The wedding and the fine print

In my 74 years I have not seen, or even heard of, a more tasteless, egotistical or pretentious wedding than the recent, 24x7 televised extravaganza of the Ambanis.

It is not just about the cost, estimated to be anything between Rs 1,500 crore and Rs 5,000 crore, not including the cost to the government in facilitating a private function as if it was a state event. The ugliness, the perversity and its real portent lie elsewhere.

It lies in the in-your-face manner in which this money was expended, at a time when the average Indian has never been worse off economically, when inequality and unemployment have reached record heights, when 67 per cent of the nation's GST is paid by 50 per cent of its poorest citizens, when the top 1 per cent control 40 per cent of the country's wealth, when 800 million people have to be provided free/subsidised foodgrains to survive.

At a time like this, it needs a specially insensitive and supremely contemptuous mindset to distribute invitation cards which cost lakhs of rupees each, charter 100 private jets to bring in guests from all over the globe, take 500 guests on a pre-wedding cruise, flaunt clothes and necklaces worth more than the GDP of many countries, pay Rs 80 crore (reportedly) to someone who is practically unknown in India, dish out gifts that reportedly cost more than Rs 1 crore each.

Marie Antoinette at least offered cake to citizens when there was no bread, her Indian avatars offer only a soap-box serial (spread over eight months), every event of what should be a private affair playing out in full public glare. It is this which offends the sensibilities, not just the scale of expenditure.

Incidentally, I find something sick and diseased in this obsession for things foreign in our super rich, this compulsion to flaunt white-skinned invitees, be they pop-stars, ex-prime ministers, or corporate honchos. It's as if our billionaires have not fully "arrived" until they can rub shoulders with these imported types, even if the latter have to be paid to condescend to come. Why, for example, a Rihanna or a Justin Bieber when our country has such a rich galaxy of artistes and unparalleled cultural variety of our own?

Let us be clear about one thing: this wasn't just a wedding — it was a powerful political statement. It appears to me that Mr Ambani was making two statements here through the glitz, the hype and the greenbacks. One, that no one should be in any doubt about his political clout and preeminence. (Incidentally, this vindicates what Rahul Gandhi has been saying all along about who the real powers behind the throne are).

And Mr Ambani's confidence is certainly justified — barring the South and the Left, every politician of any note — including those from the INDIA alliance and even the Congress itself — were in obsequious attendance, as were the Shankaracharyas who had boycotted the Ram Mandir inauguration, an indication that the Ambani empire holds sway over both the temporal and the spiritual! And the Prime Minister was there too, making contrite amends for accusing his host of sending tempo loads of black money to the Congress during the elections.

The second statement by Asia's richest man is that he doesn't give a tinker's curse for public opinion or his fellow Indians, that other 99 per cent who have funded his riches, consumed his products, and made him what he is. He had demonstrated as much earlier when he built his 27-storey, R. 3,000 crore mansion overlooking the slums of these Indians: the mansion is the symbolic finger he is showing them.

And why should he bother, anyway? He controls most of the media, the many anchors and editors had their snouts firmly in the multi-cuisine troughs he had prepared for them, and their studios obligingly read from the script prepared by them.

But beneath this sickening display of naked power and wealth, one can detect the parvenu type aspiration of the nouveau riche, the real colonial mindset of the Indian uber rich: a desperate, almost paranoiac desire to be "accepted" by the glitterati and power brokers of the West, to be one of them, to rub shoulders with them.

This is a trait Mr Ambani shares with his political mentor: the mentor does it with bear hugs and dropping of first names, our aspiring Midases do it by basking in the company of these invitees (what P. Sainath calls "Nero's guests"), even if it means your star performer performing with his jockeys showing and a Kim Kardashian doing a 'gajni walk' next to Mamata Banerjee plodding along in hawai chappals!

It is THIS colonial mindset which is the bane of a progressing India, which Mr Modi should be working to eradicate, rather than on renaming Rajpath or revising the IPC and CrPC or redesigning the Army's uniforms. But a doctor can hardly be expected to cure a patient if he has the same disease himself, can he? 

For me, the only ones who come out of this tamasha smelling good are the Gandhis, not one of whom attended the wedding functions, despite being invited personally. The absence of Rahul Gandhi particularly is not a sulking refusal or arrogant behaviour; as Valsan Thampu has explained in a video, it is an affirmative action which demonstrates moral uprightness and political consistency.

For this was not just a wedding, it was a political statement, a reiteration of the power and wealth of someone who controls the levers of government, and wanted it to be known not just in India but globally. It had to be answered in kind, which is what Rahul Gandhi has done.

He has shown that, notwithstanding the capitulation by his peers in the Opposition camp, he at least has the courage and commitment to practise what he preaches — that this country is being handed over to the oligarchs, that the national wealth being cornered by the rich 10 per cent needs to be equitably shared with the other 90 per cent of the citizens of the country, that the nexus between politics and Big Capital has to be broken for the country to progress and to remain a true democracy. To that extent, he has been true to his new persona and has done us proud. 

Sadly, no other leader of the Opposition alliance has shown similar fortitude or moral integrity: they have all succumbed to the lure of power and wealth and performed the role of baratis (if not labharthis) in full public glare. They could have wished Mr Ambani personally and in private in the best Indian traditions, without associating themselves publicly with this circus. Instead, their cringing behaviour has exposed the fragility and lack of any genuine, value based adhesive to the INDIA alliance.

It further shows the difficulty of formulating any common minimum programme for the alliance. This is a warning flag for Rahul Gandhi and one hopes he has taken note of this. For all their talk of socialist principles, concern for the common man, tears for the vulnerable sections — all this is just a facade, they are perfectly comfortable with the purveyors of vulgar affluence and riches; they are self-serving opportunists whose only goal is to attain power.

They will sup with the devil, if necessary, to attain this object. If they are opposing Mr Modi, it is not because they do not approve of his values and principles (or lack thereof), it is because they would rather be sitting on his throne. They cannot be trusted to stay the race and the Congress will, sooner or later, have to find a way reduce its dependence on them.

Many years ago, when I was a probationer on district training in Mandi (unfortunately, Kangana Ranaut was not around then), I used to go to the district club almost every evening for a drink or a game of bridge. My deputy commissioner, the late C.D. Parsheera, was president of the club but NEVER visited it.

One day, I asked him the reason for staying away. I still remember his words, which have guided me throughout my career: Avay, our job demands that we say NO more often than we say YES. And remember this — it's very difficult to say "no" to a person with whom you have had a drink the previous evening.

Do you now see the fine print in this wedding?

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Disappearing Democracy: Dismantling of a Nation and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com