Tag Archives: india

Stafford Cripps, Mahatma Gandhi, and an art gallery in London’s Islington

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JUST OVER SEVEN years ago, I bought a book, which I put on a bookshelf without reading it, and then forgot about it. This September (2024) I found it whilst sorting through our book collection. It is a biography of the British politician Stafford Cripps (1889-1952), who visited India in March 1942. Winston Churchill had sent him there to negotiate with leading Indian Nationalists (including Gandhi, Jinnah, and Nehru) to keep them loyal to the British war effort in exchange for self-government when WW2 was over. It was up to Cripps, then a Labour politician, to formulate the proposed deal. The mission was not a success because Churchill thought that Cripps had offered the Indians too much, and the Indians thought his offer was not enough: they wanted independence immediately.

There have been many books written about Stafford Cripps. The one I found in my collection, “Stafford Cripps. A biography”, was published in 1949, when Cripps was still alive. When I looked at the book after ‘discovering’ it, what surprised me was the name of its author: Eric Estorick.

Until I looked at the book today (3rd of September 2024), I had only associated the name Estorick with a fine museum of 20th century Italian art – The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art. This is housed within Northampton Lodge, a Georgian building which was once the home and offices of the architect Sir Basil Spence (1907-1976), who was born in Bombay. This is in Canonbury, which is just north of Islington. The collection was established by the American Eric Estorick (1913-1993) and his German-born English wife Salome (1920–1989) after WW2.

Eric Estorick was none other than the author of the biography of Cripps, which I ‘unearthed’ today. Born in Brooklyn (NY), son of Jewish emigrés from the Russian Empire, he was awarded a PhD in sociology at New York University. In 1947, he married Salome (née Dessau), who was an artist. Eric’s interest in art began before that when he met the American photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). The Estoricks began collecting art soon after the end of WW2. During their honeymoon, the Estoricks were introduced to the works of the Italian Futurists. The Collection contains several good examples of their works. In 1960, Eric opened the Grosvenor Gallery in London’s Davies Street. His first exhibition was a display of modern sculpture. It was in his gallery that my mother exhibited some of her sculptures in 1965, in an exhibition called “Fifty Years of Sculpture. Some aspects 1914-1964”.  She must have been introduced to Eric at the time.

Apart from his interests in art, Eric Estorick was a prolific author. In addition to writing three books about Stafford Cripps, he wrote others about politics as well as art. One of his books, which was published privately, was a history of the Marks and Spencer firm, in which he worked for some time. It was in that company that Salome Estorick had worked. Marks and Spencer had been a customer of her father’s textile manufacturing firm.

Having found my copy of Estorick’s book and skimmed its contents, I will not be putting it into our storage unit as I had originally intended, but will begin reading it soon.

A chance discovery in a shop in Covent Garden

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I ALWAYS ENJOY looking through the books on sale in charity shops (thrift shops). First of all, one often sees books that are either out of print or that you did not know existed. Secondly, occasionally, one finds real treasures.

Today, I was in an Oxfam shop near Covent  Garden when I found a book called “Muslims in India.” Edited by Ratna Sahai, it was published in the mid to late 1990s. What made it interesting is that this illustrated and quite learned book was produced for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. In other words, it was commissioned by the Government of India. I wonder whether the present Indian Government will produce a new version of this volume.

I paid very little for the book – about 10% of what booksellers on the Internet are charging.

Two Albanian heroes

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JUST AS THE ALBANIAN Skanderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti: c1405-1468) heroically resisted the invasion of his country by the Ottomans in the 15th century, Khwaja Safar, also an Albanian, bravely led forces opposed to the Portuguese, who were attacking his adopted country India during the 16th century. Both were forcibly converted to Islam. One remained a Muslim, and the other returned to Christianity.

Khwaja Safar was a soldier; a merchant; the treasurer of Cairo; advisor to the Sultans of Egypt and Gujarat; and the Governor of the city of Surat. His parents were Albanian, yet he is remembered by a name which is not Albanian. You can discover why this is when reading my book about his extraordinarily fascinating life. “An Albanian in India” is available both as a paperback and a Kindle (eBook) from Amazon:

An Albanian who fought the Portuguese in India during the 16th century

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MY NEW BOOK IS ABOUT THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF AN ALBANIAN HERO WHO FOUGHT THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA DURING THE 16TH CENTURY

“AN ALBANIAN IN INDIA” is available

as a paperback and a Kindle eBook from Amazon:

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Albanian, known as ‘Khwaja Safar’, was born in southern Italy. Just as the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg fought the invaders of Albania, Khwaja Safar valiantly opposed the invaders of his adopted country – Gujarat.

After serving as a soldier in Italy, he went to sea as a trader, and was successful. While sailing in the Red Sea, he was captured by an Egyptian admiral, and taken to Cairo. He was presented to the Sultan. Khwaja rose rapidly to become the treasurer and trusted advisor ruler of Egypt’s ruler. From Egypt, he travelled to Yemen, and then to Gujarat in western India, where he became a formidable opponent of the Portuguese, who were aggressively attempting to monopolise trade in the Indian Ocean. With his knowledge and experience of the tactics of European armies, he became Portugal’s most formidable opponent in 16th century western India.

My book (also available as a Kindle eBook), “AN ALBANIAN IN INDIA”, is illustrated with pictures and maps. It describes Khwaja Safar’s extraordinarily exciting life and my visits to places where he made his mark in India.

CLICK BELOW TO REACH THE AMAZON PAGE FOR MY NEW BOOK:

He lived and painted in and around London’s Hampstead district

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TWO HALF-BROTHERS from India were both artists, and spent time creating artworks in and around Hampstead. Lancelot Ribeiro (1933 – 2010) was one of them, and the other was his older and more famous brother Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002). Today (23rd of June 2024), we dashed up to Hampstead’s Burgh House to see an exhibition of works by Souza created when he lived in Hampstead and Belsize Park. This small, but superb exhibition closes today.

Born in Portuguese Goa, Souza studied art at the prestigious JJ School of Art in Bombay. A participant in the Quit India Movement, he was expelled from that school in 1945 when he pulled down a Union Jack flag at a school celebration. Souza migrated to the UK in 1949. By 1955, he was already making a success in London’s contemporary art world.

In London, Souza first lived in Paddington, then North Kensington, and by the mid-1950s, he had moved to Hampstead. By 1961, he had made enough money to buy a large house – number 9 Belsize Park. He remained there until he moved to the USA in 1968.

The exhibition handout (produced by London’s Grosvenor Gallery) described Souza as an Expressionist artist who:

“… conveyed the fear and anguish of the generation.”

One of the great fears was that of nuclear weapons. Souza became an anti-nuclear activist, taking part, for example, in the Aldermaston Marches. Three of the paintings at the exhibition, “The Mad Prophet of New York”, “The Apocalypse”, and “Oedipus Rex”, reflected Souza’s reaction to nuclear weaponry, and were painted during his time in the Hampstead area.

At least two of the paintings we viewed reflected Souza’s life in northwest London. One of them depicts a church in Chalk Farm (near Belsize Park), and the other, a parody of Picasso’s 1907 “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, has the title “Young Ladies of Belsize Park”.

The paintings were hung in the well-lit Peggy Jay Gallery in Burgh House, and were accompanied by informative panels. It is a shame that this excellent exhibition was only open for a few days (19th to 23rd of June 2024). I am glad that we made the effort to see it.

Son of missionaries at the Camden Art Centre in Hampstead

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MATTHEW KRISHANU WAS born in Bradford (UK) in 1980. His parents were Christian missionaries. His father was British, and his mother Indian. Their work took them to Bangladesh, where Matthew and his brother spent some of their childhood years. Matthew’s formal education in art took place at Exeter University, and then at London’s Central St Martin. Today, the 1st of June 2024, we viewed a superb exhibition of his paintings at the Camden Art Centre in Hampstead’s Arkwright Road. The exhibition continues until the 23rd of June 2024.

Many of the paintings on display include depictions of two young boys – the artist and his brother – often in a tropical setting that brings to mind places on the Indian Subcontinent. The paintings vary in size, but all of them are both pleasing to the eye and full of interest. His paintings of trees and other plants are impressionistic. Like many of the other pictures, they were inspired by the artist’s childhood in Bangladesh and later visits to India.

One room with several paintings contains works that must have been inspired by the artist’s memories of being brought up in a missionary family. The paintings in this gallery are depictions of the colonial legacy of Christianity in the Indian Subcontinent. Another indication of the artist’s upbringing in a Christian religious family setting is the appearance of small images of the Last Supper in several of the paintings, including those which are not specifically portrayals of religious environments.

Although, there is no doubt much that can be read into his paintings, Krishanu’s works are both approachable and engaging. I liked them immediately – as soon as I saw them. It is worth a visit to Arkwright Road to see this well laid-out exhibition.

Cotton and Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi and Lancashire

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LANCASHIRE USED TO be the centre of the cotton processing industry in the UK. Cotton grown in the southern USA and in India’s Gujarat was shipped to Lancashire, where the cotton mills used it to manufacture textiles.

In the heart of the city of Manchester, we were surprised to find a huge bronze statue of the former President of the USA, Abraham Lincoln (in office from 1861 to 1865). Lincoln played a significant role in the abolition of slavery in his country. Many of the slaves worked to grow and harvest cotton, much of which was sent to Lancashire. The processing of the cotton grown by the slaves provided employment for the workers of Lancashire. The statue was created by the American artist George Grey Barnard (1863-1938) in 1919, and is one of three castings – the others being in Louisville, Kentucky and in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Beneath the statue in Manchester and carved in the plinth, there is the wording of a letter sent by Lincoln to the working people of Manchester. Written on the 19th of January 1863, Lincoln thanked the workers of Manchester, who were supporting the abolition of slavery and at the same time suffering because of the blockade that prevented cotton reaching Lancashire from the southern states of the USA. According to one website (https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/statues/lincoln.html), Lincoln’s blockade of the cotton exporting ports was not universally welcomed:

“To what degree the people of Lancashire gave this support willingly is questionable. Lincoln’s Union Army blockaded the southern ports preventing the Confederate supporters from trading their cotton and causing what was known as the Cotton Famine in the UK. By November 1862, three fifths of the labour force, 331,000 men and women, were idle. The British Government was encouraged to take action to overturn the blockade and riots broke out because of the hardship suffered by the workers. The Confederate Flag flew on some Lancashire mills.”

The American Civil War was not the only time that the Lancashire cotton workers had to suffer because of a freedom struggle taking place many thousands of miles away. In addition to the USA, British India was a supplier of cotton to the mills of Lancashire. Indian cotton was sent to Lancashire, and processed to make textiles that were then sold in India. Because of this, a vast number of weavers in India, who could have made the textiles, were made unemployed and impoverished.

As part of Mahatma Gandhi’s attempt to free India from British rule, he initiated a boycott of cloth and clothing made with textiles manufactured in England. This was sufficiently successful to render a great number of Lancashire textile workers unemployed – at a time when the Great Depression was hitting the country. On the 25th of September 1931, Gandhi travelled from London to Darwen, a small town (with textile factories) north of Manchester. He spent the following days speaking to people of all walks of life, explaining the purpose of his Khadi movement – the boycotting of imported textiles and the encouraging of homespun Indian textile production. Both of my wife’s grandmothers chose to wear only khadi cloth because they supportrd the freedom struggle. James Hunt described Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire in his book “Gandhi in London”, and noted that:

“Everywhere Gandhi explained that whatever the effect of his khaddar movement and boycott might have on Lancashire’s unemployment was a result of his prior concern with the greater sufferings in India. While Britain had 3,000,000 unemployed. India had 300,000.000 villagers idle every year. The average Indian income was a tenth of what the British unemployed worker received from the dole …”

Overall, despite the effects that his boycott was having, the workers of Lancashire welcomed him warmly and supported his cause.

Until we visited the Manchester Museum, which is about 1.3 miles south of Lincoln’s statue, I was unaware of Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire. The museum has a gallery dedicated to the South Asian diaspora, despite being called “the South Asia Gallery”. One of its showcases concentrates on the Mahatma’s brief visit to Darwen.

We visited Manchester in May 2024 to see an art installation curated by our daughter. We also wandered around the city, sightseeing. Little did we expect to discover connections between this vibrant city and both Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.

Made in India and sold in Istanbul

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KARAKÖY IS A DISTRICT of Istanbul close to the Golden Horn (Haliç). When walking along Tersane Cadesi, a busy avenue lined with shops selling technical goods for mechanical operations (from nails to power tools), we passed an old building topped with domes. Its walls are alternating layers of stones and brick work.

A plaque on the wall of this place reads “ISBU FATIH BEDESTENI AYASOFYA VAKFI KEBIRI OLARAK INSA EDEL MIŞTIR”, which means ‘This Fatih Bazaar was built as a part of the Hagia Sophia Foundation’. So, the building was constructed as a bazaar, and is still used as such. Like the rest of the street, only machine tools and spare parts are sold in the edifice.

Made in India

The above-mentioned foundation was founded soon after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. Its function, along with other foundations, was to restore and restructure Istanbul, which had deteriorated badly during the last years of Byzantine rule. I have not yet been able to find out when the bazaar was constructed.

On one of the external walls of the building, a selection of rubber car tyres was on display. An elderly man, who was running the stall, greeted us, and began trying to guess where we were from. My wife told him that she is Indian. Hearing that, the old fellow rushed back to his collection of tyres, and we started to walk away. A few seconds later, he rushed towards us. He was holding a tyre in his hand, and pointing to it, and he kept saying “India”. We stopped, and then he rotated the tyre until he found the words “Made in India” embossed on it, and showed then to us.

THY HAND, GREAT ANARCH BY NIRAD CHAUDHURI

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HAVING BEEN BEFRIENDED by the author’s son Prithvi, and having seen some of his father’s belongings stored in the Calcutta Club (in Kolkata), I finally got around to reading a book that I bought almost 30 years ago. The 960-page volume by Prithvi’s father, Nirad C Chaudhuri (1897-1999), is called “Thy Hand, Great Anarch”, and was first published in1987. The title comes from a couplet in a poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744):

“Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;

And universal Darkness buries All.”

This pessimism well summarises what Chaudhuri has written in his enormous tome.

The book is the second part of Chaudhuri’s autobiography. It covers the period from 1921 to 1952 – the years leading up to the end of British rule in India and the first few years after the country gained its independence. Chaudhuri was a keen observer of what was going on in India during this period. Without pulling any punches, he gives his often-critical opinions of what was going on in the country, and never fails to point out what he felt was being done wrong both by the British and also by the Indians fighting for the end of British rule. Although he wrote this book long after 1952, he quotes from things he wrote during the period he described. He did this, I believe, to prove to the reader that his frequently idiosyncratic opinions were not as a result of looking back with hindsight, but were what he thought at the time.

One of Nirad’s chief criticisms of the various different freedom fighters was that they all expressed their dislike of British rule but, according to him, none of them proposed plans for how India was to be ruled if or when independence was achieved. I have read several books about the history of India’s fight for freedom, and most of them portray leaders such as Gandhi, Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, and Subhash Chandra Bose as heroic figures. This was not how Nirad portrayed any of them. Having been the personal secretary of Bose’s brother Sarat Bose, Nirad was in a good position to observe many political events at close hand. As for Gandhi, he wrote (giving his reasons):

“To take the question of his contribution to Indian independence first. It is a blatant falsehood to say that he or his movements brought it about, whatever their moral effect.”

This was not an opinion I had come across before in histories of the struggle for India’s independence. It is his highly individual and original views that help to make his book so engaging. He writes very scornfully of Subhash Chandra Bose’s politics and his cooperation with the British Empire’s enemies during WW2. As for Jinnah – the ‘father’ of Pakistan – he showed less disdain, writing:

“I must set down at this point that Jinnah is the only man who came out with success and honour from the ignoble end of the British Empire in India.”

Unlike members of the Indian National Congress and their opponents – the British Government, Jinnah:

“… never made a secret of what he wanted, never prevaricated, never compromised, and yet succeeded in inflicting an unmitigated defeat on both the British Government and the Indian National Congress.”

Although I got the feeling that Chaudhuri admired the British and believed that Indians would fare better by being part of the British Empire than they would in an India ruled by Indians, his book is by no means short of criticism of the British as colonists, during the last years of empire, and after India became independent. Figures such as Attlee and Mountbatten get little or no praise from Nirad. At the beginning of a chapter called “Mount Batten Piled on Mount Attlee”, he wrote:

“As if Attlee single-handed was not enough to complete the work of demolition begun by the more cunning mediocrity. Baldwin, he piled on himself Lord Mountbatten to add greater work to his policy, which brought endless misfortunes to the Indian people.”

As the book’s title suggests, the text contains Nirad’s views on the anarchy he perceived developing as India approached independence, and then after having achieved it. It is not surprising, given what he wrote and thought about the country of his birth that Nirad chose to move to England (in about 1982) and lived there until he died. Many readers might be surprised or even horrified by what the author wrote, but he takes care to make whatever he thought sound reasonable to his readers. There are parts of the book which I found hard going – difficult to comprehend, but I ploughed on regardless, and was pleased that I did.

Tea makers and politicians in India

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MY LATEST BOOK, “The Hitler Lock & Other Tales of India”, is mainly about my very varied and fascinating experiences of travelling in India and only a little bit about Adolf Hitler. Here is a brief excerpt from the book:

Some say that when he was a young boy at school, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped in his family’s tea stall. Although he never became a chaiwallah, I have met one tea maker who became actively involved in politics. He was the owner of Chai Day Teahouse in Bangalore’s Johnson Market. I visited his establishment a couple of times in 2016, but when I looked for it four years later, it had disappeared.

Chai Day was more of a café than a tea stall. It had tables and chairs within its premises. What struck me immediately was that the walls of the seating area were covered with slogans, such as “Don’t promise when you are happy. Don’t reply when you are angry. Don’t decide when you are sad.”, and “We are not use less. We are used less”, and “Thanking you your faith for Syed Arif Bukhari.” The latter refers to the name of the owner, and the fact that he used to, and may still, put himself forward for election to positions, including MLA, in the Government of Karnataka. He told us that he is an independent and that his symbol is an electronic calculator. Just in case that is meaningless to you, I should explain that all political parties in India identify themselves with symbols as well as their names. For example, the Congress Party symbol is a raised right hand, and that of the BJP is a flowering lotus. This is done so that voters who have difficulty reading can find the party for which they want to vote. After chatting amiably with the charming Mr Bukhari, he said:

“If one chaiwallah can become a Prime Minister, maybe I can do the same.”

He might have been joking, but who can tell what the future will bring.

We are fond of drinking tiny cups of sweet, milky, often spiced, tea at the numerous tea stalls that can be found all over India.  During a visit to the Gujarati city of Baroda (Vadodara), we spoke to two tea makers one morning. One of them was a charming lady, who told us about the working life she led. She operates her stall from 630 am until 730 pm daily. She boils her tea with milk and spices on a gas ring, as do most other chaiwallahs. Each of her gas cylinders contain enough fuel (domestic LPG, which contains butane or propane or a mixture of them) to keep her stall going for 15 days.

The other chaiwallah we spoke with was Gopal. He has a tea stall near the entrance to one of the former pols (see below) of Vadodara. He works from 10 am to 6 pm. His stall was very busy when we visited it that morning. It faces a peepal tree with numerous Hindu offerings around the base of its trunk. One of the daily offerings to the gods is the first cup of tea that Gopal makes each morning. Like many other chaiwallahs we have visited in Gujarat, Gopal adds fresh herbs and spices to his tea. That morning, he had large sprigs of mint leaves and bunches of lemon grass and ginger. He pounds the latter in a pestle and mortar. He told us that pounding the ginger releases more flavour than grating it, which is what many other tea makers do. I asked Gopal whether I could take photographs of him and his stall. He allowed me to do so. As we were leaving him, he told his customers proudly (in Gujarati):

“Our Prime Minister must go to the UK and USA to have his picture taken. See, people from the UK have come all the way from London to Vadodara to photograph me.”

[Note: A pol is an ancient form of gated community, built for protection, found in the historic centres of Varodara and (more prevalently) in Ahmedabad].

You can buy a copy of the book either as a paperback or as a Kindle e-book from Amazon: