of India, with half pages devoted to your own picture, and the other half to vastly exaggerated claims of development under your benign rule. And on the 25th birth anniversary of the party, you had yourself garlanded with high-denomination currency notes worth lakhs of rupees. You have had dozens of marble statues of yourself put up in Lucknow and other cities. Are you surprised then that the common people of your country have turned against you and would welcome a legislation forbidding squandering of their money in feeding your ego-mania?

Has the money collected during the silver jubilee bash been deposited in banks in the name of BSP or is it in your personal account? Your past does not inspire confidence. As soon as you became chief minister, you began acquiring large tracts of real estate in different cities, including Delhi. None of it was registered in the name of your party, but rather in your own name or of those of your relations. You also bought expensive jewellery to adorn yourself and explained them as gifts given to you by admirers. No one believes that to be true.

As for your admirers, the less said about them the better. They are a time-serving bunch of sycophants who will bootlick anyone in power. They are your worst enemies who will stab you in the back when you are in trouble.

Just think what you could have done with all the money you collected: instead of marble statues, if you had opened a chain of Mayavati Primary and Secondary schools, Mayavati Free Clinics for the sick, Mayavati Night Shelters for the homeless and so on. Your name would have gone down in history as that of the greatest Dalit leader of India. All you need to do is that instead of lending an ear to sycophants, listen to the likes of me and the aam admi (common people), who honestly wish to see you fulfil the dream of Baba Sahib Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. Don’t let us down.

Colourful life

Duleep Singh, the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, is not on my list of heroes of Sikh history. He was the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (a few historians have questioned his legitimacy). His mother, Rani Jindan, was the daughter of the royal kennel-keeper. I have nothing against her. She was said to have been a great beauty.

As a child, he was exposed to violence and cold-blooded murders of relations and courtiers. That left deep scars on his psyche and warped him for life. When the Sikh kingdom was annexed by the British in 1849, he was taken hostage and made to hand over the Kohinoor diamond and put under the guardianship of an English cleric, Dr John Login, and his wife. He converted to Christianity, cut off his long hair and kept his beard so that with a turban he could still pass off as a Sikh.

He and his mother were taken to England. He was given a large estate and a handsome pension. He became a great favourite of Queen Victoria and wore her miniature picture in a diamond necklace. He tried to live like an English squire, arranging annual shoots in his estate when pheasants and grouse were slaughtered in the hundreds. After his mother died, he was allowed to bring her ashes back to India to immerse in the holy Ganga. But he was not permitted to visit the Punjab. On his way back to England, he was shown a bevy of nubile girls in an orphanage in Egypt. He picked Bamba Müller, the illegitimate daughter of a German man and an Egyptian woman. She bore him many children.

Duleep Singh lived an extravagant life of self-indulgence. He became a heavy drinker and a glutton. He put on weight, became paunchy and lost whatever good looks he had as a young man. He ran into heavy debts and began to dream of the unaccountable wealth he was entitled to as the maharaja of the Punjab. He rebelled against Queen Victoria and tried to get the Czar of Russia to help him regain his crown. Nothing came of it. When Bamba died, he took another wife and moved to Paris. Ultimately, he begged Queen Victoria’s pardon. She absolved him of treason, paid off his debts, and allowed him to return to the estate. He died a miserable death in Paris. His progeny continued to suffer from delusions of grandeur. Once I wrote to his daughter, Bamba Sutherland, asking for an interview and inviting her to tea at the Ritz in London. She regarded all Sikhs as her subjects and turned down my invitation. Her letterhead, from a cottage in Buckinghamshire where she lived on a pension, read: “H.R.H. Princess Bamba Sutherland of the Punjab, Kashmir and Beyond.”

Duleep Singh’s life is well-recorded in a biography, The Exile, by Navtej Sarna, India’s ambassador in Israel. However, no matter what the facts of his life may have been, many Sikhs have nostalgic memories of the rulers of the Sikh Kingdom. The latest example is the publication of Sovereign, Squire and Rebel: Maharajah Duleep Singh and the Heirs of a Lost Kingdom by Peter Bance. Peter’s real name is Bhupinder Singh Bains. He is based in London and specializes on Sikh diaspora. His earlier book, The Sikhs in Britain: In their Own Words and Photographs, was well-received. His book on Duleep Singh is the most lavish I have seen. It is full of paintings and photographs of the prince and his family, his estates and the graveyard in which he is buried. It will be a valuable asset in any library on Sikh history and as a collectors’ item.