The Hindu Merchant at Novgorod and Khrushchev’s visit to India
I was drawn to this tale while referring to Khrushchev’s
memoirs, which interestingly took me to the story of Sadko, and made me listen
to a glorious tune titled “Song of India’ by Rimsky Korsakov. The haunting tune
led me to the Indian favorite ‘Awaz De Kahan he’ (Naushad was certainly
inspired by the overture and verse sections of the Russian Operatic piece –
Song of India), by yesteryear’s Noorjehan (See a
previous article). The story around the Russian song and its impact is
fascinating, which goes on to connect India, Khrushchev, and Nehru, later
influencing Khrushchev’s visit to India (and wrongly, Kerala) in 1955. Without
further ado, let us now see what this is all about.
Ages ago, during a time when there were neither planes nor
ships as means for quick transport, or communication, the only means for long-distance
trade was the camel, an
account of which I had provided some years ago. Traders traversing vast
distances, perched atop the ship of the desert, after arriving at
Caravanserai’s, conveyed stories from exotic places and events, later regaled
their audience with stories of their travels. Imagine the scene, the weary
trader relaxing with a tall drink, in the middle of a marketplace or town
square, centering an audience with wide open eyes and bated breath eagerly
waiting for morsels of words to fall out of the mouth of the enthusiastic
speaker, speaking in hyperbole. We have heard and read about so many of these
storytellers, such as Sindbad, then the teller of the Arabian Nights, and so on
and so forth. The story of Sadko is one such.
First an introduction to Nikita Khrushchev and why I am
telling this story. I came across this tidbit while researching the Sino-Soviet
split of the 60’s, and the 1962 Indo-China conflict. Khrushchev was the First Secretary
of the Communist Party at that time, and Nehru the Prime Minister of India. I
will not get into the complex political aspects, the geopolitics, etc., in this
article, but will just mention that the USSR had hardly any knowledge of India at
that time. Once KPS Menon was appointed as India’s third ambassador to the
USSR, things changed a bit and the hugely popular ambassador made quite an
impression on the politburo. The relationship strengthened in 1955 and Nehru
visited the USSR in June, a much talked about visit, especially the amusing
incident on how he had Khrushchev remove entrance fees to public places, among
others. A return visit was hastily planned, and the Russian Premier Bulganin
was to visit India in 1956. The visit was advanced, and it was announced that First
Secretary Khrushchev would accompany Bulganin. It was to become in the history
of the Indo-Soviet relations, a laudatory trip, one which looking at the
itinerary, was incredibly exhausting to the Russian team of 100 or so, flying
into India.
Khrushchev said - Our knowledge of India, to tell
the truth, was not only superficial but downright primitive. Don’t laugh, but I
personally drew some of my knowledge of India from an aria sung by an Indian
merchant in the opera by Rimsky Korsakov entitled Sadko. He sang: “Countless
the diamonds deep in caverns of stone.” I knew that the weather there was warm,
that the sea did not freeze, that the country possessed countless riches and
that the animal world there was something fantastic. There were jungles. The
very word made a very big impression on me, much bigger than now when we
ourselves have seen what the jungles of India are really like. They’re not at
all as exotic as they sound!
And that was how I read for the first time, that there was a
Song of India. Curious, I got to the operatic piece and listened to it. The tune
was very familiar and before it got over, I knew that was the inspiration
behind the Indian favorite Awaz De Kahan He. All this made me even more
curious. I decided to do a little research on the story of Sadko and the
trader.
It is somewhere in the middle of the story that Sadko meets
many merchants by the pier of Lake Ilmen, and as it turns out, one of them is a
merchant from India. While other merchants sing about their lands, the Indian ‘Hindu’
merchant sings a lovely song about his distant home. That is the Song of India (Song of the Indian
Guest) one that is also known as the Hindu Song or Chanson Indoue. Interestingly
both the Russians and Chinese called Indians – ‘The Hindus’, people from Hindustan
– Hindustan, just like the Turks call Indians- Hintli, ‘those from Hindistan’.
Anyway, Russian music was over time, infused with oriental motives and secondly, Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov who was once a sailor himself, often wrote music inspired by
the sea. The Sadko opera was completed around 1898. The middle piece in the
opera was the Indian song, and it went on to became very famous in the Western
world later, and get immortalized in India, thanks to Naushad getting inspired
by it, when tasked to make music for Anmol Ghadi. But it is unlikely that many
know about the original Song of India, in India.
Russians of course, the affluent ones, and the party bigwigs
got to see all the great operas in Moscow and that is how the splendor of India
reached their ears and influenced their thought, as it did in the case of
Khrushchev. The Song of India was popular among many musicians in the 1930s and
1940s and oft-repeated in many versions.
So, how did the song go? There are a few versions in vogue,
the original versions with translations, and an extended Mercer translation. Listen
to the Russian Leo
Kuznetsov version here, with accompanying visuals. The Ukrainian Ivan
Semyonovich Kozlovsky (1900-1993) was a leading opera singer in the Soviet
Union; a favorite of Stalin, and in another section, Khrushchev mentions his familiarity with this
version and the line about diamonds. A good instrumental version
can be heard here.
Khrushchev did not find much favor after the 60s and was eventually ousted, perhaps because he was never a Stalinist, because he was moderate, because of drought and related difficulties in Russia in 1963, as he antagonized China, and finally, because he negotiated peace with the West, following the Bay of Pigs furor, to reduce cold war tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin circle stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Beginning in 1966, Khrushchev began his memoirs. He
initially tried to dictate them into a 10 lbs. German tape recorder slung over
his shoulder while walking outdoors, to avoid eavesdropping by the KGB. Sergei
Khrushchev, his son, later handed over the tapes to the KGB, but copies had
been made, some of which had been transmitted to a Western publisher. Sergei
instructed that the smuggled memoirs should be published, which they were in
1970 under the title ‘Khrushchev Remembers’. In this voluminous collection,
Khrushchev has a section on India, which makes very interesting reading, as you
must have realized seeing how he talks about his knowledge of India having been
gleaned from Korsakov’s opera piece.
Now we get to the second part of this article, Khrushchev’s
impressions of India.
The state
visit 1955
After a trade treaty had been signed between the two
countries in 1954, Nehru made a state visit in June 1955. The return visit
planned for early 1956 was advanced to the winter months of 1955 and a large
contingent of some 100 Russians started their tour of India in Nov 1955.
Age had caught up with Khrushchev and he frequently confuses names with places, in his memoirs. For example, he believed he spent a couple of days touring Kerala, while in reality, he was traveling around Coimbatore, Coonoor, and Ooty. Perhaps Kerala was stuck in his mind as it had voted a communist government into power, later in 1957. Nevertheless, it was all the State of Madras that he toured around, not transgressing into Cochin and Travancore kingdoms, and Kerala had been formed only in 1956. Let’s now check out some highlights from Khrushchev’s memoirs relating to India, noting that he makes it clear that he is visiting a capitalist country.
The dignitaries were put up at the Presidential palace, much
to President Rajendra Prasad’s annoyance. Khruschev mentions Prasad’s comments
were relayed to them: “They have put the Russians there, and they are going
to make a foul mess of my palace. They are going to eat meat there, not to
mention drinking alcohol”.
They did all the usual stuff while on the road, wearing
Gandhi caps, climbing on an elephant, receiving garlands from maidens, having
Kumkum applied on their foreheads, and visiting farms and factories, dams, and
educational establishments, including the NDA at Pune. Ah yes, and a tiger cub
was gifted, at Rudrapur.
At Madars, it appears Rajaji was quite an imposition,
irritating the otherwise joyous dignitary.
“This ascetic man kept talking to me during the performance, giving
me no chance to follow the course of the concert and enjoy it.” In his opinion, if large factories were
brought into this heavily populated country, the high level of mechanization
and automation would result in a mass of working people being driven into the
army of the unemployed, and poverty would only increase. He stuck to the
Gandhian ideal: the spinning wheel was the only industry needed.
Morarji Desai - In Bombay, Desai, the prime minister of
this state, had a hostile attitude toward us; he had been opposed altogether to
our being invited to Bombay. He and I understood each other quite well, but our
views stood in absolute opposition. He firmly supported a pro-American policy
and held that India should develop in the classical capitalist pattern.
But when it came to the travels down South and into the
cooler environs of the Nilgiris, he assumed he was in Kerala - Before we
went to Kashmir we went to the state of Kerala and added - One thing
about Kerala that has remained in my memory was the endless rows of palm trees
being grown commercially. Coconuts were harvested from them. We were shown how
that was done. People scrabbled skillfully up the trunks of the trees. Their
feet were bound with rope and seemed to stick to the tree trunks. Then from the
treetops, they would throw down the coconuts.
At Coonoor (Khrushchev thought that was also in Kerala, it
was the Singara plantations owned by the Madhwani’s) - We were also shown
tea plantations in Kerala. What we saw in Kerala made a sorry impression.
Everything was done by hand; then the leaves were thrown in a heap on the
ground. I joked: “If Soviet citizens who drink Indian tea could see how it’s
processed, they’d probably lose their appetite for it.” In our country, the
sanitary standards are stricter at tea plantations. There was nothing like that
in Kerala. But the owner gave us a very polite reception and treated us to tea
and fruit.
In all, they spent 27 days, visiting India Burma, and
Afghanistan. Ms Rahimbabaiveva, Deputy Minister of Culture in Uzbekistan was included
since it was believed that Kashmiris and Afghans supposedly had ethnic
connections to Uzbek. The entourage was about 100 people, of which 50 traveled
with the leaders, including a lady cook and cargo planes to ferry baggage.
Three Ilyushin 14s and other planes were deployed, and they even did trial
flights to each locale. They touched at Delhi, Agra, Bhakra Nangal, Bareilly,
Rudrapur, Terai, Bombay, Pune, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Coonoor, Ooty, Calcutta,
Burma, Chittaranjan, Sindri, Jaipur, Srinagar, Delhi, Kabul and back.
NY Times - At one point Nehru told Bulganin that it was
rumored he wore a bullet-proof vest; "I do not," said Bulganin.
"Feel me." Nehru good-naturedly poked an inquiring finger at the
Russian’s chest. Then Bulganin turned to the crowd and raised his hands high in
a happy prizefighter’s salute.
Bangalore (again, Khrushchev thought that was in Kerala) - In
Kerala, we visited a respected fellow countryman, of ours, the great artist
Svyatoslav Roerich. His father [Nikolai Roerich] had also been a famous artist,
and his paintings were on display at an exhibit in Moscow.
Taj Mahal - It is enough to mention that great pearl of
artistry, the Taj Mahal, every tourist visits this place, taking delight in the
white stone structure, which doesn’t even seem to be of stone because the
material is of such exceptional whiteness. This was built in a century-long
past, yet to this day it bears witness to the high level of culture of the
Indian people. On the other hand, when I looked at the poverty all around, the
thought occurred to me that the rulers didn’t consider working people to be
human, but forced them to erect palaces and mausoleums, leaving them to die
from the heavy burden of their labors. The rulers didn’t take the people into
account and had no regard for them. They only needed hands to do the work, and
they squeezed the living juices out of their subjects. Today these buildings
are the pride of India, monuments to its art.
KPS Menon accompanied them on the trip and mentions that the
documentaries made later - revived a thousand memories of the three most
hectic weeks of my life, when I accompanied Bulganin and Khrushchev on their
hurricane tour of India from Kashmir to Coimbatore, from Bombay to Calcutta. It
was also a comprehensive tour. From Delhi, dry and cool, and the Punjab, even
drier and cooler, they flew into the sweltering heat of Bombay. Thence we took
them higher and higher, to Poona, 2,000 feet above sea level, to Bangalore,
4,000 feet high, and to Ootacamund, 8,000 feet high, where the crisp air
refreshed and reinvigorated them. From Ootacamund they made the precipitous
descent to Coimbatore and were charmed by the coconut, areca-nut, and banana
groves they saw on the way. There followed the hottest and most tiresome part
of their journey: Madras, Calcutta, and Rangoon. Finally, they went to Kashmir.
There they saw the snow, discarded their bush-shirts, donned their fur coats,
and felt at once at home and nostalgic for their own Central Asia, as Babar
once did when he saw a caravan arriving in Lahore from Kabul.
Local reports mention that they stopped at the village of
Vadamadurai where a thirsty Bulganin is believed to have drunk some coconut
water in a farm, which these days is known as the ‘Bulganin Thottam’. They
stayed at the Ooty Raj Bhavan and had their hair cut by a local barber. It is
also mentioned that they planted trees in Bangalore, and one of them I believe
is possibly around, though leaning heavily.
According to the New Yorker - Bulganin has been stately,
Khrushchev animated. Bulganin has not seemed to be enjoying himself much, and
at times has looked like a product of taxidermy. His blue eyes have been
expressionless, as if made of glass. He has, however, been consistently polite
and thoughtful. Khrushchev, on the other hand, has been full of life and
spirit; indeed, he has expressed himself with an exuberance that some educated
Indians at least, consider boorish.
As time went by, Bulganin was starting to tire, and
Khrushchev (his junior in the political hierarchy - Khrushchev's position as
head of the Communist Party imparted greater authority and control than
Bulganin's position as head of the government) took over. At Bangalore,
Khrushchev confirmed that Russia had recently exploded a hydrogen 'bomb. As
Khrushchev put it, the scientists had done this - to "see whether their
calculations were right, adding the Soviet Union would never be the first to
use this power."
The next few years became a period of turmoil all over the
world. The U2 plane was downed, the Nandadevi incident occurred, America
invested heavily in Pakistan, the specter of a nuclear holocaust loomed on the
horizon, the Bay of Pigs happened, Mao went ballistic, and China invaded the
Indian borders in 1962, following a Sino Soviet split. Khrushchev steered the
USSR in those days and fortunately proved to be more moderate, for which he
eventually paid a price and got ousted.
The state visits of Nehru and the return visit by the
Russians are barely known to the youth of today, and they may not care, anyway,
but then again, history was never taught rightfully in our schools, it was
simply imposed, and everybody dreaded those lessons. I hope it is a little bit
more interesting to students these days, for any event can be an interesting story
replete with anecdotes and asides if some effort is taken. These are all
incidents that created a nation, and her worldly relations. Nevertheless,
history is also being manipulated these days and is even being re-written
sometimes, to suit political views.
I deliberately did not get into the political sides and
impacts of the visit, for it would be dreadfully boring for a casual reader.
Not everybody looked forward to the arrival of these guests and its potential
implications, fearing an Indian tilt left, which never happened. Khrushchev
stated – Nehru was not a Communist, but is a bourgeois political figure and
a democrat, who had his own political views. We understood that although he was
not a Marxist, or a supporter of the Soviet type of governmental system, he did
want to do good for his people, and he wanted life in India to be organized on
a democratic basis. He still talked about socialism then, although rather
vaguely, and it was hard for us to understand what kind of socialism he had in
mind in general. After all, the term "socialism" has been dragged
around a lot and is somewhat the worse for wear.
So much for
the song and its popularity, needless to mention it made quite an impression on
Khrushchev.
Finally, most of you may not know, that this plant, Dracaena
Reflexa Variegata, (we had one at home for years and did not know!), one that
many of you would be familiar with, is also called ‘The Song of India’! I have
no idea why it is so…
Rimsky-Korsakov and His World - edited by Marina Frolova-Walker
Khrushchev remembers - Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev
Propaganda aspects of the Bulganin -Khrushchev visit to India in late 1955 - Harry B . Irvine
The flying Troika – K P S Menon
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