I missed the actual ceremony but I did watch a lot of the scenes before and after , like many of my fellow countrymen and women. I also read the report that more Indians watched the Kate -Will wedding on TV than the Brits. Which is understandable . There just are more English knowing Indians than there are Brits. There just are more TV viewing Indians than English folk. All because there just are more Indian men , women & children on the planet than English men, women & children.
We easily outnumber them and, despite the Independence struggle and the Independence, we are still overwhelmingly in love with them, their Queen, their Prince of Wales, their People’s Princess and her sons who are like our princes . We follow anyone they date, marry or not marry. Given a choice , we would all want to be them, the British i.e. In the second decade of the 21st century with so many Indians living out there in London, Oxford and various other parts of Britain the two centuries old secret fantasy of Indians has become a reality .
The answer to why Indians , all post-colonials for that matter, are so enamoured of everything British lies in the one expression which is now made so much of by thinkers and speakers on international relations, namely ‘Soft Power’. Long before Harvard Professor, Joseph .S. Nye coined it and developed the concept in 1990 , the British rulers had perfected the art of using soft power ‘to attract and co-opt’, as Nye puts it, the subject nations to want what they (the British ) wanted.
The introduction of English education in India and making English the official language of the country were master strokes in the power play of the soft variety. Beginning with the nursery rhymes which elite Indian parents took pains to teach their children, English poetry and literature worked as weapons of mass conversion of the Indian psyche to an English way of thinking , feeling and imagining. British history from its very origins and the English language from its origins in the the Anglo Saxon times were part of the syllabus for students majoring in English literature. I know it from the inside as I had gone through it all. And I must add I have benefited by it, both materially and psychologically.
Various other British systems and practices, manners, cuisine, cricket et al which can be put into the soft power basket made their way into the subcontinent’s physical as well as mental space. More than one hundred years of such infusion could not be shaken off at midnight , August 1947. We continue/d to be part of the Commonwealth of Nations . The British Council ensures the maintenance of the influence, though the libraries, alas, are in the withdrawal mode right now.
We have out-Britished the British in our passion and flair for cricket. We write more innovative fiction in English than the English novelists and beat them at the prize winning game . In parliamentary democracy, strangely, reverse osmosis seems to be taking place. Reports suggest their MPs and Ministers out there are as as bad as ours in the matter of spending and thieving public funds.
But they have the monarchy still, far removed from muck of this kind. The Queen , personally , is above board, despite her siblings and progeny turning Buckingham Palace into F.....gham palace. I suggest that the Commonwealth of Nations honour her with a medal for standing the Duke Of Edinburgh, his foot ever in his mouth, for 63 long years. That is Right Royal Endurance . We, Indians salute that regardless of any power, hard or soft !
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