We are living in the midst of a mess, a muddle, melancholy and extended political chicanery. Hence, I am leaving this cesspool and writing about the lesser known side of Jawaharlal Nehru.
On the night of his departure to China on August 22, 1939, Mr Nehru had an unexpected and hilarious sartorial disaster in the early morning. “When I put on pyjamas the izarbandh [pyjama string] slipped on one side and I could not tie it. I had no time to pull it properly and so I tucked it in as best as I could and marched out. The wretched thing would not remain up and I had to hold on to it all the time. At that frightfully early hour, the Chinese consul turned up at my hotel. At the aerodrome at 4 a m there was a crowd of Congressmen and others. Imagine my plight — holding on to my pyjamas, accepting bouquets, shaking hands, doing namaskar, etc, etc. It was a terrible ordeal for an hour.”
“Life is full of regrets but curiously the regrets are seldom about things done — almost always they are tied round things undone,” he wrote.
He once wrote to his sister: “One cannot help one’s reactions to people. But curiously enough, it is the people we care for, with whom we are intimate, who have the capacity to hurt us. You [his sister] have it in you and it is not a common gift, to win over people and to make friends with them. Do not ignore that gift, for it softens and smooths life’s journey — it makes a great difference to our lives, as it does to the lives of others.”
“As soon as one starts thinking of any problem, it seems to run into another and yet another till there is no end to it as there is no clear and definite beginning. It is not just a knot which we have to unravel, but a tangled skein, which goes on twisting itself afresh even as we ravel ... was it not Marx who said that history answers our question by putting us new questions?” he once reflected.
When his grandson Rajiv was born, the question of finding a suitable name occupied Mr Nehru’s mind. He was in the Ahmednagar jail at the time . “As for the baby’s name, your letter gave me the first information that Rahul had been suggested ... we all know of course that this was the name of Buddha’s son, but do you know anything more about it? Rahul means “fetters” … I discussed this matter with Narendra Dev [a fellow Congress working committee member and fellow prisoner] so Rahul is hardly appropriate … Narendra Dev and I rather fancied Priyadarshi, which was Ashoka’s name. It appears in Ashoka’s inscriptions … Indu is also Priyadarshni. There is a certain appropriateness in her son being called Priyadarshi. Maulana and Asaf [Ali] jointly suggested Brajees which is the old Iranian for Jupiter and has come to mean the auspicious one.” Mr Nehru also suggested that a janmpatri (horoscope) be made.
When Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’s husband, Ranjit Pandit, died in January 1945, Mr Nehru wrote, “So long as life lasts one must meet it four square and not only live wholly and fully but take the most out of it. I believe in the affirmation of life, and not the negation of it, whatever happens … I do not see why you should do away with the ‘tikka’.”
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On September 7, 1948 at a press conference about Hyderabad, a correspondent asked Mr Nehru, “May I know how your statement just now that the Government of India is not going to do anything to the Nizam is compatible with Sardar Patel’s statement that the Nizam will go the way of Junagarh?” Mr Nehru replied, “If I understand it, the Nizam is a person, Junagarh presumably is a place.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, like most American leaders, hasn’t the foggiest idea about the manner in which India has conducted its foreign policy. Never have we aspired to play “leader” in any part of the world. It goes against our grain to espouse the concept of “leader” which is so dear to the Americans. Madam Secretary of State, you run a crusade; we run a policy.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when 34 meets 79 at the upcoming Indo-Pak foreign ministers’ meeting. It will be fascinating to see the youth and the old connect. Indo-Pak relations often go off the diplomatic rails. But Begum Hina Khar is a talented and remarkable person, and much is expected of her.
TAILPIECE
There has been widespread disappointment at the Cabinet reshuffle. The prime minister has limited options. He has to make do with the human material at his disposal. Given the present circumstances, he did not do such a bad job. He should also have appointed a Cabinet minister for damage control.