NEHRU’S
ROLE IN INDIA
Rajindar
Sachar
Reverence and hero
worship for Jawaharlal
Nehru was normal not only with the older generation but with our generation as well. My father,
Bhim Sen Sachar was a Congressman in 1937 he was elected to the Punjab
Legislative Assembly. Nehru campaigned for my father in that election. Even
though I was just 14, I got ample opportunity to have a
close view of him at meetings and functions.
In May 1949, the Socialist
Party under Ram
Manohar Lohia’s leadership held a
demonstration in front of the Nepal embassy in New
Delhi to protest against the Rana government in the Himalayan kingdom. We were
arrested (about 50 of us including Lohia) for violating Section 144 CRPC
and remained in jail for a month and a half. It was during that imprisonment
that Nehru and Indira sent a basket of mangoes to Lohia. Sardar
Patel wrote to Nehru expressing his
annoyance for sending mangoes to a person in jail who had violated the law.
Nehru in his quiet way told him that politics and personal relationships
are two separate things and should not be mixed up.
In 1952, the Congress
returned to power with a clear majority in the Punjab Assembly elections. Nehru and Azad appointed my father as the leader
of the Congress party and he again became the Chief Minister of
Punjab, which then comprised of present-day Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
Political morality
was very high amongst the leaders of 1950s. For instance, when the governor of
Punjab invited Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit as a guest for a vacation in Simla (then
capital of Punjab) in 1954, she was put up in the government guest house and a
bill of Rs. 2064 was sent to the governor because she was his guest. The
governor however, didn’t pay the bill and the chief engineer brought this to
the notice of my father. On his next visit to Delhi in May 1955, my father
brought that matter to Nehru’s notice. Imagine a cm is discussing a small
amount of money with his leader. But father was very strict on his principles.
And Nehru’s response was equally commendable. He opened his drawer and wrote a
cheque of 1000 and said: “I am giving this now. I am going to Europe and once I
come back I will pay the remaining amount.” Later on, the governor was so
ashamed that he paid the balance from his discretionary fund.
I myself had a
personal experience in 1955 when I was the chairperson of the Socialist Party (Punjab)
and the general secretary of the Punjab High Court Bar
Association. In 1955, the Punjab High Court was shifting from Simla to
Chandigarh. It was to be inaugurated by Nehru and he had come to Chandigarh the
evening before. My father, who was then the Chief Minister of Punjab, invited
Nehru for an informal breakfast at our residence. I was staying with my father
though my office was in another sector. It was a rare occasion for a young man
like me, who admired Nehru a lot. But, I had grown up by then. Our party was
convinced (rightly or wrongly, time alone will tell)
that Nehru, who had shown the vision of socialism to us, had not kept that pace
following wrong policies. Our differences with his policies were deep. I was a
small fry in part of that milieu. So I told my father that I will not be at the
breakfast table to receive Nehru, though my wife will
be there along with my mother to play the hostess. My father and I had a
beautiful understanding and respected each other’s view. He realised my reluctance
but mentioned that I was being childish.
I went to my
office before Nehru arrived. I continued to admire
Nehru and I could not think of being at home and be rude by not joining him for
breakfast. Of course, we received Nehru with all the dignity and deference due
to him when he came to the high court inauguration.
Now I laugh at my
presumptuousness — a chit of boy, whom Nehru will not even notice beating his
chest by not attending and denying himself a rare close breakfast meeting with
one of the greatest of leaders of India and
who had been a hero of our family. But then I take it as the peculiarities of a
radical youth, the devil I may I care attitude and the
almost fatalistic belief in the rightness of the cause of one’s own party. But
then I believe that is the real difference between youth and old age – one may
laugh now, but one does not demean conduct because at that time it represented
what I like to feel was a youthful, genuine and unshakeable faith in socialism
– which fortunately, I have still not lost.
Nehru was indeed
doing some inner thinking and so expressed it to Maulana Azad thus: “we should
do something for Sachar”. He soon appointed father as the governor of Orissa in
1956 and wrote to the Chief Minister saying “Your governor is a very good
administrator and you will find him so.”
Father thereafter
left active politics and engaged himself in the Khadi movement. But his spirit
of freedom was still strong as ever when he wrote to Indira
Gandhi during the Emergency reminding
her of what Nehru had said about total freedom of the press.
New Delhi
July 23, 1975
 |
| Bhim Sen Sachar |
“To my mind, the
freedom of the press is not just a slogan from the larger point of view but it
is an essential attribute of the democratic process. I have no doubt that even
if the Government dislikes the liberties taken by the Press and considers them
dangerous it is wrong to interfere with the freedom of the Press. By imposing
restriction you do not change anything; you merely suppress the public
manifestation of certain things, thereby causing the idea and thought
underlying them to spread further. Therefore, I would rather have a completely
free Press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than
a suppressed or regulated Press.”
We must respond to the call. Accordingly we propose,
with effect from August 9, 1975 and regardless of consequences to ourselves, to
advocate openly the right of public speech and public association and freedom
of the Press, for discussing the merits and demerits of the Government arming
itself with extraordinary powers.
Yours faithfully,
Bhim Sen Sachar & Ors.
Rajindar
Sachar
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