Organiser’s
Deepavali issue published last week is a Special one on India’s Hundred
Years of Cinema. The issue has prominently carried a longish interview
with me. The journal’s Editor, Prafulla Ketkar, accompanied by his
correspondent, Pramod Kumar, had recorded this interview a fortnight
back. I notice that both the Telegraph as well as the Amrit Bazar Patrika have carried news items about my interview.
Two
years back when I published a compilation of blogposts I had written in
the preceding two years I requested M.J. Akbar, one of India’s most
outstanding journalists to write the Foreword. And he had responded to
my request with an excellent write-up. The concluding paragraph of this
four-page write-up read:
“This
collection will not clarify every query about the career of Lal Krishna
Advani, but it will certainly answer one. He has held two portfolios in
a Union Government, once as minister of information and broadcasting
under Morarji Desai, and twice as home minister under Atal Bihari
Vajpayee. His mind was embedded in the home ministry, but his heart
belonged to information and broadcasting.”
Actually, it was as I & B Minister that I had met Akbar for the first time, and that too in Pakistan.
In my memoirs titled My Country , My Life, I have recalled my first trip back to my birthplace, Karachi, where I spent the first twenty years of my life, thus:
“I
was on my way back from Paris, where I had gone to attend a UNESCO
Conference. It was a short trip, just two days, because the Parliament
Session was about to commence. Oddly, it was cricket that took me to
Karachi. For the first time, Doordarshan was covering an Indo-Pak test
match and I was invited in my capacity as India’s I & B minister. I
was naturally overjoyed. I wanted only two things from the visit: an
opportunity to visit my house, and my school. It was really a delightful
surprise to find Father Modestine, who was the principal of St.
Patrick’s High School when I used to study there, and who had long since
retired, personally present at the schoolgate to receive me.
Incidentally, it was in Karachi in 1978 that I first met M.J. Akbar, an
erudite Editor and author, whose friendship I have cherished since then.
He was working for Sunday magazine those days and I recall that he covered my ‘homecoming’ in his report on the cricket match.”
* * *
M.J. Akbar has obviously been following these days my blogs relating to Sardar Patel. It
is he who pointed out to me that the name of the British General
heading the Indian Army in 1947 had been misspelt. I added a footnote to
the blog and had it corrected. In the context of Nehru’s differences with Sardar Patel, he has commended to me an excellent book by Balraj Krishna, titled India’s Bismarck, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The book is sponsored by Sardar Patel Trust, Karamsad. Karamsad is the birth place of Sardar Patel.
In
today’s blog I propose to quote just one excerpt from this book which
not only confirmed that Sardar Patel walked out of the Cabinet Committee
meeting when harsh words were used against him, but also indicates that
shortly thereafter, V.P. Menon also left the meeting.
The book, India’s Bismarck, records:
“In
a democratic set-up, cabinet sanction was essential for Police Action.
Patel faced a formidable task in overcoming Nehru’s reluctance. At one
of the meetings of the defence committee, of which Nehru was the
chairman, there was so much bitterness that Sardar Patel walked out. “Seeing
his seat vacant,” V.P. Menon told a Rotary meeting in Bombay, “I too
walked out five minutes later.” This seemed to have shaken Nehru out of
his complacent mood, and mellowed his opposition. Later, at a meeting
attended by the governor general (Rajagopalachari), the prime minister,
the home minister (Patel), and secretary to the states ministry (Menon),
“it was decided to order troops into Hyderabad”.
Patel
had yet to face the Hamlet in Nehru. The British commander-in-chief of
the Indian Army, General Roy Bucher, persuaded Nehru that “even at that
late stage the campaign should be called off as militarily risky, and
hazardous on grounds of internal security in the whole country”. About
midnight on 12 September, after he had spoken to Nehru, Bucher attempted
“a rare feat” in pulling Patel “out of bed at that hour” and advised
him to at least postpone action for fear of air attacks on Bombay and
Ahmedabad. Patel reminded Bucher “how London had suffered during the
Great War, and coolly assured him that Ahmedabad and Bombay both could
stand up to an attack if it came”.
Gen.
Bucher, K.M. Munshi writes, “was hesitant throughout. He overestimated
the capacity of the Hyderabad army, underestimated that of his own
troops, and knew not the ability of the Sardar …to deal with the
problems of internal law and order. Like most Englishmen, he was unable
to realise that no price was too high to be paid for eliminating the
Razakar menace which threatened the very existence of India”. In H.V.R.
Iengar’s view, “the verdict of history will be that the Sardar was
right” and a verdict with which Nehru wholeheartedly agreed later.
Indian troops marched into Hyderabad on 13 September. The campaign was named “Operation Polo”. It lasted barely 108 hours!
In his monumental book, Integration of the Indian States, V.P. Menon, after describing Operation Polo at some length, concludes:
“On
17 September, Laik Ali (Prime Minister of the Nizam) and his cabinet
tendered their resignations. The Nizam sent for K M Munshi (who had been
under house arrest ever since the Police Action began) and informed him
that he had given orders for his army to surrender; that he would be
forming a new government; that Indian troops were free to go to
Secunderabad and Bolarum, and that the Razakars would be banned. Munshi
communicated this to the Government of India. Major-General Chaudhuri
took charge as Military Governor on 18 September. The members of the
Laik Ali ministry were placed under house arrest. Rizvi was arrested on
19 September.
There
was not a single communal incident in the whole length and breadth of
India throughout the time of the operation. There was universal
jubilation at the swift and successful ending of the Hyderabad episode
and messages of congratulation poured in to the Government of India from
all parts of the country.”
TAILPIECE
I
recall the pain of a day, way back around 1958, when our party lost in a
Delhi corporation election. To help forget our sorrow, Atalji and I
went and saw a movie at a theatre close to our party office, in
Paharganj. That theatre was Imperial and the film we saw was the Raj
Kapoor-Mala Sinha starre Phir Subha Hogi, based on Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment. The lyrics of the film were excellently written
by Sahir Ludhianvi, and the words of one uplifting song went thus:
Wo subah kabhi to ayegi…
Jab dukh ke baadal pighlenge, jab sukh ka saagar chhalkega
Jab ambar jhoomke naachega, Jab dharti naghme gaayegi
Wo subah kabhi to ayegi
Thirty years later, in 1998, when Vajpayeeji became our Prime Minister, I recalled our poll defeat and affirmed, “Wo subah aayi hai, aur humhi usey laaye hain”.
By courtesy Organiser (Deepavali Special issue)
L.K. Advani
New Delhi
November 11, 2013
For more: http://blog.lkadvani.in/blog-in-english/india%E2%80%99s-bismarck-an-excellent-book
No comments:
Post a Comment