Chapter Thirty Six

Mission to India

We then travelled south along the Gulf with a few stops on the way. First class seats on the plane were filled with veiled Muslim ladies returning from a shopping trip to Paris. Even though they wore the long all-enveloping robes they proclaimed opulence by the sheer luxury and expensive material of their clothes and the expensive perfumes they exuded. Our next stop was New Delhi. During our time in India it was the period of the Haj. The airport and all the railway stations were crammed with excited and noisy pilgrims. A guide from one of the Indian companies we were to visit met and chaperoned us during our stay.

Inspecting a manufacturing process in India.

We met some industrialists in Delhi and inspected some factories there and later in other parts of the sub-continent. One aspect of some of these factories caused an indelible impression. This was the lack of health and safety regulations. I was shocked to see young men locked in factory rooms applying insulation to winding conductors of transformers. This insulation was usually polyurethane, epoxy resins, polyethylene terpthalate, and other similar material. I used to reel out of these impregnating rooms choking from the acrid atmosphere and feel great pity for these unfortunate workers whose lungs would have such a short shelf life as they struggled to put bread on their family’s table.

At the weekend we travelled north to see the Taj Mahal and were most impressed. On the way we stopped for tea at a wayside cafe and came face to face with an unpleasant aspect of human behaviour. An unfortunate bear was made to perform for the diners and provide photo opportunities for them. He was led by a chain fastened to a nose ring. My hosts insisted I be photographed with him. I wondered how humans could inflict such lifelong pain on these poor beasts.

We were transported in a car driven by a factory driver of our hosts. We careered along at a strapping pace along slightly raised narrow roads with deep drainage channels at each side and people scattering to right and left of us. The trip induced a tension within us every second we were in the car. We passed many cows that are revered in India as the providers of all life’s needs. They were allowed to roam at will even in the cities where traffic made way for them as of right. They were also useful in the transport industry.

A more common and acceptable mode of transport are the local taxis. These are in widespread use all over India and a trip in one of them is akin to riding in a chariot in Rome with Ben Hur. There are called auto rickshaws and are essentially mopeds to which a car body is attached. The driver sits in front and the passengers take their chances behind him.

We eventually reached Agra where the Taj Mahal was built. We could only marvel at its beauty and brightness. It is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture in the world. The detail in the carving was unbelievable and the whole edifice a fitting resting place for an Emperor and his Queen. It is a mausoleum built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and was completed in 1653. In 1658 soon after its completion Shah Jahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb and was imprisoned in a cell in Agra Fort. Agra fort is about 300 metres up the river from the Taj Mahal. The sole view he had from his cell window there was of the Taj Mahal.

The Musamman Burj in Agra Fort where Aurangzeb was imprisoned by his son for the last seven years of his life. His only view was of the Taj Mahal that contained the tomb of his beloved wife.

He died in 1666 and Aurangzeb buried him in the Taj Mahal next to his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. The edifice is usually attributed to the Persian architect, Ustad Ahmad Lahauri, who was far in advance of his time in architecture. He designed the four corner minarets with a slight cant outwards. This was to ensure that in the event of an earthquake the minarets would fall outwards and so miss the main building.

We returned to Delhi and saw more of the city at the week-end. We visited the unusual complex of astronomical instruments of the Delhi Observatory near Connaught Circle which I described in Chapter 9. These were built by the Maharajah Madho Singh in the early 1750s. They were composite scientific instruments and performed a myriad of functions. The wonder of their age then, they are still very impressive today.

When we visited the city the people were celebrating the Hindu Spring Festival of Holi that is generally held in March. This is also called the Festival of Colour as the people smear each other with bright paint or coloured powder. Holi also celebrates Krishna and is closely akin to the Western Saint Valentine’s Day as it fosters gender rivalry and flirting is encouraged.

I next visited the Government Buildings and the Rajpath. This was a magnificent piece of Colonial architecture with an impressive vista down the Rajpath where their imperial masters overawed their colonial subjects with magnificent pageantry. The Rajpath contains India Gate. It is a massive stone arch and is inscribed with the names of 90,000 Indian soldiers who died for the Empire in World War One and on the North West Frontier. It is now India’s National War Memorial and is called the Amar Jawan Jyoti (The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier).

India Gate New Delhi.

Gandhi’s Prayer House at Gandhi Smriti.

No visit to Delhi would be complete without visiting Birla House situated a few kilometers from Connaught Place. Birla House is now called Gandhi Smriti (Gandhi Remembrance) and is located at 5 Tees January Marg. It was where Gandhi spent the last five months of his life. We were shown the building where he used to hold his prayer meetings and from where he walked to his death on one of his nightly public walks. The actual spot where he was assassinated was marked with a stone called The Martyrs Column. It is only a few paces from his prayer house. I believe the stone is now covered with a roof held up by four pillars. Gandhi was killed by an Hindu extremist who felt he was not doing enough for the Hindus. This was another case where people who practice a religion of love feel free to carry out the most heinous crimes and indulge in their darkest instincts in its name.

Our next stop was Mumbai, a vast city with horrific poverty. When I moved around the streets I was followed by a group of little beggars with faces to melt the heart of the most hardened. When I gave them a few pence the group became a crowd and the cries for alms became a howl. I could not escape and when I tried to lose them in shops they just followed me in still crying piteously. Finally, I had to flag down a taxi to escape. As we travelled around the city we passed many public work projects, most of them part of a huge sewer project. It was chastening to see entire families actually living in the huge concrete sewer pipes that were lined along the centre island of the dual carriageways. These pipes were in position along the side of the sewer trench prior to being installed. The advertisements on the buses, exhorting the population not to kill their female children, said something as well about a country renowned for its mysticism and religions. On the one hand many females were killed at birth like pups or kittens or aborted while on the other hand groups of cows were free to roam and soil everywhere. Females were not welcome as they were not as self sufficient as the boys in the daily grind for life in India. It was stomach-churning to see the young cripples begging by the side of the street with their little limbs broken and distorted in every conceivable way in order to elicit sympathy from passers-by to give alms to them rather than their competing colleagues.

Mumbai houses the HQ of TATA the biggest conglomerate in India whose products touch every part of Indian life. It is also the biggest contributor to charity in India and it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Its chairman, Ratan Tata, has a personal fortune of $70 billion making him one of the world’s richest men. We spent a number of days interviewing TATA engineers for work in Iraq and inspected more manufacturers before moving on to Bangalore to carry out further interviews.

Bangalore is largely dependent on TATA and the contribution its payroll makes to the city’s prosperity. We were housed in a TATA guest house where the Indian cuisine was excellent. An incident brought home to me that I was not at home when a rat ran across my face in the bedroom one night. Rats are a problem in India, some new born infants have been attacked and a hospital patient died after rats gnawed off his penis while another paralysed patient had his face eaten by them. The power and telephone catenaries going into the houses are equipped with collars to deter rats and other rodents from gaining entry. These are similar to the collars on ships mooring hawsers I used to see on American Liberty ships as they moored in Cork after World War Two with their cargoes of grain.

One weekend we went to Mysore to see the Palace of Tippu Sultan ‘The Tiger of Mysore’ at Srirangapattana. It was a large painted wooden teak structure now looking neglected and in need of restoration when we visited. Tippu Sultan is regarded as a great Indian patriot and an enlightened ruler. He was a Muslim ruling a Hindu population and was regarded as their defender by the Hindus. However, he was very anti-Christian. He was responsible for the captivity of Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam, which began on 24th February 1784 and ended on 4th May 1799 when Tippu Sultan was killed. When he gained control of Canara he seized 70,000 Christians out of a total of 80,000 and force-marched them to Seringapatam over an atrocious 340 km route. According to British accounts 20,000 of them perished on the way. When they reached Tippu’s city 30,000 of them had the choice of converting to Islam or death. The young women and girls were forcibly made wives of the Muslims living there. Any young man who tried to protect the women had his nose, upper lip and ears cut off. Anyone who escaped and was recaptured had their ears, nose, feet and one hand cut off on Tippu’s orders. An altogether enlightened man. He defeated the British many times but was defeated in his turn by them. He was finally killed on 4th May 1799 defending his palace from a combined force of the East India Company and the Nizam of Hyderabad. Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, fought on the British side and when the fallen Tippu was identified, Wellesley felt his pulse and confirmed that he was dead. Thus ended the Fourth Mysore War. Tippu was famous for his use of rockets and they caused havoc among the British infantry.

Tippu Sultan’s Palace at Srirangapattana.

We also visited the nearby Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple at Srirangam. It was built in the 9th Century and is dedicated to Lord Ranganatha, a reclining form of Lord Vishnu.

When we were in Bangalore we met SK Murthy who was on vacation there as he hails from that area. He told us that Sai Baba was in residence at his ashram in Prasanthi Nilayam, the abode of Supreme Peace in Puttaparthi about 200 km north from Bangalore.

Sai Baba is regarded as an avatar by his followers and is reputed to have the gift of healing, bi-location and materialization. In Hindustan ‘avatar’ means descent as of a Supreme Being to our lower existence. Avatars usually have superhuman qualities. He has an estimated six million followers (his own followers claim their number ranges from 50 to 100 million) and 1,200 Sai Baba centres in 114 countries worldwide including a group of devotees in the UN building in New York. SK said that in order to see Sai Baba at his morning audience in his ashram we would have to leave Bangalore at the unearthly hour of 4.00am. Mousa was eager and went. I was more skeptical and stayed at the guest house. Mousa was most impressed when he returned after the audience that was full to capacity. In recent years Sai Baba has been accused of sexual abuse of young male followers and the BBC broadcast a TV documentary that claimed to show the materialization to be sleight of hand. These accusations have been challenged and the consensus is that the accusations are not proven. From 2004 he was confined to a wheelchair and died on 24th April 2011 aged 85.

Bangalore was home to some of India’s technology research establishments and when the word got around that a UN delegation was in town I was invited to inspect these by their various directors. My career started in research and I am still interested in keeping up with the cutting edge of my profession so I deeply regretted that I could not take advantage of their kind invitations as our schedule was so tight. The Director of a nuclear research centre visited me on a bicycle and I realised why the Indian engineers were anxious to work for salaries others would spurn. When we finished our interviews I had recruited about 12 Indian engineers for Iraq.