Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  The national income over the First and Second Five Year Plans (1951–61) rose by 42 per cent, but whom had it benefited? Nehru appointed a committee to find out why the common man had not benefitted. P.C. Mahalanobis (founder of the Indian Statistical Institute) headed the committee. The committee found that the ‘concentration of economic power in the private sector was greater than what could be justified as necessary on functional grounds’. It questioned ‘how far this is an inevitable part of the process of economic development, how far it can be justified in terms of economy of scale and full utilization of scarce managerial and entrepreneurial resources … and how far the growth which has taken place is unhealthy and anti-social in its consequences’. A report on the current pattern of economic development, if prepared, would arrive at the same conclusions.

  Even though the radicals found the Mahalanobis report to be grist to their propaganda mill, they could not make a convincing case against the private sector because the report itself was not categorical on its role. Therefore, the phrase, socialistic pattern continued to be used by the Congress.

  Yet, what Nehru had in view was the building of heavy industry for the production of capital goods as a base for a modern, strong country, and on the wide expansion of village industries for the manufacture of consumer goods and provision of large-scale employment. Many years later, Manmohan Singh, leading the government, adopted something similar with less emphasis on village industries.

  Vote-bank politics had already begun in Nehru’s time. Maulana Azad enquired which constituency he should contest from and was told by Nehru to choose a place with a substantial Muslim population. Azad opted for Gurgaon constituency, including Mewat where there was a substantial Meo (Muslim Rajput) population. When Zakir Hussain heard about this he said that Azad should have contested from a Hindu-majority seat so that if they were to defeat even a person like him, they would have proved that their avowed faith in secularism was a sham.

  Nehru found little time for the party organization and still less for the Gandhians who were annoyed that they were not being consulted on any policies or programmes being formulated by the government. After waiting for years, Acharya Vinobha Bhave, Mahatma Gandhi’s closest disciple, invited Nehru and Pant to his Paunar ashram, near Wardha in 1959, to exchange views. Vinobha told them that they had strayed away from the ‘Gandhian path’.

  Nehru had liked Vinobha’s Bhoodan movement, that had motivated landlords to donate a part of their land for distribution among the landless. When Sheikh Abdullah had distributed land to the tillers in Kashmir without compensation to the landowners, Nehru had congratulated him. Nehru had himself effected the first amendment to the Indian constitution when the Supreme Court had held that the requisition of land for public purposes should be on the basis of ‘just compensation’. The amendment required the government to lay down the principles of compensation.

  Nehru was not against compensation but argued that the land owned by the zamindars was given to them by Britain for their loyal services to the Raj. He couldn’t accept feudalism in a country which they were determined to convert into a welfare state. Subsequently, the land acquisition act was passed in 1984 when the quantum of compensation was considered to be the market price. Both governments at the Centre and in the states have played havoc with the right to acquire the land for public purposes.

  The discussion at the ashram degenerated into heated arguments, and Nehru found the questions taking the form of an inquisition. Vinobha said in general terms how difficult it was for any government or individual to match up to Gandhi’s standards, but the real attack was launched by an elderly lady at the ashram. She said that the government had betrayed Mahatma Gandhi’s principles. I could see Nehru’s face first showing discomfort and then annoyance. He could not contain his anger and told her that he too knew about lapses and irregularities in the working of the ashram and the Bhoodan movement. He had purposely kept silent but ‘if you want to discuss economic development, you should give me the chance to point out the humbug that went in the name of Gandhiji’. Pant controlled the situation by taking the lady to task for levelling vague charges, and the discussion ended on a sour note.

  This was where I first heard that Congress President V.N. Dhebar was resigning and Indira Gandhi was taking over. Pant had supported Nehru at Vinobha’s ashram but not at the CWC when Indira Gandhi was nominated as the party president. He was careful not to oppose Nehru’s daughter directly but argued that her frail health would come in the way of the extensive travels the Congress president was required to undertake. Raising his voice, Nehru told Pant that ‘she was healthier than both of us’ and could put in longer hours of work. The subsequent discussions, as I noted, were to fix the date on which she would assume charge. This was the first time that dynastic politics came to the fore, and the Congress since then has been following the practice of invariably having a member of Nehru family at the helm of affairs. It assumed a ridiculous form when Robert Vadra, husband of Priyanka, daughter of Sonia Gandhi recently during the UP legislative assembly election in early 2012 said that he was willing to join politics ‘if people wanted’.

  Left to Nehru, he would have liked Indira to succeed him as prime minister, but too many Congress leaders, with a long stint of sacrifice and struggle for the country’s freedom, were still on the scene at the time. Nehru did not possess the dictatorial traits necessary for him to ignore them.

  How simple, in comparison, was Shastri can be deduced from a single incident. He was the home minister when we were returning from the Qutub after a function. One single security man sat in the front seat of the Ambassador car, the vehicle which all ministers, including Prime Minister Nehru would drive in.

  When we reached what is now the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the railway crossing was closed. Shastri saw a sugar-cane crusher selling juice. ‘Why not have some juice until the gate opens,’ Shastri said. Before I could say anything, he got down and went to the sugar-cane stall. Both of us had a glass each, Shastri paying for it. Strangely, no one recognized us, not even the sugar-cane juice vendor. Even had he entertained any suspicion about the identity of his customer, he must have cast it aside because he could not have imagined that the home minister would come to his stall for juice.

  Shastri found it difficult to make both ends meet as the salary of an MP was small. I persuaded him to write for newspapers. His first article was on Nehru, understandably all laudatory. I organized his syndicate service on the lines on which I had set up mine some thirty-five years later. The article was placed with the Hindu in the south, with Amrita Bazar Patrika in the east, the Hindustan Times in the north, and the Times of India in the west. Each paper paid Rs 500 per article. An additional income of Rs 2000 made a big difference. Shastri’s second article was on his hero Lala Lajpat Rai. Before he could write the third, Nehru had a stroke in Bhubaneshwar at the AICC meeting in 1962. Shastri was recalled to the cabinet and I returned as his information officer.

  Shastri in his quiet way began dealing with the files marked to Nehru. Indira Gandhi did not like her father’s choice and would see important files herself before returning them. Shastri learnt of this but did not protest. Nehru had treated him with affection and he did not wish to create a situation in which Nehru would have to choose between him and Indira Gandhi.

  Nehru’s recovery was slow and a rumour meanwhile spread that he was seriously ill. I also acted as Nehru’s information officer when the person attached to him went on a week’s leave. I had Nehru photographed in a side profile in which he looked healthy and released the pictures to the press. The rumour died, but I knew that the stroke he had suffered had left a permanent mark and he would not live for long.

  My first face-to-face meeting with Nehru was in 1963, when I reported to him what Chester Bowles, US ambassador to India, had said at a press conference. I was nervous and spoke rapidly in English. He asked me to repeat it slowly and in Hindustani. The gist of Bowles’ remarks was that America wanted In
dia to take the initiative to foster good relations with Pakistan. Nehru did not react.

  A few days later, when the prime minister visited Jaipur, I accompanied him in his car from his residence to the airport. The newspapers had reported his advice to IAS probationers. Vijayalakshmi Pandit, accompanying him up to the airport, asked him about the speech. Nehru pointed towards me from the back seat and said: ‘This was his doing.’ I had briefed the press on the advice he had given the probationers that they should pay special attention to the common man.

  One night in winter the Bharat Sevak Samaj, a voluntary organization, requested Nehru to accompany them when they distributed blankets among the homeless. Nehru agreed to distribute the blankets, sometimes wrapping them around those sleeping in the open. His remark while doing so was: ‘Why don’t they revolt?’

  This incident might prick the conscience of today’s leaders. Bhim Sen Sachar, then chief minister of Punjab, approached Nehru with an embarrassing request. Vijayalakshmi Pandit had stayed at the Shimla Circuit House, then part of Punjab, and had not paid the bill of Rs 2500. Sachar was told by his governor, C. Trivedi, to put the expense under some miscellaneous state government account. However, Sachar was a stickler for propriety. Nehru said that he could not clear the bill at one go but would pay the Punjab government in installments. Nehru sent the amount in five installments, each time drawing a cheque on his personal account.

  When I was still Nehru’s information officer (1963) I saw Shastri, then out of the government, waiting for his turn to meet the prime minister. I complained to N.K. Sheshan, Nehru’s private secretary, that Shastri had been waiting for an hour for the meeting. Sheshan took me aside and said that he had twice sent the message upstairs to Nehru’s bedroom. ‘What can I do when she [Indira Gandhi] is not calling him,’ said Sheshan, and advised me to keep away from ‘their politics’.

  Morarji Desai expressed his indifference to Shastri’s entry into the cabinet; Jagjivan Ram made it publicly known that he opposed Shastri being taken back. Recalling the Kamaraj Plan, he said quite indignantly that on the carrom board of politics Nehru had used Shastri as the ‘striker’ to drive out the men he did not like.

  When Nehru tried to make Shastri, leader of the House, there was opposition within the party, particularly from Morarji Desai, and the proposal had to be dropped. Nehru did not want a contest lest the party should split during his lifetime. He devalued the post and a relatively unknown person was appointed leader of the House.

  Shastri was dejected, but from that day he realized that he would have to brave Desai’s firm opposition if he was to become prime minister. Shastri had a knack of keeping his own counsel and therefore never showed any disrespect to Desai, nor did he project himself as a candidate. He, however, tilted still more on the side of the old guard (the syndicate) in the Congress while, at the same time, giving an impression of being a non-factional, non-controversial individual.

  If Shastri nurtured the belief that his ministership was a stepping stone to prime-ministership, he was mistaken. As soon as Nehru recovered slightly, all important files and papers went direct to him and Shastri would learn about their disposal many days later through the courtesy of some indulgent deputy secretary or joint secretary. ‘I am only a glorified clerk,’ he often said.

  One day he received a request from Kenya to nominate a delegate to an international labour conference. He suggested the name of Abid Ali, a Congress leader known for his standing in Labour circles. Rajeshwar Dayal, then foreign secretary, did not accept the recommendation and went directly to Nehru to have the name changed. Shastri learnt about the rejection of his recommendation only through routine papers and felt humiliated.

  As the days went by, such instances piled up. In fact, he had to wait even to get an appointment with Nehru and at one point thought of resigning from the ministry. Once he told me that he would return to Allahabad. ‘There is nothing for me here now,’ he said. He then added woefully: ‘If I continue to stay in Delhi I am bound to come into a clash with Panditji. I would rather retire from politics than join issue with him.’ Two considerations however made him stay. One, the syndicate did not want him to give up the position of vantage he occupied as cabinet minister, even though No. 4 in rank. Two, by quitting, Shastri did not want to erase the impression that he was the successor because that was how he was viewed when he was brought back to the government.

  Many people told him that Nehru’s behaviour was influenced by Indira Gandhi’s ‘hostility’ towards him. Initially Shastri would never encourage such doubts but later he would go out of the way to find out if that was true. In due course, he became convinced that he was not uppermost in Nehru’s mind as his successor. Indira Gandhi was more open about ignoring him and would herself take important files to Nehru.

  I ventured to ask Shastri one day: ‘Who do you think Nehru has in mind as his successor?’ ‘Unke dil main to unki saputri hai [In his heart is his daughter],’ said Shastri, ‘but it won’t be easy,’ he added. ‘People think you are such a staunch devotee of Nehru that you yourself will propose Indira Gandhi’s name after his death,’ I said. ‘I am not that much of a sadhu as you imagine me to be. Who would not like to be India’s prime minister,’ was Shastri’s reply. Krishna Menon did not think that Nehru was grooming Indira Gandhi for a bigger role. He told me that ‘the impression got around when she became the Congress president. Nehru really wanted democratic procedures to take their own course’.

  Nehru was steadily declining in health. The Congress party spoke in whispers about his possible successor. Top Congress leaders, K. Kamaraj from Madras state, N. Nijalingappa, from Karnataka, N. Sanjiva Reddy from Andhra Pradesh, and Atulya Ghosh from West Bengal, all opponents of the intractable Morarji Desai, vowed at the temple town of Tirupati to have Shastri as Nehru’s successor. He was the key that fitted all locks.

  Even so, there was an atmosphere of uncertainty. Only a week before his death, Nehru had jokingly said at a press conference in New Delhi that his life was not ending ‘so very soon’. Why didn’t he appoint a successor? To this question of his successor, Nehru usually said: ‘If I nominated somebody that would be the surest way of his not becoming my successor. Winston Churchill nominated Anthony Eden and Eden did not last long.’

  Nehru was, however, impressed by Shastri’s gentle yet effective approach in tackling volatile situations. He had sent him to calm the tense situation that had developed in Kashmir after the disappearance (December 1963) of the holy relic (Moe-e-Muqadas), a lock of Prophet Mohammad’s hair, from the Hazratbal shrine near Srinagar. As a result there were demonstrations in Kashmir and Calcutta witnessed a Hindu–Muslim riot. B.N. Malik, then India’s intelligence chief, was sent to Srinagar to assess the situation. He submitted an alarming report, and saw the hand of the interned Sheikh Abdullah behind the theft. However, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, the outgoing prime minister of Kashmir, alleged that it was the doing of his political opponents, G.M. Sadiq and D.P. Dhar.

  On receipt of Malik’s report, New Delhi seriously considered the imposition of rule by the Sadar-e-Riyasat in the state but held its hand when it realized that with Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed in the opposition the Kashmir government might not garner sufficient votes in the Assembly for ratification of such an order, which had to be put into effect within six months of the suspension of popular rule.

  Fortunately, the holy relic was traced when it was being smuggled to Pakistan. However, Maulvi Mohammed Farooq, a Kashmiri leader who had constituted an ‘action committee’ to trace the relic, alleged that the ‘recovered relic’ was not genuine. Once again tension began building up. Shastri’s predicament was how to arrange a deedar (display) to establish the identity of the relic.

  It was indeed a tense atmosphere when we reached Srinagar in January 1964. Shastri, in heavy winter clothes (the overcoat was Nehru’s) paced up and down the ground at Hazratbal where patches of snow defiantly remained despite the sun. The identifiers were a little late. Anxious, Shastri, who was not given
to revealing his emotions, smiled in relief when they eventually arrived. As soon as the relic was declared haq (genuine), Shastri informed Nehru. This averted the worst because New Delhi was even prepared, if need be, to declare martial law in the state.

  After the relic’s recovery, Pakistan found that it was whipping a dead horse. The situation improved so greatly that Nehru sent orders for the release of Sheikh Abdullah (8 April 1964) whose detention always bothered him because they had been close friends. The only contact between the two in eleven years took the form of a couple of messages from Nehru which Abdullah insultingly ignored. However, when the Chinese attacked India in October 1962, Abdullah wrote a letter to Nehru to remind him that his warning of Chinese ‘untrustworthiness’ had been proved correct.

  The long detention had made Abdullah bitter. I invited him and Mirza Afzal Beg, Abdullah’s close associate, to lunch one day after their arrival in New Delhi. He said that the ratification of the state’s accession by the constituent assembly was not valid because he was not present there. He compared Kashmir to a beautiful woman whom both India and Pakistan ‘wanted to ravish’.

  Nehru asked Shastri to hold talks with Abdullah on Kashmir but nothing came of these meetings. How could it have when Abdullah’s mind was filled with the idea of an independent Kashmir? When Shastri could not pin him down to any specific demand, he asked him: ‘Sheikh Sahib, what you have in mind is independence?’ Abdullah said: ‘Yes.’ Shastri was so perturbed by this reply that he said in public later that India would not allow Abdullah to propagate independence for Kashmir.

  Abdullah now worked hard on Nehru. Once a respected guest at the prime minister’s house, he was back there. Abdullah told me that he found Nehru ‘genuinely sorry about what he had done to me’. The result of the reunion between the two was that India initiated another effort to contact Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir problem. When Abdullah suggested that he should visit Pakistan and meet Ayub Khan to find a solution, Nehru concurred. By that time Abdullah told me he (Nehru) had realized that ‘he should not leave the Kashmir problem unresolved’.