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The Rediff Special/Vaihayasi P Daniel

'I never wanted to compromise on my principles'

Gulzarilal Nanda, who passed into the ages on Thursday, was one of the most unusual of men as Vaihayasi P Daniel discovered when she met him eight years ago in Ahmedabad.

In the dreary autumn of his life it was the curling drifting leaves of memory that rustle loudest.

His days were timeless. Eventless

In his neat Ahmedabad neighbourhood he was unknown.

Faceless.

A few doors away neighbours reacted with Kaun Nanda? Gulzarilal Nanda? Kaun Nanda? Kaun, Kaun, Kaun????

The anonymity was chilling, a tuneless autumn sonata.

An illustrious career -- eclipsed by the radiance of the Gandhis, Patels and Nehrus swirling around him -- amounted to just a series of evenly sprinkled interviews that featured in the yesterday columns of various newspapers.

'Former prime minister Gulzarilal Nanda in reverie'…. 'Former prime minister Gulzarilal Nanda in retirement'. 'Gulzarilal Nanda in old age'… A favourite media chestnut. And a quiz question: 'Who was twice acting prime minister of India?'

Otherwise he was hardly remembered. No streets named after him. No airports. No parks. No vegetable markets. No golf tournaments.

In life, rather than death, he was forgotten.

When a Padma Vibhushan arrived two years ago before I met him, in India's 43^rd year of independence, this architect was a decrepit, bent over nonagenarian.

If Gulzarilal Nanda was bitter about it, one did not know. He existed in a hazy no man's land, drifting between consciousness and senility.

His daughter, Dr Pushpa Naik has to nudge his memory roughly for events of the past to spit forth, haltingly of course. A few sentences later he had lapsed back into solemn reverie.

The gentleman who so ably nurtured the country when it was leaderless on two occasions -- once after Jawaharlal Nehru's death and again after Lal Bahadur Shastri's death -- spent his days very quietly.

Mornings he spent listening to bhajans sung by singers that his daughter asked to visit the house. The Ramayana was sometimes read to him. He also had the newspapers read out too. ''He is very much aware of what is going on in the country,'' Dr Naik had said then. And Nanda muttered something about the grave situation the country was in.

The afternoons were generally filled with the visits of some journalist or leader or MP, coming to pay their respects. Ghulam Nabi Azad, Madhavrao Scindia, Devi Lal… they all come visiting then, almost as if it was then obligatory for any politician passing through Ahmedabad to call on Nanda, just as they would perform any other ritual like visiting the Sabarmati Ashram.

Once Mother Teresa passed through. And though Nanda wanted to go and see her, she apparently insisted, 'He is a very good person. I will go myself and bless him.'

Nanda's time-worn, furrowed face was tranquil. Grizzled and grey headed, the skin stretched across his face paper thin. His glassy eyes seemed to gaze perpetually in the distance. As if after a certain age a man is not looking outward anymore, but inward, at the pageant of a life gone by.

This son of an English teacher from Sialkot, east Punjab, was once Gandhi's lieutenant… his rook in the battle for independence.

He studied in Lahore and did a double MA, winning a gold medal too. And then he moved to Allahabad to take up a job involving research in a government university.

A prophetic meeting with the Mahatma drew him into the freedom movement and into participation in the whirlwind of events that shook British India. And so one fine day, the man with an honorable career with the British government, and a family to support, gave up his station in life to join the Congress.

His family, his daughter recalled, did not exactly thank him for it. ''But my father was a very loving and honest man. I remember once, as children, we had done some drawing on office stationary. When he came home we showed them to him. He was angry and said this paper is meant for government work and told the servant, 'bazaar se kagaz mangao.' "

They saw very little of him after that, as he got more and more immersed in the freedom movement. Dr Naik remembered him coming to her medical college in Ludhiana just prior to his arrest to give her the fee and ask her to be careful while he was in jail. "We would feel sad. And also very proud. He was doing so much for the country."

When independence did dawn they saw even less of their father. Nanda was the fourth wheel of the government handling ministerial portfolios ranging from labour to irrigation, home affairs, power, planning, employment, railways. He was in charge of government planning and the architect of the first and second five-year plans.

There was actually very little Nanda was not involved with in independent India.

But he always preferred to stay out of the frontline. Even on the two occasions -- in 1964 and 1966 -- when he held the prime ministerial reins, Nanda was not interested in promoting his candidature for the post. Never was he inclined to hang onto power.

His reasons for shirking the limelight were clear in his mind. Suddenly, at that question he emerged out of his fog. "The number one person has to make concessions of all kinds. His principles are compromised. I never wanted to compromise on my principles."

This very strong belief ironically landed him in the backseat of history. Though his hand moulded India's future with the same skill as a Gandhi or a Nehru, his craftsmanship was forgotten.

Truth has always kept honest men poor. And forgotten.

As Gulzarilal Nanda passed into the ages this week, how many sons and daughters of Hindustan remembered him? Or know of him?

Yet, truth is said to be the rarest quality in an epitaph.

EARLIER FEATURES:
Gulzarilal Nanda dead
Last of the Gandhians
'Nothing can be got done in this country without paying a bribe'

The Rediff Special

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