A befitting tribute to a miserable wretch.
In death, as in life, his heart was in Oxford
By L K Sharma
The Times of India News Service
LONDON: Nirad C Chaudhuri had expressed a wish that his body should not be taken to India and that it should be cremated in Oxford at the same place where his wife's funeral was held in 1994. The funeral will take place at the Oxford Crematorium on Thursday. One of his three sons, who lives in Calcutta, has confirmed that he is reaching Oxford.
The death of Nirad Babu was recorded only by two British dailies and by none of the TV channels, but then the disenchanted Anglophile would not have expected more. After all, he was only an Indian writer, not an English TV chat show host whose life and death would be celebrated and mourned, respectively, by millions these days.
Nirad Babu's death did not make headlines but then while alive, he had not shown any bitterness about the lack of recognition by the host society. But in another age, Winston Churchill had praised his book and perhaps that was one compliment that Nirad Babu must have treasured most.
Back home, the Indian establishment had blacklisted him for his views on the British Empire and criticism of Indian leaders. If the urchins of Mori Gate in Old Delhi laughed at him for his English dress, the Indian establishment was not as harmless in its reaction. But, in the last few years the Indian establishment did make amends and he was honoured by the Nehru Centre of the Indian High Commission in London.
Nirad Babu spent all his English years in Oxford but was given an honorary doctorate only when he reached the age of 92. Even then, he wasn't given dining rights at a college. He was more familiar with the history of such traditions and quaint customs than many living Englishmen.
However, he dismissed the suggestion of slight or neglect by saying: ''When you realise that you are going to leave this world via the Oxford crematorium, dining rights are trifle.'' (Mohan-What an idiot)
Nirad Babu had started lamenting the decline of the British value system. Ever a perfectionist, one can easily see him marking the newspaper obituaries on him for their errors and misprints. Like any other great Victorian would have found, he was finding it difficult to see vulgarity creeping into English life. He subscribed to only one newspaper and saw no TV but he continued to be a keen observer of the English people and contemporary Britain. He found it hard to control his anger about the moral decline and the loss of purpose and confidence, as he saw it.
When his great book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, was reprinted here last year, the publisher left out the famous dedication: ''To the memory of the British Empire....'' He was so shocked that he banished the copies of the reprinted edition out of his sight. Then, when his last book in English, Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse, came out, he turned several of its pages into the proof reader's galleys - a sad comment on the state of British publishing.
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