Rati Bhabha Forbes has woven the story of her father’s life around the difficult formative phase of nation-building. Bhabha was a businessman of some repute and also a minister in the pre-Partition interim government known as the Viceroy’s Executive Council and in Nehru’s first cabinet in independent India. So, apart from honouring his memory, this lavishly produced self-published biography not only offers a ring-side view of the politics around independence but also ends up correcting many misconceptions about Nehru’s policies.
Forbes devotes the first two chapters to her family and its background. The most interesting part here is the story of the Parsi community that found a hospitable refuge in India after fleeing persecution in what is now Iran. It certainly contradicts the perverted view that Indian history begins and ends with the Hindus. Bhabha, like many other members of the Parsi community, settled in Bombay, as it was called then, and actively participated in this thriving city of commerce, business and banking.
As a member of the interim government, he held a non-Congress seat reserved for the Parsi community. He was close to Vallabhbhai Patel and the author tells us that Maulana Azad and Patel “did not see eye to eye” on many important matters including Bhabha’s ministerial appointment in July 1946. Azad was unhappy mainly because Patel had not consulted him. The controversy over Bhabha’s appointment involving two senior leaders of national movement shows that the Congress was never a faction-free organisation, either before or after independence.
Chapter 5 deals with Bhabha’s years in government and the most compelling narrative here is on the challenges posed by the refugee problem. The post-Partition riots shook the foundations of the new government and a Central Emergency Committee and the Delhi Emergency Committee were set up to tackle the resultant humanitarian issues. As chairman of the Delhi Emergency Committee, Bhabha appears to have acquitted himself creditably and the author reproduces testimonials from the last Viceroy Louis Mountbatten to this effect. The author also makes the interesting point — one that is of contemporary relevance — that all ministers, including Bhabha, declared their assets. In Bhabha’s case, this was particularly important because he was associated with 60 companies, including the Central Bank of India.
Several other facts in this book would shock those who have propagated the idea that Nehru’s policies of economic planning and market regulation kept the Indian economy in chains and it is only in the1990s that India came into its own as a result of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. First, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment (later known as Unctad) was held at Havana in November 1947 and the government of India’s delegation led by Bhabha represented the ideology of “economic nationalism”. India along with other backward developing countries maintained that the effort to lower tariffs for highly developed and underdeveloped countries amounted to “treating unequals with inequality”. Any other option exercised by India in 1947 would have destroyed national efforts at industrialising. Nehru’s India, as a product of anti-colonial nationalism, fought for economic self-reliance and the assertion of sovereign rights to protect its market from developed, capitalist countries.
Chapter 8, titled “Dad’s Persona” provides plenty of evidence that working relationships between the national leaders were reasonably cordial. Indeed, the impression you get from this chapter is that the so-called differences between Nehru and Patel were exaggerated.
Many critics of Nehru have maintained that rural India was neglected in the interests of industry and his predilection for “giganticism” or big projects. The facts suggest otherwise. Nehru’s government appointed the Rural Banking Inquiry Committee in October 1949 under the Chairmanship of Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas. Bhabha was its Vice-Chairman. “The main thrust of the Committee was that the reach of banking should be expanded to rural areas and the deposit rates should be attractive to garner household savings,” the author writes. This extremely important policy decision to expand rural credit facilities should be understood in the context of pre-colonial British rule when the rural poor were in lifelong thrall to private money leaders.
Further, a big debate took place on the issue of “Competition between Foreign and Indian Banks” and it was firmly suggested that “foreign banks were at a comparative advantage over Indian banks as they were free from the obligation to open branches in rural and semi-urban areas”. Those who allege that Nehru’s policies killed competitive capitalism did not understand the social philosophy behind his Five Year Plans. It should also be remembered that financial institutions like the Industrial Finance Corporation of India was set up only in 1946 and the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) in 1955 and both performed yeoman’s service in providing finance to industry.
Forbes has done a competent job in relating her father’s story. But the greatest value of this book lies in educating the new-rich entrepreneurial and professional middle classes of India on Nehru’s policies to show that much of what he did, including economic planning, laid the foundations for 21st century India — and she has done so on the basis of facts rather than theories that are empirically flawed.
REMEMBERING MY FATHER: COOVERJI H BHABHA
Rati Bhabha Forbes
Publisher: Rati Forbes
161 pages
