A prince and his secret letters

“Do we not know those whose ramblings are far
From anything called thought — and yet they ARE?”
From Descartes ke Dohey
(Ed. by Bachchoo)

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of England, now well in his 60s, has many concerns. He is, as the British say, not just a pretty face. His concerns include, in a very big way, the environment. He has spoken out and is a well-known supporter of the lobby or consensus that wishes to cut down carbon dioxide emissions to save the planet from getting warmer. He is a devotee of organic farming. I haven’t actually read or heard his opinion on any other subject which fall within this universe of concern, but I can quite imagine what they are. Eco-freakos are predictable and may even be more right than eccentrically obsessed. Only diligent, rigidly applied, non-partisan science will determine which.
Prince Charles is also concerned about the National Health Service, Britain’s proud institution that is dedicated to give free and good medical treatment to its citizens. I don’t know what specific form his concern takes.
The concerns and others are expressed, it is alleged, in several letters, known as the “black spider letters” because of the creepy-crawly nature of the prince’s handwriting, addressed to ministers of the government in the past.
Today’s headlines tell us that we won’t or can’t know what the prince wrote to these ministers. This is a summary of the latest judgment in a seven-year battle for information under the British Freedom of Information Act which entitles citizens to examine papers of the state not classified as secret.
To start at the beginning, in 2005 a journalist of the Guardian newspaper, which is loyal enough to the monarchy and not what some would characterise as a republican rag, applied to the information commissioner to see the content of the prince’s letters to the ministers of the Tony Blair government, written between 2004 and 2005.
These involved letters to the ministries of business, health, education, environment, culture and Northern Ireland. The Guardian wanted them released for public scrutiny. The information commissioner ruled at the time that the letters didn’t come under the Freedom of Information Act and need not be released to the newspaper.
The Guardian fought a legal battle which came to a head last week when three judges of an appeal court ruled that the letters should be released.
That was the penultimate serve in the pinging and ponging. Now the attorney-general, Dominic Grieve, has overruled the judges and has said the prince’s letters should not be released for constitutional reasons.
And what are these? The prince is in line to be King one day. The British constitution, though unwritten, requires the monarch to remain politically neutral and the 27 letters sought under the freedom of information order, it is thought, demonstrate clear political bias. This would impede Prince Charles’ accession to the throne. As King he would not be able to revert credibly to a neutral position on these issues and so the letters ought to be repressed.
I am sure that Mr Grieve does not believe that if the Queen (God save her etc.) were to die tomorrow and Prince Charles were to be crowned king he would suddenly be a man of neutral or no opinion. That would be tantamount to thinking that once Pranab Mukherjee becomes President of India he ceases to hold the opinions that he held as a Congressman and a minister with this and that portfolio in several Congress governments.
The Indian Constitution is a written one and though it specifies how a President is to be elected it doesn’t say that the candidates have to prove in some way that they are individuals without political opinions.
The unwritten British constitution and the written Indian one, which took its lead on the establishment of democratic institutions from Britain, can only specify that any bias must be towards truth and justice and not towards the doctrines, ideologies, idiosyncrasies or prejudiced determinations of one party or section of the population.
It’s quite a transformation to demand of an individual. Of course it has been done. The boy who steals butter and hides the clothes of nymphs bathing in the river out of mischief becomes, as a charioteer to a prince in the war of all wars, one of the most powerful ethical philosophers of world civilisation.
In a more limited way, when Prince Hal, son of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV of England — as a lad he goes around with Bardolph, Peto and Pistol, the boys from the block who drink, whore and commit armed robbery under the guidance of the wicked Sir John Falstaff (all this in the Shakespeare histories) — succeeds his father and becomes Henry V, he orders the arrest of Falstaff and his gang as badmashes not fit to live as freemen in a country of which he is king.
Hal’s transformation to Henry V is not one of opinionated lad to neutral and neutralised monarch. It is quite the opposite. Today, Britain requires of Prince Charles that he keep his opinion to himself because Britain may have royalty but it no longer has a monarchy.
Something similar applies to President Pranabda. Being down and dirty, active and successful in the rule of several Congress governments, he is analogous to Prince Hal. He knows who has done what to whom and when.
In this hour of radical steps, when Mr Grieve is safeguarding the potential kingship of Prince Charles, the Indian Parliament could take the crucial step of voting by a two-thirds majority to give President powers over a summary anti-corruption commission and an executive special police and judicial force.
Such a measure would seek to transform the office of President from appearing in photographs shaking hands with no-count officials of this or that nation to having in this crucial field plenipotentiary powers to knock off at the top the proliferating Ravan-ic heads of corruption.