Cities of our childhood become dwelling places in our minds to which we impart an imaginary loveliness. This is sometimes unrelated to the place we have left behind. I wonder if nostalgia for Lucknow is likewise accompanied by a degree of exaggeration. But the mind comes down sharply: "No! Lucknow was really a very lovely place...once upon a time".
Lucknow's decline has been gradual, since the mid-19th century when the contest with the British erupted into the uprising of 1857. Earlier, in 1856, Wajid Ali Shah had been exiled to Calcutta. In fact, this possible indiscretion by the British is cited as one of the causes of the "mutiny".
With the looming British presence, for decades Lucknow and its qasbahs remained afflicted by a pronounced cultural schizophrenia. Awadhi and Brajbhasha were strong ingredients in the exquisite Urdu Lucknow-walas wore on their sleeves. Theatre, music were almost subservient to the flourishing art of conversation, laced with metaphor, simile, pun, quip and dollops of poetry and aphorisms, sayings in Persian, Awadhi, Arabic and, occasionally, in Sanskrit—cutting across class lines. It's difficult to convince folks today that I have actually witnessed poetic symposia at corner paan shops! The high point of this culture was from the mid-19th to mid-20th century.
Paradoxically, this spectacular phase of Lucknow culture coincided with the post-1857 penetration of British in all spheres. Macaulay's education policy (to create brown Englishmen), already in place since 1834, acquired acceleration. A new cultural divide was created. The more conservative held tenaciously onto their florid conversation, their Lucknow manners in the qasbah, the old city centres like Chowk and Nakkhas. The upwardly mobile made swift adjustments with the British and moved on to the civil lines and cantonments. They started sending their children to English language schools.
The willingness of a section of the new Indian elite to accept British tastes, manners and customs was breathtaking. Some of this was to spite the old Urdu assertiveness. Macaulay's education policy was enunciated in 1834; in 1934 Doon School was established. La Martiniere in Lucknow and a host of schools in Nainital and Mussoorie churned out gentlemen and women trained to have soup without a slurp.
New shopping arcades like Hazratganj came up to cater to the new gentry who visited their obstinately Lucknowi cousins in the older city only for marriages, deaths and, of course, Moharram. Clubs like Mohammad Bagh, Rifah-e-aam and Lucknow Club opened up as elaborate social institutions for the British Indian army, feudal aristocracy and the more plebian Anglo Indians. The Mayfair Talkies in Hazratganj became the rendezvous for Lucknow's avant garde. The bigger taluqdars, mostly Shia, who determined the city's cultural tempo, led a double life. On the one hand, they projected themselves as models of Lucknow's famed culture, on the other they were hand in glove with the British at the soirees and nautch parties. The British, smart rulers, took note of their token resistance to 'angrezi' culture and started Colvin Taluqdar college, opposite Lucknow University, where the wards lived with their retinue of servants. There was no practical need to pull this lot out of its decadent stupor.
Two events impacted on Lucknow in different ways. Partition denuded the city of some of its minuscule middle-class, but the influx of Punjabi shopkeepers added to the city's commercial vigour. The Punjabi merchants augmented their custom by introducing new marketing tricks, including fluent flirtation with women customers unaccustomed to such audacity.
The second event turned out to be traumatic for the Muslim aristocracy—zamindari abolition in the '50s. Independence, decline of the Urdu aristocracy, the retreat of the British, all added to an interesting phase of transition through the '50s and the '60s. It was transition without much bitterness and rancour. We came from backgrounds of varying proportions of Angrezi or Urdu (now even some Punjabi), but we were welded together by Lucknow's infectious humour and conversation as we ambled along the city's well-lit bazaars. There was no agitational spunk in the effete, elegant, tolerant, determinedly cultured Lucknow.
A new political culture surfaced with the defeat of the Congress in eight states in 1967. Egalitarianism brought into focus a most un-Lucknowi figure, of socialist leader Raj Narain, as the new political elite. Mulayam Singh Yadav has amplified the Raj Narain persona a hundredfold. Mandalised politics has caused Mayawati to pitch her Dalit tent against Mulayam. The new politics has demolished the traditional three concentric circles of Indian elites: feudal, Macaulay's and Brahminical. Hazratganj, which integrated the pre- and post-British, is now the passage for "thu-thu" (we spit on you) and "dhikkar" (plague on you) rallies and counter-rallies. A new, agricultural elite is gradually becoming the mofussil elite crowding Hazratganj, untutored in manners and sometimes trigger-happy to be noticed.
It is not snobbery that has created a distance between me and the hometown of my childhood. It is unfamiliarity with a transformed social reality spurred by egalitarianism, a value whose fruit has not yet ripened. Departure from Lucknow has been a bit like being abandoned even though it is I who has left.