In London, the wealthy Hinduja brothers fund the Faith Zone. In India, they face allegations of less pious activity
To its critics in the liberal intelligentsia, the millennium bazaar will be a carnival of vacuity. The Great Exhibition of 1851 told the world of the boundless and beneficial possibilities of science and manufacturing. One hundred years later, the Festival of Britain reflected the optimism and solidarity of the generation that had survived and won the second world war. But the Dome appears to have nothing to say.
It can't celebrate the inventiveness of a native industry that has all but disappeared. It can't proclaim the united purpose of a nation that is divided by fantastic inequality and is slowly fragmenting into its constituent parts. As with a Lloyd- Webber musical, the show's spectacular scale is meant to overwhelm questions of value. The result, wrote the novelist Ian Sinclair, is a "Disneyland on-message" that had "nothing to do with bemused citizens".
The ostensible purpose is to mark the two-thousandth anniversary - or thereabouts - of the birth of Jesus. Yet, as Peter Mandelson developed Michael Heseltine's project after the 1997 election, Anglicans and Roman Catholics complained that there was no place for the spiritual in what looked like being a cross between a trade show and a theme park. A "Faith Zone" was promised to appease the pious. But its contents provoked prolonged sectarian dispute and no business sponsor could be found. The deadlock was broken in a bold manner in the summer of 1998. The New Millennium Experience Company announced that one of the wealthiest and most secretive families in international trade was giving £1 million to ensure that the devout might rent a small corner of the hall.
The Hinduja brothers - Srichand and Gopichand in London, Prakash in Geneva and Ashok in Bombay - control a global finance, telecommunications, film and oil business. Srichand and Gopichand are the eighth wealthiest people in Britain. They are worth about £1.3 billion and were granted British citizenship by the Home Office earlier this year. The ascetic brothers reject alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. They give generously to charities on three continents through the Hinduja Foundation. Their fortunes are not held individually, but as the communal property of the House of Hinduja.
They are also alleged to be at the centre of the biggest bribery scandal in the history of independent India: the Bofors arms affair. The case, which once inspired headline-writers around the world, has dragged on since 1988 without conclusion. Those among the Hindujas' eminent friends in London who have heard of Bofors must think the old scandal is now little more than a low, faintly disconcerting hum in the background. Current events in India suggest they may be proved wrong.
Although their appearances in the press are rare, the Hindujas are familiar to the point of cosiness with politicians, the Queen and Prince Charles. They are Sindhis who fled Pakistan at partition and built their wealth in Iran before the Islamic revolution and India. They were once close to Rajiv Gandhi. With a neat switch, they befriended the leaders of Congress's rivals in the Hindu-nationalist BJP after Rajiv was assassinated in 1991. As in India, so in Britain. The Hindujas graced Conservative fund-raising parties for Margaret Thatcher and John Major before finding, along with many other rich men, that the transition from old Conservative to new Labour could be painless.
"I asked: can we do something in the Dome?" Srichand said earlier this year. "Mandelson started coming to our functions and receptions. He is sharp, decisive and has a good grasp of the issues. Every businessman likes politicians like that."
The influence that you get if you help bail out a potential embarrassment was palpable on the night of 3 November. Tony and Cherie Blair joined Mandelson, Charles Kennedy, Jeffrey Archer and 3,000 guests at a Hinduja Diwali party at Alexandra Palace in London. Mrs Blair had dressed to ingratiate. She wore an orange and white silk churidar kameez - a sari-style wrap covered by a puff-sleeved jacket - and a jewel on her forehead. Srichand's daughter picked the costume from the collection of Nita Lulla, one of the best Indian designers in Britain. Her father presented it as a gift to the First Lady. Distinguished guests applauded the Hindujas for their ecumenicism and philanthropy.
Lowlier souls moaned. "Everyone around me thought it was bit tacky," one said. "The place was heaving and we were left parched and struggling to get a drink. David Frost came on and made a few bad jokes. Blair made a speech I've heard him give to ethnic minorities before. Cherie's dress was too flashily Bollywood."
As they left, each member of the multicultural company was asked to sign the Hinduja Pledge, which solemnly bound them to strive for tolerance and peace in the next century. Even the grumpiest party-goer couldn't object to such a well-meaning, if somewhat saccharine, sentiment.
The same touchy-feely spirit will animate the Faith Zone. Christian history will have its place beneath "six dramatic canopies", but so, too, according to the press releases, will a display of "moments of profound personal experience common to us all - the birth of a child, marriage, the loss of a loved one - and how they are marked and understood in distinctive ways by different faith groups". Srichand has said that he wanted to promote the pledge and contribute to the Dome because, "I don't agree when we talk about Hindus or Christians, because we are all human beings. It's only which faith people follow that has created differences between us."
Well, there's not only faith. The struggles for money and power - and for control of the weapons that generate both - have their part in creating differences. Allegations about all three may soon force the British government to explain how the peace-loving Faith Zone got entangled in a sub-continental arms race.
On 22 October, Superintendent Keshav Mishra of the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a 25-page affidavit at the court of special judge Ajit Bharihoke in New Delhi, along with 2,500 pages of witness statements and supporting documents. After years of obfuscation, the Bofors scandal, which has haunted the Hinduja and the Gandhi families, looks likely finally to confound sceptical Indian observers by concluding with the prosecution of at least some of the alleged criminals.
Rajiv Gandhi's Congress government paid Bofors, a Swedish armaments manufacturer, $1.3 billion (£802 million) in 1986 for 400 Howitzer field-guns for the Indian army. Rajiv was at the height of his popularity. He was an airline pilot who never expected to be a politician. After his brother Sanjay died young and Indira Gandhi was murdered, he was pushed into taking charge of Congress. His background enabled him to pose as an Indian JFK; a bright technocrat who would stop the fixing of the old elite and open up a secretive government and a controlled economy. He heralded a new, modern India , impatient with ideology and ready to throw off the forces of conservatism.
The appeal of the new leader was enhanced by his promise that middlemen would be cut out of Indian government contracts. In theory, the agents of western companies were supposed to provide detailed local knowledge. In practice, as all halfway knowledgeable Indians suspected, they bribed generals and politicians and civil servants.
Bofors shattered his clean image. Within months of the weapons being delivered, Swedish radio claimed that £30 million-worth of kickbacks had been distributed to the Gandhi court. Rajiv denounced the allegations as a treasonable conspiracy against India, and then presided over the most perfunctory of inquiries. The bad smell would not go away. The chief of staff of the Indian army said that he had recommended pulling out of the contract, but had been overruled by Rajiv's associates. The defence minister resigned, rather than obey Rajiv's orders to stop investigations into arms contracts. In June 1988, the Indian press published documents from the Swedish auditor-general identifying shell companies that had allegedly channelled Bofors' pay-offs. Included in the haul were the names of firms linked to the Hindujas.
The CBI followed the media accusations with its own investigations in India and Sweden. It alleged in 1990 that "the Hinduja brothers are believed to be behind secret coded accounts in the name of Pitco/ Moreso/Moineao and AE Services of the UK".
The Hindujas were outraged. "We completely deny that any such payments were ever received by our company or by any member of the family," they said. The documents were false, part of a plot by their rivals.
The Swiss froze six bank accounts. A full inquiry seemed imminent. But each attempt to release evidence was blocked by appeals to the Swiss and Indian courts and by the changing interests of the changing governments in New Delhi. The case was deadlocked through the 1990s.
But now the Jarndyce v Jarndyce of Indian politics appears to be near resolution. The Swiss government released a batch of bank records, and these allowed the October charge sheet to be delivered to the court. Details of the Hinduja companies are being held up by the Swiss for the time being. If and when they are received, Gopichand Hinduja will, according to the CBI affidavit, join former Bofors middlemen and employees, and the late and posthumously prosecuted Rajiv, in facing charges of "criminal conspiracy". CBI officers add that Srichand and Prakash Hinduja are under investigation for the transfer of alleged bribes. This, of course, does not prove their guilt.
Indian journalists who, from necessity, wear a body armour of cynicism have joined the opposition in doubting whether the BJP-led coalition would dare to proceed against the Hindujas. All the other suspects mentioned in the CBI evidence have been charged, they point out. The Hindujas are discussed, but no charges have been brought. They merely remain the objects of "continuing investigations". The Hindujas, meanwhile, protest their innocence and say their names have been dragged into the affair solely to embarrass Congress in an election year.
When I spoke on the telephone to Arun Jaitley, the minister of information in the BJP-led coalition, he was anxious to assure a magazine on the other side of the world that detectives and the government were serious. The CBI "first registered the links" between the Hindujas and the scandal in 1990, he said. Only the Hindujas' "repeated appeals" to the Swiss have stopped formal charges being brought. "If there is no evidence, why have the Hindujas been fighting the battle of their lives to stop us getting evidence from Switzerland?" he asked. He sounded like a man who meant business.
The Hindujas, who have always denied being involved in arms-dealing, legal or illegal, justified the delaying tactics by saying that if their records were released, unrelated and peaceful transactions with Bofors would be twisted by detectives. A resolution will be reached, sooner rather than later. There are no judges left for the Hindujas to appeal to in Switzerland. Their last hope is the Swiss government, which is still considering the claim that the Indian request for information threatens Swiss national sovereignty.
Shri Jaswant Singh, the leader of the Indian lower house, told the Indian parliament that the Hindujas had "appealed to all the courts and lost in all the courts". The CBI had given an undertaking that their bank statements would be used only for the purpose of investigating the Bofors bribes.
"The highest court in Switzerland has already ruled that there do exist grounds for sustaining [the charges]," Singh continued. "Therefore these documents should go." When they arrived, "a charge sheet would be filed" against the Hindujas.
The Swiss may uphold the Hinduja appeal. Even if they do not, the family's long protestations of innocence may be vindicated if the papers are released. For all that, their critics in the Indian government appear confident.
Whatever the outcome, the affair has been a disaster for the sub-continent. With all the juicy allegations of larceny and intrigue to savour, it is easy to forget that Bofors guns added to the ever- growing armouries of India and Pakistan, which now face each other in an unstable nuclear "balance of power" that scares the living daylights out of the US State Department.
The consequences for Indian democracy have been as dire. The Gandhi family had many faults, but at its best it upheld Nehru's ideal of a secular India. The Bofors scandal led to Rajiv's defeat in the 1989 general election and the emergence of the BJP as the dominant Indian party. The BJP used Bofors in this year's election to wrongfoot Rajiv's widow, Sonia, who assumed the dynasty's hereditary title of leader of Congress and led it to defeat.
Now, the political embarrassments may spread to Britain; though, for those who look beyond the garishness, there may seem embarrassments enough already. If the Indian authorities have their way, it is possible that visitors to the Dome's "haven of tranquillity" may feel the urge to meditate on the Faith Zone's associations with war in Kashmir and profiteering in New Delhi. They might then move on to the "Mind Zone" sponsored by British Aerospace, suppliers of Hawk Aircraft to the slaughterers in the Indonesian military. Nearby, they will be able to gawp at giant screens sponsored by BSkyB, owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose companies have paid virtually no corporation tax since 1985. (At least, they may reflect, News International is finally giving something back.) Then they could take in a national showcase of young talent in the Dome's theatre, where children will present plays sponsored and developed by McDonald's, whose two-year libel action against green activists ended with Mr Justice Bell ruling that the company targeted "susceptible young children to bring in custom, both their own and that of their parents".
If you stop being high-minded, the Dome can say as much about Britain as its predecessors in 1851 and 1951.
In the words of the publicity for the Faith Zone, it accurately "explores the values that underpin our society".
Nick Cohen writes the "Without Prejudice" column in the Observer"
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