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 The Gandhi we forgot -
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By Kallol Bhattacherjee
In the 1940s, an eccentric Parsi named Nusserwanji Gazdar terrorised photographers in Bombay. He was obsessed with regal self-portraits. On the other extreme was Jawaharlal Nehru’s Parsi son-in-law, Feroze Gandhi. He would rarely allow anyone to photograph him along with the Nehrus. When his sister Aloo Nusserwanji Batlivala asked him to be photographed more often to enhance his political career, Feroze retorted in between puffs from strong Gold Flake cigarette: “Do you want me to be like Nusserwanji Gazdar?”
Fifty years after his death in 1960, a forgotten video footage of a wedding shot by Norvin Hein and an upcoming biography by Swedish journalist Bertil Falk bring Feroze back in the limelight.
The footage by Hein, a retired Yale University professor who taught at Allahabad’s Ewing Christian College in the early 40s, shows Nehru’s daughter marrying the man she loved against the wishes of almost everybody in her family. It is the footage of the triumph of Indira Priyadarshini’s love as she walked round the sacred fire at Anand Bhavan in Allahabad on March 26, 1942, to become Mrs Indira Gandhi.
The wedding was not a smooth affair. Feroze was a Parsi and Indira a Hindu Brahmin. Also, Nehru wanted Indira to experience life before committing and advised her to consult her aunts and Mahatma Gandhi. Her aunts were not sympathetic. And the Mahatma quizzed Indira on her sexual feelings about Feroze, and added that they were not good enough reasons for marriage.
His suggestion: even if they get married, Indira and Feroze should practice brahmacharya. Indira shot down the idea saying it was a prescription for “bitterness and unhappiness”! However, Gandhi helped prepare a thesis for the inter-community marriage.
Nehru asked sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit to find a middle path for the union. She, in turn, sought Gandhi’s advice. He asked her to get a written copy of the Hindu marriage ritual, and a red pencil. He wanted all passages that offended morality or common sense struck out. And what remained after this editing was the final ceremony.
The footage is special also because it captures the charm and energy of a man who, in his later life, was averse to being photographed with Indira. His niece Ratoo Dara Dastur, 80, told THE WEEK that Feroze was conscious that his wife’s presence in any picture with him would deflect the attention from him.
“Do you want me to be Indu’s poonch (tail)? After all, that is what people will think if I appear in photographs with her,” he once told his sister. Despite such subtle sentimental emotionalism and signs of inferiority complex, Indira and Feroze loved each other deeply.
World War II was a companion of their love story. On their wedding day, Japanese aircraft bombed India’s eastern coastline. That, however, did not mar the festivity.
Hein filmed throughout the day of the wedding that had generated gossip and controversy. The energetic groom is the clear star of the silent footage. His energy and pranks kept the event from becoming unduly solemn. Feroze was aware that he was from an ordinary Parsi family, whereas his wife came from India’s crème de la crème. But, he never tried to hide his aam aadmi roots and remained a commoner throughout his life.
Feroze was particular that his family should not be overwhelmed by his alliance. So, he would tell his relatives never to seek favours from Indira. “Once Feroze warned my mother, ahead of Indira’s arrival, that she should not ask Indira to make her a minister or member of any trust.
“My mother was furious: how could he even think that she would seek favours from her influential sister-in-law? But that was how Feroze was. He was a common man, but a very proud common man,” says Ratoo, the only surviving relative who had seen Feroze active in politics.
The Nehru-Gandhi family in Delhi has maintained links with Feroze’s family members in Mumbai. Recently, Rahul Gandhi attended his relative Tanaz Patel’s wedding in the city.
According to Falk and close associates of Feroze, he was a man of immense self respect who never compromised on his principles. He was a simple man, too. Whenever in Bombay, Feroze would land up at his sister’s house and demand scrambled eggs after high-profile meetings in five-star hotels.
He would tell his surprised sister that five-star hotels cheated people by giving exotic names to simple dishes. “God! They gave such a long name to the dish and finally when it arrived, it was same old fish fry,” he once told Aloo after eating at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai.
Feroze’s afterlife, too, has been simple. While there are plenty of roads, hospitals, airports and bridges named after Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, the only institution bearing Feroze’s name worth mentioning is the Feroze Gandhi Memorial College in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh. He started it as Rae Bareli Degree College a few months before his death on September 8, 1960.
Since 1952, either Feroze, his immediate family members or friends have been representing Rae Bareli in the Lok Sabha. The constituency rejected them only once—when Indira was defeated after the Emergency.
The people of Rae Bareli, which was one of the most backward regions in India, still remember the first Gandhi who worked there. The Amul experiment was launched in Gujarat under Verghese Kurien, and the spirit of village-level development rose in the country. Feroze wanted to emulate it and develop Rae Bareli. Nehru trusted Feroze with this daunting task.
But soon, differences cropped up, as Nehru believed in the top-to-bottom approach and Feroze vice versa. The ideological rift kept widening.
Falk refers repeatedly to Feroze as the “unofficial leader of the opposition” in the Lok Sabha in the 1950s. Feroze slammed Nehru’s falls and fallacies. Obviously, the father-in-law was miffed.
Caught in between was Indira. People of Rae Bareli remember that whenever Feroze visited his constituency, Indira and he stayed in Room No. 1 of Lakshmi Hotel, the first hotel in the area. But soon, the couple started revealing signs of friction.
“Feroze needed a mother to his sons, Rajiv and Sanjay. Indira loved Feroze, but her father, who was doing the country’s most important job, needed someone to look after his house,” said a local Congress supporter.
Feroze loved his sons. Ratoo and Falk believe Feroze’s fascination with technology influenced Rajiv and Sanjay, who became pilots. Feroze’s father, Jehangir Fardoonji Gandhi, was a marine engineer. From him, Feroze picked up interest in machines. Feroze’s garage in Bombay had a lathe, with which he made flower holders to raise funds for cancer patients.
He was also the trusted expert on cars to his friends. Years later, when Rajiv drove jeeps to his prime ministerial office, Feroze’s friend Onkarnath Bhargava of Rae Bareli saw reflections of the man in his son. “Feroze used to drive a green station wagon in Rae Bareli while campaigning,” he recalls.
Feroze’s bedroom in Delhi swarmed with battery-operated cars, bikes and aircraft he got for his sons. When Sanjay asked Indira for a bike, after Feroze’s death, she refused. Sanjay shot back: “You can say no to me because my father is not alive today.” It badly hurt Indira.
Her hurt had been deeper when her love story went sour in the 1950s. Things had worsened as Feroze was linked to a string of politically-inclined lovers. Among them, Tarkeshwari Sinha, Mahmuna Sultana and Subhadra Joshi stand out. Feroze’s official Ambassador car was often seen outside Tarkeshwari’s house in Delhi. Falk spoke to Tarkeshwari and Sultana. Tarkeshwari admitted to the affair, but refused to discuss it. All that Sultana said before hanging up the phone was: “It all happened such a long time ago.”
Milky-skinned Feroze was a mass magnet in Rae Bareli. But what were his political convictions? People veer off course and land with Indira and Nehru, as if it is natural to talk of the two while talking of Feroze. Details of Feroze’s political career are, therefore, difficult to frame. Falk travelled across India to trace almost each and every dharna and meeting Feroze organised or attended.
He says one of Feroze’s earliest political assignments was in 1933, when he was just 21. Nehru chose B.N. Pande, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Feroze to find out the conditions of peasants who had not paid taxes as a mark of protest against the Raj.
“It showed that Nehru trusted the young man with difficult assignments,” says Falk. One of the villages Feroze toured was Pakri Sewar in UP. Sixty-three years and eleven months after Feroze studied how noncooperation had affected the farmers there, Falk visited Pakri Sewar. “It turned out that every child in Pakri Sewar knew the adventures of Feroze Gandhi in their village,” he says.
Feroze’s political status rose rapidly and his adventures during the Quit India movement became folklore material as he toured the country in disguise. But, his contributions to the freedom movement remained clouded by Nehru’s deeds.
Leftists note that Feroze underwent a fundamental change post Independence. Suneet Chopra of the CPI(M) says, as anti-Nehru politics emerged with the repression of the Telengana movement, many within the Congress extended their hands to radical and not-so-radical leftist causes. Feroze was one among them.
At a time when Nehru’s socialism was questioned in Parliament, Feroze led the Congress Socialist Forum, a pressure group within the party that opposed Nehru in the Lok Sabha. He was not same youngster who, at 21, had become one among Nehru’s “three musketeers”. Feroze had come full circle.
A tribute to Feroze came in his lifetime. While it was normal for the people of 1950s to address leaders by titles such as “Panditji” and “Maulana”, Feroze was the only leader who was addressed by his name.
His Persian name fuelled rumours about him having Muslim roots. Falk and Ratoo rubbish such rumours. His friends from Rae Bareli recall that Feroze used to counter such rumours saying, “I am anything but Muslim.”
Falk’s biography will be the first comprehensive work to prove that Feroze was not given the surname ‘Gandhi’ by the Mahatma, as propagated by Right-wing detractors. Feroze belonged to a Gujarati Parsi family which had the surname Gandhy or Gandhi.
Feroze was no stranger to rumours. His entry into the Nehru household itself had the rumour mills on fire. In the early 1930s, Kamala Nehru struggled with tuberculosis, but still was active in the anti-Raj movement. During a procession, she fainted. Feroze, a teenager then, took her back to Anand Bhavan. Even as servants refused to clean Kamala’s spittoon, Feroze nursed Kamala. And continued to assist her until she left for Europe later.
Rumours of an affair between ailing Kamala and Feroze floated in the mean minds of Allahabad, but soon was disproved. But love did blossom—between Indira and Feroze. The young lady was impressed by the gentleman’s strong-willed dedication to the callings of his heart.
That heart suffered an attack in 1958. Falk blames Feroze for neglecting his health. His friends remember him as a heavy smoker who was addicted to black coffee. Feroze kept odd hours and had an air of indestructibility around him. After the heart attack, Indira returned to Feroze, and the family went on a vacation to Kashmir. Ailment healed the enstrangement.
But a year later, friction resurfaced, notes Falk. Feroze disapproved of the dismissal of the Communist government in Kerala in 1959; he opposed Central intervention. Indira supported it.
Drinking habits and hereditary diabetes added to his health woes. But, Falk’s research does not show up Feroze as the drinking, smoking, womaniser. He says all these were parts of his problem, not pleasure. Feroze wanted his niche and often felt frustrated.
In 1960, he suffered a second heart attack, and left the world he wanted to change. Ratoo points to the ‘jinx of 47’. Jehangir Gandhi died at 47. Feroze died at 47, too. So did his son Rajiv.
Biographers often express their difficulties in judging historic figures. But Bhargava says this Gandhi’s biggest contribution is that he gave the idea of democratic opposition a new breath. Chopra says Feroze was evolving as a firebrand socialist like Ram Manohar Lohia. Had he lived longer, he would have caused greater discomfort to Nehru.
Among his legacies, notable is the ‘Feroze Gandhi Act’ on freedom of expression for Parliamentarians (1956). He also headed the National Herald newspaper and was associated with the editorial team of the Indian Express.
Feroze was also a crusader against corruption, communalism and caste-based politics. His anti-corruption tirade in the 50s exposed the ‘Jeep Scam’—involving purchase of jeeps for the Army—that badly embarrassed Nehru.
Feroze was also instrumental in getting industrialist Ramkrishna Dalmia behind bars for a fraud involving his insurance company. It led to the nationalisation and incorporation of more than 200 private insurance firms as the Life Insurance Corporation.
Most sensational was the Mundhra Scam that Feroze exposed in Parliament, despite Nehru’s objection. “A mutiny in my mind has compelled me to raise this debate. When things of this magnitude, as I shall describe to you later, occur, silence becomes a crime...,” he said from the treasury benches.
Feroze was determined to fight. “...when I hit hard, I expect to be hit harder,” he told the house. The scam, involving the LIC and tycoon Haridas Mundhra, eventually led to the then finance minister T.T. Krishnamachari’s resignation.
The biggest tribute to Feroze, feels Falk, has come from his grandson Rahul. Falk feels Rahul’s approach is “Ferozian”. “Like Feroze, Rahul has also shown interest in mobilising the grassroots power,” he says.
The legacy of Feroze still continues to touch the life of the aam admi. Silently.
The youth icon
By Rakesh Mohan Joshi
I joined Allahabad University, then one of the most respected institutions in north India, for graduation in 1943. My brother and I stayed at the Holland Hall Hostel of Cambridge Block, close to which were Nehru’s ancestral home, Anand Bhavan, and his residence-cum-Congress office, Swaraj Bhavan.
Feroze, who had studied in Allahabad’s Ewing Christian College, maintained rapport with student leaders, and frequented almost all the hostels in the city. He was a close friend of my brother, who studied in the Christian College.
Feroze was a rising star of Indian politics, fighting for the Independence, alongside Kamala and Jawaharlal Nehru. He was jailed a couple of times. The handsome Feroze was, indeed, a youth icon. But, even after becoming Nehru’s son-in-law, Firoze remained a simple man. His dress, too, was always simple; I don’t remember him wearing coloured clothes even once.
We used to regularly meet at our hostel for sessions of cards, sitting barefoot on the floor, sipping many cups of tea. Once, after one such session, Feroze left wearing slippers belonging to one of us. We had to finally persuade our dhobi, who worked at Anand Bhavan, too, to get them back. That’s how Feroze was. He mingled with commoners without any facade.
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