Book Extract: Around India’s First Table: Dining and Entertaining at the Rashtrapati Bhavan

The Indian Republic’s First State Banquet

On 24 January 1950 Indrani Jagjivan Ram attended her first state banquet at Government House, New Delhi. That morning the constituent assembly had signed India’s new constitution. On this symbolic occasion, the ‘palace’, which had been built as an emblem of British power, cast its aura of splendor over the meeting of the heads of two of the first Asian countries to throw off the yoke of colonial rule. Governor General Chakravarti Rajagopalachari was the first Indian to occupy the office after the British had departed in August 1947. His guest, President Sukarno of Indonesia, had led his country’s struggle for freedom. The Dutch had acknowledged Indonesia’s independence just one month previously, in December 1949. The Indonesian president had come to India to celebrate India’s first Republic Day.

Indrani and her husband were greeted at the guest entrance by two finely dressed ushers and directed along a corridor lined with the Governor General’s Bodyguard (GGBG), standing so still that they resembled lifeless statues. When they reached the Ashoka Hall they found a crowd of well-dressed guests milling about with butlers moving among them carrying trays of colourful sherbets in tiny glasses. A short while later a voice called, ‘Attention!’ everyone obediently formed a neat line. The band played the Indonesian national anthem, followed by the ‘Jana Gana Mana’ and Governor General Rajagopalachari and President Sukarno glided into the room. They moved along the line of guests, shaking hands and exchanging a few words with each of them on their way to the dining room.

Indrani was relieved to find herself seated next to the comfortingly familiar figure of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He reassured her that the butler would only place suitable food before her as the rose next to her plate indicated that she was vegetarian. As the band began to play and everyone began to eat their cream of spinach soup, he explained how the proceedings worked: ‘See those tiny green and red bulbs on the wall in front of you – when each course commences the green bulb will be on and the bearers will start to serve the food. And when the course finishes, the red light will flash, signaling bearers to start clearing up the table. See now the red light is on, now the bearer will take the plates away.’ Indrani listened politely but asked herself for how long were Indians going to be proud of adopting British manners now that the departure of the British meant the end of India’s slavery.

In fact, what Indrani was witnessing was not so much an act of imitation but of appropriation. Walking in the grounds of the magnificent building when it was still the Viceroy’s House, Gandhi had told the viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, that it was far too big for one man. It would have to be turned into a museum or college once the British had finally departed. Mountbatten protested that India would be the largest democracy in Asia. The eyes of the world would be upon her. Other heads of state would come and visit and India would need to entertain and impress them. This was precisely the way in which the new Indian prime minister and his governor general were using the house in January 1950. The cloak of splendor which the house had thrown over the Raj was now being used to lend grandeur to the new Indian Republic. In fact, Indrani’s husband, Jagjivan Ram, was the youngest minister in Nehru’s interim cabinet. In those early days, just two years after independence, the principal aim was to demonstrate that the Indian state had mastered, and could effectively deploy, the conventions that governed state occasions. India was not simply aping viceregal rituals, but showing it was fluent in the diplomatic language of state protocol in which all nations needed to be conversant. The success of the banquet affirmed that India could proudly take its place on the international stage. Today, guests at a state banquet at the Rashtrapati Bhavan experience a ritual which echoes the viceregal past but which the Indian state has quietly but emphatically made its own.

Guests arriving at the Rashtrapati Bhavan for a state banquet ascend to the main floor by means of a marble staircase which was designed as the viceroy’s private staircase. On either side of the staircase, troughs lined with black marble catch water which spouts from lions’ heads set on the walls. The President’s Bodyguard (PBG) lining the guests’ route look every bit as impressive as the motionless Sikh lancers who stood in the corridors like grim stone giants when the French socialite Baron Jean Pellene attended a viceregal ball in 1935.

The ceremony of greeting the President of India and his guests has been modified since the early days when Indrani experienced her first banquet. It is now the guests who walk up to the president after their name has been announced. The mode of entering the dining room has also been altered since the early days after Indian Independence. The guests now file in first. Once everyone is standing solemnly behind their chairs, the President of India and his guests of honour walk to their places along the space between the table and the chairs. Only once the president has taken his seat at the centre of the table does everyone else sit down. Political precedence is still carefully observed, just as it was in the days of the Raj, with the president at the apex of the triangle and the guests ranged along the table in order of their place in the political hierarchy.

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Also read: A Q&A with Elizabeth Collingham, author of "Around India’s First Table: Dining and Entertaining at the Rashtrapati Bhavan"