Free India by Patrick French Page B

well known for funding Indira Gandhi during her wilderness years after the Emergency, and the government at the time of his appointment was led by the BJP, which loathed the Gandhi family. When Indira Gandhi lost power in 1977, Swraj Paul had telephoned her and said, “Indiraji, as long as I have something to eat, you will eat first.” 11 Perhaps the Labour Party thought this was not important; they certainly never explained why someone who was non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes (avoiding paying tax because he intended to return to India, his country of origin) should represent Britain abroad. The India–UK Round Table achieved little, at substantial cost to the taxpayer, but gave Swraj Paul exceptional access in New Delhi. In 2007 he promised to bankroll the Labour Party at the next general election, and distributed 6,000 free copies of Gordon Brown’s dud book
Courage
to schools to celebrate his becoming prime minister; in 2009 he was found to have claimed £38,000 in expenses from the House of Lords authorities by pretending his main home was a tiny one-bedroom flat attached to a three-star hotel he owned in Oxfordshire. The money was repaid. Lord Paul of Marylebone’s net worth was estimated at $750m. 12
    So Britain continued on its way, drawing in a little cash from the non-domiciled, paying out some more to the economically inactive, continuing with a perception of the world that depended on the imprecations of earlier times. When London needed a monstrous sculpture to commemorate the 2012 Olympic Games, it was designed by Anish Kapoor (ex-Doon School) and paid for by Lakshmi Mittal; the Indian media called it “a permanent Indian presence in London,” the mayor Boris Johnson called it “a piece of modern British art” and Kapoor, presumably conceiving the overstretched tower as a metaphor for Britain, described it as “an eccentric structure that looks as if it’s going to fall over.” 13
    At high-functioning south Asian parties in London, prestige was graded in commercial terms, to the disapproval of the few Indian representatives of old money, those who played the game that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s of copying the manners of English gentlefolk. Their approach wasout of date; few were interested in people who acted like people who were themselves becoming irrelevant, a social group which relied on the mantra of proud inaction, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” When Lakshmi Mittal entered the room there was an understanding he was the guest of honour, since he was the richest person in Britain—of any ethnicity. I remember waiting by the front door to leave one party and finding myself beside Lakshmi Mittal. He had an intelligent and reserved face. His wife, Usha, a squat woman with movable assets on her neck, ears and fingers, was surrounded by admiring women wearing shimmering metallic outfits. It was something close to the worship of pure wealth, the worship of Lakshmi. One old man was saying over and over again to nobody in particular: “Lakshmi, Usha, so nice,” with a glow on his face like the glow of reflected gold.
    Indians were turning global, in Europe, in the Americas, in east and west Asia. In Australia, the fertilizer tycoon Pankaj Oswal outraged his neighbours by building the country’s biggest house in the genteel suburb of Peppermint Grove; his wife, Radhika, banned builders working on the site from eating meat pies and ham sandwiches, saying, “Meat eating is creating bad karma.” 14 The unshackling of talent extended far beyond the flamboyant new rich. An idea of Indian exceptionalism had developed, a conviction that the country could achieve something unique at this point in its history.
    In India, the middle class had a chance to shape its own destiny in a way that had never been possible before. You could move to your own house using a home loan and live outside the joint family; you could buy a car that was not an Ambassador or a Fiat; it was possible to travel abroad