Banquo’s Ghost

An apparition wearing a smartly tailored jacket with a gleaming red rose pinned to his pocket has been haunting the halls. Rashtrapati Bhavan, Raisina Hill, Lok Kalyan Marg, Supreme Court, Sansad Bhavan, Shastri Bhavan, Samvidhan Sadan—sightings galore reported. Sometimes, the ghost leaves behind pages from books: The Discovery of India, The Unity of India, Letters for a Nation: From Jawaharlal Nehru to His Chief Ministers, Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Words of Freedom: Ideas of a Nation, Independence and After...The list of his tomes is long. The pages are scattered around in no particular order. In the morning, when the doors swing open, those who walk in are free to gather them. Read them, don’t read them—the people’s choice. It’s all very democratic.

Some nights, snatches from his speeches appear on the walls in big bold letters. They are said to shine like lighthouses at sea, beckoning passersby, preaching the scientific temperament, preaching peace and the politics of integration. ‘‘Tryst with Destiny”, “Emotional Integration”, “The Plan is the Country’s Defence”, “Private Property and Public Good”, “Government and the People”, “The Temples of Modern India…” One man, many quotes. One nation, many hauntings.

Must he make a point at every turn? His voice crests like a wave, consuming the ones who are in power. The phantom from the past, draped in a dapper khadi jacket, twirling his red rose—he’s always on the ruling dispensation’s mind. Try as they may to ignore him, his voice rings out in their ears, day in, day out. He offers tips for stopping the nation from regressing. Throws in a bon mot to lighten the national mood. His voice trails after leaders—in Parliament and in prayer rooms, in temples and towns.

Rivers may dry up and fields turn fallow, global warming may rain flood and fire, but this ghost will never run short of words. His prophecies are parsed by those who hate him the most. His policies pilloried, his loves and hates dissected; his decisions revisited. Brickbats, posthumously packaged, lobbed at him in public. Insults tweeted out by IT cells. New scandals cooked up; old rumours resurrected and Instagrammed. His is the presence of absence writ large on the landscape. The spectre who stalks the ones who claim to care about him the least. Every move they make, they see his shadow crisscrossing their path. Every step they take, they look over their shoulders, measuring themselves against the phantom.

Whether it is a conclave on Indian democracy and creeping authoritarianism or a crucial Parliament session, his words hover over the speakers’ heads like invisible signboards. Sometimes, the ghost from the past is said to make legislators jump out of their skin just as they are about to pass a bigoted bill, pitting religion against religion, judging people on the basis of faith. “We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest,” the apparition roars. “Freedom and power bring responsibility…”

When the campuses of three IITs were inaugurated recently, students and invitees allegedly heard a faraway voice reminiscing about IIT Kharagpur. How it birthed a new era of Indian engineering. How it blazed a trail that others simply continue to follow. Drifting around the campus as he pleased, the jacketed phantom is said to have praised the freedom fighters who had sacrificed their lives for the country at Hijli Detention Camp, where IIT Kharagpur was built. The phantom’s pet topics were freedom and sacrifice. Also mentioned: Nehruvian socialism—inclusive, evolutionary; parliamentary democracy; secularism.

Sometimes he speaks in poetry, sometimes in prose. There are rumours, strong rumours, that many ruling party members have been hearing his voice in the dead of the night. Startled out of sleep, reminded of history and of facts they would rather forget, they pace up and down the corridors of their official residences till dawn. Their footsteps echo all over Lutyens Delhi. The night is not their friend. These haunted souls are reported to have tried remedies like state-of-the-art earplugs and sound-proofing their bedrooms. But there’s no staving off the ghost. No sound-proofing to be had, for love or money, to keep out the past. That voice drills through rock. Consumes those who claim to care nothing for him. The spirit rushes into official residences where others fear to tread. Neither barricades nor biometrics stop his march.

Stories about his travels keep swirling in the air like motes of dust. They kick up a storm every time an Indian politician sets off on a major foreign tour. Wherever you’re headed, I’ve been there before, says the ghostly voice as the engines start to whir. Made my mark, met those who mattered, he says, unfurling his memories like a flag in the blue. Wheels click, wings spread out. As the plane whisks away the politician to her destination, the phantom who made history soars higher. His is the hand that wrote the first chapter in independent India’s history when the nation was finding its way on the global stage, when the world was just getting to know a new-born Republic. His, the power and the glory. And the oratory.

An anecdote here, an achievement there. The wind carries his tales across the country. His grand goodwill tour to America when Truman was president, his visit to the Soviet Union where crowds lined the streets, flinging roses and serenading him like he was a rockstar of sorts. His chats with the captains of American industry, his bonhomie with Soviet farmers and workers. So many fans, so little time. It’s as if the man couldn’t walk a mile without making a hundred friends.

This ghost has inscribed his name everywhere: on the ramparts of red fort, on airports, stadiums, campuses, classrooms, on India’s big dams and big dreams, and even on articles of clothing. A jacket is just a jacket, right? But his name stays attached to it like an accessory that can’t be unhooked. Like a damned spot, that name stays on, immune to time, untouched by a thousand barbs.

He is a “dagger of the mind”, hanging in the air. He floats, he quotes, he struts around as if he owns the nation. The spectre refuses to fade away, popping up at every meeting and state dinner, flitting from table to table, filling up rooms with tales of his triumphs, doling out free advice to dignitaries from beyond the grave. Must this apparition dig up the past and parade it around—sometimes as a triumph, sometimes as a cautionary tale?

“There is none but he

Whose being I do fear: and under him,

My genius is rebuked.”

Out, damned spot! The presence of your absence is too much to bear.