I was and am not ignorant of his weaknesses. His persistent lack of a genuine popular political base—he depended on Gandhi, Nehru and the proverbial Congress “High” Command to get himself foisted on to the Madras Congress Party; he was accused of “backdoor entry” as he preferred a “nomination” to the Legislative Council to an election to the assembly; his views on Prohibition were derived from Gandhi and smacked of an authoritarian streak in an otherwise libertarian persona; his opposition to the BCG vaccine was a trifle outlandish; his support for Hindi in 1937 and his opposition to Hindi in 1967 may indicate a certain vacillation and lack of lucidity which rarely affected him otherwise; his willingness to sacrifice his government for an obscure (and possibly obscurantist?) and definitely trivial position on school education, betrayed a lack of realism, which again, one could rarely accuse him of. Net-net—he was by no means perfect. He had his weaknesses and a certain streak of ruthless opportunism. But on balance, his insights, his courage, his farsightedness and his patriotism were of such a high order that one is left breathless thinking about them.