Freedom from Dynasty

Flashback to the period when India’s first Prime Minister, the arch-dynast, Jawaharlal Nehru established his unchallenged and defiant sway over both the Congress Party and Government.

But despite having no real Opposition, Jawaharlal Nehru, the ever-insecure human and political consequence of adolescent colonial trauma originating in Harrow, set out to ruthlessly crush any dissenting or even alternate voice. The Hindu Mahasabha which had blazed such an extraordinary path during the Freedom Struggle was in terminal decline. The Rashtriya Swayamevak Sangh found itself in a tight corner, a victim of tumultuous circumstances unleashed by Partition which in turn was the direct consequence of the misguided Mahatma’s fatal surgeries upon Bharata’s soul as well as the selfsame Nehru’s overweening ambition.

The story is well-known. This insecurity was at the root of Nehru pulverising genuine patriots and truly learned scholars like Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, hounding out Rajaji and stifling fine minds like John Mathai. The same impulse also worked behind the patronage that he doled out to the drunken disgrace, Maulana Azad, who was made the Education Minister. This was apart from his addiction to Communism and the Indian Communists with whom he had a backdoor arrangement (For a near-complete picture, the reader is referred to Sitaram Goel’s classic work, Genesis and Growth of Nehruism). The following snippet should provide an idea as to the sort of courtiers Nehru deliberately surrounded himself with:

On Gandhiji’s usual silence day on a Monday he wrote a personal letter to Nehru on the inside of a used envelope advising him not to make Maulana Azad the Education Minister as he was convinced that the Maulana would ruin education. […] In Delhi, the Maulana never attended a dinner party. He came

to the PM’s house only for lunches in honour of important foreign

dignitaries. At Cabinet meetings, which were normally fixed for

5 p.m. or soon after, the Maulana would get up at the stroke of

six, regardless of the importance of the subject under discussion,

and leave. Soon he would be before his whisky, soda and ice and

a plate of samosas…Nehru avoided seeing him in the evenings… One day the Maulana’s favourite Private Secretary came to see

me privately. He told me that he was worried about the Maulana

because he was imbibing half a bottle of whisky every evening.

Falls were not infrequent. In fact he had broken his back in a

fall and had to wear a metal plate to support his back. Since

then an able-bodied man was always available to support the

Maulana whenever he got up during and after his drinks. […] As a departmental minister, the Maulana was a disaster, as

Gandhiji had feared. He made no contribution to education. He

left everything to the trio — Humayun Kabir, K.G. Saidayin and

Ashfaque Hussain. [M.O. Mathai’s Reminiscences]

Needless, Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi continued the same, ignoble legacy of concentrating power and gave India its first taste of tyranny. The dark story of how she systematically vilified and throttled the Bharatiya Jana Sangh including its founding leader, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya needs a more detailed retelling.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was both her prized victim and challenger, a fear that made her throw him in prison during her notorious Emergency.