It's an Enwrong

It's an Enwrong
Mani Shankar Aiyar

William Hawkins arrived at Surat in the good ship Hector on August 24, 1608, determined to secure through a firman from the Moghul emperor Jahangir the right to trade in derogation of the monopoly trading rights earlier granted to the Portuguese. It was not till August 1618, all of ten long years later, that Hawkins' successor at several removes, Sir Thomas Roe, received an ambiguously worded decree granting the trading rights the East India Company had fruitlessly sought for a decade.

It is not that the English envoys were personally disdained. Hawkins was fluent in Turkish and Persian and, moreover, a great boozer. In little time he emerged as one of Emperor Jahangir's favourite drinking companions. But could not screw the sanad out of the Court. The English then tried to seduce the Emperor through two musician-diplomats, Lancelot and Trully. Although a fascinated Jahangir ordered six cornets to be made following his astonishment at the Englishman's playing of this unknown instrument, no general permission to trade followed.

The Company then hit upon a genuine, duly accredited King's Ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, who reached the Imperial Court at Ajmer in mid-January 1616 bearing the gift of an English coach, into which Jahangir scrambled with all the enthusiasm of a child at its birthday party. So delighted was Jahangir with the coach that there followed an imperial request for ``an English horse''. It took months for the horse to arrive but Roe thought the trouble taken was worth it when Prince Shahjahan, the main stumbling block on Roe's path, loved the animal. But still no firman was forthcoming.

It was not till 1618, as he was taking his leave of the Moghul Court ``infinitely weary of this unprofitable employment'' that Jahangir entrusted to the departing envoy his reply to King James which was to change the course of history: ``The letter of love and friendship which you sent and the presents, tokens of your great affection toward me, I have received by the hands of your ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe (who well deserveth to be your trusted servant). I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominion to receive all the merchants of the English nation and what goods soever they desire to sell or buy, they may have free liberty without any restraint.'' Mission accomplished.

Little has changed. It has taken today's multinationals not 10 but nearer 50 years to secure the liberty to ``sell or buy''. It would be fascinating, therefore, to peek into the correspondence of Rebecca Mark and her successor, Shilling, with Enron headquarters to see how closely their frustration matches Sir Thomas Roe's, as also to learn whether the 20 million dollars Enron has spent on ``educating'' India on the benefits of Dhabol include coaches or also horses of a 21st century kind. It would be even more enjoyable to see from the US Ambassador's coded cables to Foggy Bottom and the White House whether Mark and Shilling deserveth to be the trusted servants of the US establishment. Meanwhile, I await Madhav Godbole's committee report to teach me the difference, if any, between Jahangir and Sharad Pawar, and Jahangir and Bal Thackeray, as also between Jahangir's casual reply to King James and Vajpayee's ordering a sovereign counter-guarantee to Enron on the last day of his 13 days as Prime Minister Mark-I.To go by what Mohan Guruswamy, the former NDA insider, has revealed, we might also find ourselves learning the differences, if any between the role of the eldest prince of the Moghul Court and the princelings of Race Course Road.

At the same time, it would be as well to remember that even if Jahangir's reply to King James did ``change the course of history'', it took nearly a century and a half to do so. Indeed, if Aurangzeb had consolidated his Empire instead of wrecking it from within, if the successors of Aurangzeb had been a whit more capable than they were, if Ahmad Shah Abdali had been repulsed, if Madhavrao Scindia's ancestors had not lost the Third Battle of Panipat, if continental rivalries had not spilled over into the Deccan, if Nand Kumar had been an honest Indian and Mir Jaffar a patriot, indeed, to take it a step further, if Bahadur Shah Zafar had been less a poet and more a statesman (a failing he shares with Vajpayee), the East India Company would have remained a profitable commercial enterprise and the British Empire in India would not have been acquired ``in a fit of absence of mind''.

Let us not forget that after Albuquerque defeated a local nawab to acquire Goa at the start of the 16th century, no European army defeated an Indian army till the French general La Tour's victory at the Battle of Adyar in 1742, nearly 250 years later.

History does not teach us that if Enron is granted the right to generate electric power, it will end up capturing political power. Nor does history teach us that it won't. What happens depends on what T.S. Eliot has called ``the cunning passages of history''. What it does teach us is that you cannot let in multinationals with deep pockets without their becoming players on our political scene. True, their politics will be confined to their business interests so long as the sovereign authority is strong. It is venality that is the danger from them, not the undermining of our independence. But if the sovereign will of India falters, the Marks and the Shillings of today could become the Clives and the Hastings of tomorrow.

It is this which is forgotten when the Enron agreement is compared, as it has been by the apologists of globalisation, to complaining over the fixed charges of a DLY taxi when the passenger travels only five kilometers and five minutes compared to the eighty kilometers and eight hours to which he is entitled. True. Indeed, irrefutable. But does not that also establish that those who can afford only to take autorickshaws should not be hiring whole-day taxis?

Neither the country nor its consumers can afford power at Enron rates. This may not have been apparent when the agreement was first negotiated. Nor when it was then renegotiated, with the in-built provision for us to be taken for a ride not just once but with the option of being taken for suckers twice. It is the solemn, sanctified bourgeois right of international companies to milk us for what we are worth. It is the sovereign right of an independent country to say, ``No''.

The Enron agreement has the in-built provision for us to be taken for a ride not just once but with the option of being taken for suckers twice.