The French statesman, Talleyrand, once advised his countrymen to "above all, avoid an excess of zeal". I have always felt that it is the British, not the French, who have followed this advice most diligently. Political and intellectual life in France is dominated by polemic, prejudice, and ideology, whereas the British have avoided extreme and partisan positions in favour of the middle road. Some 15 years ago, Talleyrand's countrymen outlawed the headscarf in schools, colleges and offices, since they were determined to make immigrant Muslims conform in every way to the 'republican' idea of what it meant to be French. Meanwhile, the British, who also had a large and growing community of Muslims, declined to impose any sort of dress code. So, at Heathrow airport, one often had one's passport stamped by a lady dressed in black, her head covered, or, by way of variation, by a Sikh wearing a turban.
The recent victory of Sadiq Khan in the London mayoral election is an emphatic vindication of the British tradition of political moderation. It could never have happened in France, or in Germany or the United States of America for that matter. I will not see a Muslim mayor of Paris, Berlin, or New York in my lifetime. But I was in London the day a working-class Muslim whose family was originally from Pakistan was elected mayor of the city.
I reached Sadiq Khan's city a few days before the elections. An Indian friend told me that she had been sent a pamphlet issued by Khan's rival, the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, warning her (and other Indians) that the Labour man would tax away the family jewellery, and make it easier for criminals to burgle her house. On his part, said Goldsmith, he had always observed Navratri, Janmastami and Diwali, and had lined up to welcome India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, when he visited the United Kingdom.
Zac Goldsmith's pamphlet was targeted at 'Indians'; in this case a weasel word for 'Hindus'. For Indians observe Eid and Muharram, as well as Christmas and Baisakhi. My friend was offended at the naked attempt to polarize Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis, in a British city. A Sikh website, whose readers had also received this pamphlet, dryly remarked that "for some bizarre reason, Goldsmith assumed all the 1,20,000 Sikhs were middle-class Hindus, running family businesses, concerned about burglaries and possessions whilst welcoming Modi's UK visit last year."
Meanwhile, the hollowness of Zac Goldsmith's love for Hindus/Indians was exposed when he told Red Carpet News that he really loved Bollywood. Asked to name his favourite film, or actor, he stumbled (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vViUKsJ42ZM) embarrassingly; he couldn't name even one.
Goldsmith also sought to tar his opponent as a supporter of the Islamic State. He even recruited his prime minister to his cause, leading to David Cameron being accused of racism. Far from being a captive of radical Islam, Sadiq Khan is someone who has voted more than a dozen times in Parliament in support of same-sex marriage, to the horror of conservative Christians and the even greater horror of the mullahs.
The day before the election, I had dinner with an English friend. Who would he vote for, I asked. My friend answered that while he found Khan dull and uncharismatic, at least he was not an Old Etonian, unlike his present opponent, the immediate past mayor (Boris Johnson), and the prime minister himself. A vote for Khan was, among other things, a vote against entitlement and class privilege.
I have no doubt that the election of Sadiq Khan will enrage the real supporters of the Islamic State. For the fact that a Muslim can be freely elected mayor of a great Western city flies in the face of the 'clash of civilizations' thesis, which posits an eternal and perennial conflict between the West and Islam. First advanced by the conservative American thinker, Samuel Huntington, this thesis has found supporters among Hindutva ideologues in India, who see Islam as incompatible with their civilization too, and hence Indian Muslims as suspect. But, in fact, perhaps the most extreme enthusiasts of the Huntington thesis are the jihadists. They believe that Islam and the West are mortal enemies. Which is why the presence of a Muslim mayor in London will puzzle and enrage them, and perhaps provoke them to terror attacks, which I am hopeful the well trained British police will be able to detect, thwart, and abort.
I am in the UK for three weeks, combining research in the archives with meeting friends. I was in London while the mayoral elections took place; but will leave shortly before the major referendum on whether or not Britain should remain in the European Union. This too will see a contest between chauvinism and pragmatism. Both Little Englanders as well as imperial nostalgists think that England will be better off on its own, without being part of Europe. On the other side, many people know that the centre of the British economy, London, is kept going by expatriates. Nor do 21st-century cosmopolitans want a return to an insular part best captured in that famous (if possibly apocryphal) British newspaper headline of the middle decades of the 20th century: "Fog over Channel: Continent cut off."
As I said, while London now has a Muslim mayor, it is hard to see when Paris or New York will have one. But, long before the British capital, the greatest and most cosmpolitan of Indian cities had one. Although the vast majority of Mumbai's mayors have been Hindu, there have been several Muslim mayors, as well as some Parsi and Christian occupants of that office.
A mayor of Bombay who is a long-time hero of mine was named Yusuf Meherally. Meherally was one of a group of remarkable Indian socialists, whose other members included Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Jayaprakash Narayan, and Rammanohar Lohia. Unlike the communists, these socialists loved their country far more than the Soviet Union (indeed, they detested the Soviet Union, recognizing in the 1930s itself that Lenin and Stalin had put in place a murderous and brutal regime). Unlike conventional Congressmen, these socialists were deeply allergic to inherited privilege; they campaigned zealously for land reforms, for proper housing for industrial workers, and for the emancipation of women.
Wikipedia (not always a reliable source) claims that Yusuf Meherally coined the slogan, "Simon, Go Back" (to oppose the all-white constitutional commission led by John Simon which visited India in 1928), as well as the even more famous slogan "Quit India". Be that as it may, Meherally was a great patriot, who faced police lathis, went to jail many times, opposed the Pakistan movement, and was incidentally a well-loved mayor of Bombay.
A charming story about Meherally is told by his American friend, the writer, Bertram D. Wolfe. During his last, extended, jail term, Meherally had fallen seriously ill. When he was finally released in 1946 his admirers raised a fund for him to be treated by specialists in New York.
Wolfe had met Meherally many times, but on this trip of 1946 he found him unusually mellow. The fiery socialist who had formerly inveighed against British imperialism was now saying nice things about the oppressors. Why this sudden affection for the British, asked Wolfe of Meherally? Had they not looted your country, had they not jailed you many times? Meherally answered that that was in the past. Gandhi, he said, had told them that now the British were leaving, they must forget their sins and learn to keep the good things they gave India. Asked to clarify what these gifts were, Meherally answered, the rule of law, and the sense of fair play.
To which we may add: a sense of moderation. In his autobiography, the Indian writer and patriot, Frank Moraes, singles this out as the one British trait that he most admired. So it was with Gandhi, too. In his words and his deeds, he promoted dialogue, reconciliation, and accommodation, while opposing polemic, dogma, and ideological certitude. As a one-time resident of London, as someone who deeply loved and was profoundly shaped by the city, Gandhi's posthumous vote would surely have gone to Sadiq Khan rather than the egregious Zac Goldsmith.
