The Greatgrandmother Superior

Kawcaw
                     
            The great-grandmother superior



           There are four generations living under a single roof in our house. The youngest members are my two grandsons. The second level is represented by my son and daughter-in-law. The third tier is occupied by my wife and me. And at the apex of the pyramid is my mother, who is knocking at the door of nonagenarianism.

         My siblings and I call her Mummy or Appi and other members of the family address her as Mataji. She started life as Prabha and became Somawati after her marriage. When  my uncles got married, she became Badi Bhabhi.

         She got married at the tender age of eleven and a half. She was a frail little girl with slim arms and legs and initially had to fetch water from a distance. Her father saw his daughter performing this arduous chore with great difficulty and financed the installation of a tap in the courtyard of the Kaw household.

        When she was fifteen and a half, I arrived. The Second World War was on and sugar had disappeared from the market. But I was the oldest child of the oldest son. So honey was used in place of sugar and kehva was served to all visitors who came to congratulate.

At age 21 she delivered another male child, a bonny baby who was tentatively christened Jang Bahadur. The poor fellow lost his battle against pneumonia when he was just fifteen days old, leaving behind a disconsolate household.

Soon thereafter, at 23, mother gave birth to Kakaji who later grew to be the famous scientist Dr. Predhiman Krishen Kaw.

At this stage, our nuclear family got its first chance to live separately as a unit when my father was posted to Jammu. But this charming escapade did not last long. The cities of the Indo-Gangetic plain sent their bewitching messages about high salaries and my father shifted to Delhi, following the footsteps of his two younger brothers.

In Delhi, Mummy had to change over from the hearth to an angithi fired by hard coal. As our financial situation improved, we moved on to kerosene stove, Janata wick stove and later to cooking gas.Her preponderant memories of this decade of joint family life in Delhi is that of having to bake dozens of chapatis for the large household.

We used to feel quite hungry in those days. Today, when my grandchildren balk at having their third chapati, I have to remind them that at their age I used to take six chapatis and large ones at that.
It was in this crowded milieu that sister Asha, the future Chief Secretary of Himachal Pradesh, was born. Other daughters-in-law also had children. Things started hotting up, with grandma Yemberzal alias Dyed enforcing discipline. When Mummy was 36, my father and his two brothers got Govt. quarters. So we separated into nuclear families. Four years later, Dyed bade us goodbye and grandpa followed two years later.

When my mother was 42, I got married.Six years later, my brother followed. And Asha got married when Mummy was 50. Grandchildren came naturally in quick succession and they numbered seven.

Before you could say Jack Robinson, the grandchildren also entered the holy state of matrimony and had kids of their own. Except for my son’s family, the rest are strewn all over the globe.

These days Mummy is sleeping most of the time. When she wakes up, she keeps us busy answering her limited set of questions.

Her preeminent concern is for security. ”Is the door bolted?” she enquires several times. “Did you bolt it after the maid left?” she wants to know.

The second concern is for the greatgrandchildren.There are two of them living with us. They stay with their parents on the first floor. ”Where is Achu?”she asks. If we reply, “I don’t know” she is not satisfied. If we say ”He is upstairs”: she may gulp it temporarily. Soon she is back with more questions. “ Have the parents come back from office?”

She will then suddenly change tack and shift to the younger boy Amrit.”Where is Aamu?’she will ask. Suppose we falter and tell her the truth, “ He has gone to the Park to play football,” she will have numerous concerns and observations. How did he go at this late hour? How did you permit him to go when it is so dark? Who has accompanied him? Where is his mother? How can the parents be so careless? Etcetra etcetra.

The winter has set in. These days she is averse to taking a bath. So the day starts with a query, ”Do I take a bath?” My wife says yes. She expresses her reluctance. Finally after much consideration she defers the event to the morrow.

And so it goes. The best is when she enquires about my whereabouts.I am mostly at the computer or in the drawing room with a magazine or a book or a visitor. Every half an hour she wants to update my GPS coordinates. It is good that I am retired and remain mostly at home. So she does not have to worry too much.

Am I making fun of my mother? Her father used to say with a smile,”Asun laayakh nayi gacchhiham” ( If I had not become an object of ridicule). When someone in the family loses his or her cool, I warn them that we are all getting old. Do we know what we are going to become if we live to be her age? There is Alzheimer’s. There is Parkinson’s. There is the vegetable state. There are a host of other strange phenomena just waiting around the corner.

You mock her at your own risk!



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TheTruth about Nehru

                     
                     The Truth About Nehru


                      The Indian National Congress is in terminal decline. Even if we take a charitable view and hope for a miraculous revival at some stage, it is definitely in a temporary state of debilitation. These are testing times and challenge the loyalty of the faithful to the hilt. The easiest targets are the leaders, whose policies and performance can today be adjudged with the wisdom born out of hindsight.

                    Nehru is a specially vulnerable victim. He is seen to be a latter-day Babar, a founder of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. He is visualized as a 20th century Porus who suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of China. He is portrayed as a greedy villain who conspired with Mahatma Gandhi to stab Valabhbhai Patel in the back, in order to become the first Prime Minister of independent India. He is depicted as a namby pamby peacenik who allowed the UN to unnecessarily intervene in the Kashmir dispute. He proved his “secular” credentials by lightly trifling with the Hindu law enshrined in the Manusmriti in the teeth of severe opposition from Hindu leaders, while not daring to impose a uniform civil code on the Muslims. He inflicted the Soviet model of centralised planning with its public sector behemoths which resulted in the Hindu rate of growth, possibly the only “Hindu” element in Nehru’s attainments. And above all, he is represented to be a lecherous widower who engaged in lusty affairs with sundry Edwinas and Padmajas.

What is the veracity of the allegations? Let us examine these in seriatim.

Did he found a dynasty? If he had wished to do that, he would have steered the top leadership of the Congress towards the fulfilment of this objective. He did not die suddenly. He had a paralytic stroke and he remained conscious to the end. Had he wished to ensure that Indira succeeded him to the throne, he would have elevated her to Deputy Prime Ministership; or declared her to be the senior most Cabinet Minister after him. He would have made her chair meetings of the Cabinet and its important committees. He did none of these. He merely appointed her as Minister for Information and Broadcasting, hardly a portfolio to give her either clout or stature.

That is Humayun’s position .As far as Akbar and Jahangir are concerned, they were toddlers in Nehru’s time. And Shahjahan had not yet been born.  So how did Nehru found a dynasty?

Also, witness the course of events as it actually transpired after Nehru died. He was succeeded immediately by Gulzari Lal Nanda and later by Lal Bahadur Shastri. Shastri was Nehru’s favourite. He had scaled new heights by his resignation as Railway Minister just because there was a railway accident. He had a most successful tenure and he proved conclusively that the apprehension expressed in a section of the media around the theme “After Nehru who?” was misplaced. Had Shastri not suddenly died at Tashkent he would have stayed in office for at least ten years.

It is no one’s case that Nehru got Shastri killed at Tashkent. So how did Nehru found a dynasty?

Let us now come to Alexander’s invasion. Nehru was not a warmonger nor did he build a huge arsenal to overawe his neighbours. He was a genuine votary of peace and harmony. His spiritual guru was Mahatma Gandhi, who was a veritable apostle of non-violence. Gandhi followed the advice of Jesus Christ literally. And Jesus had advised his followers thus:

“That ye resist not evil; but whosever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” 

Gandhi had gone to the extent of seriously advising Nehru to disband the army. It was a good thing that Nehru did not take him literally. God forbid, if he had done so, we would today be a province of South China and you would be reading this article in Mandarin Chinese.

So when the Bandung conference was held and the principles of Panch Shila were enunciated by Nehru and accepted most vociferously by all countries, Nehru did not feel like Porus. If a historical analogy was required, he would much rather ape Asoka the Great with his Shilalekh (rock sculptures), advertising the lofty thoughts of Gautama the Buddha.

Unfortunately for him Chou en Lai played foul. After shouting slogans of “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai! ”with exemplary vociferousness, he sent in his troops into Indian territory. Had Nehru been a normal politician, he would have bided his time, built up his armed strength , and when he was good and ready, he would have repulsed the attack and won a memorable victory, just as his daughter did nine years later against Pakistan.

So what did Nehru do? Did he turn the other cheek as Jesus taught? Did he put himself in a state of readiness and give the enemy a drubbing he would remember? He did neither.. Like a confirmed pacifist, he went to neither extreme of Christian non-violence nor the other extreme of Alexander-like war-mongering. Least of all did he behave like Porus, defend his territory with might and main, and although technically defeated, give such a fright to Alexander and his cohorts that they slunk away in the general direction of Macedonia with fear writ large in their hearts.

He acted as a confused pacifist would normally do. He tried to look brave and made a casual offhand remark, “I have asked the army to throw the infiltrators out.”That showed his Hamlet like indecision—“To fight or not to fight, that is the question.”

Next allegation is that Nehru was a greedy villain who conspired with Gandhiji to deprive Patel of the prime ministership. Short answer: both men were incapable of conspiracy.

                   .Contemporary accounts show that Nehru came close to the Mahatma right in 1915 when he collected funds for Gandhi’s struggle in South Africa. He was so overwhelmed by Gandhi’s personality that he got converted from an Anglicised drawing-room orator to a khadi-clad man of the masses who plunged heart and soul into the various movements that Gandhi launched. He was a truly secular person who genuinely felt for the minorities. Gandhi had certain reservations about Patel’s secular credentials, although he admired him greatly for his administrative acumen. Three times he had to choose between Nehru and Patel. Each time, he selected Nehru.

How serious is the charge that Nehru mishandled the Kashmir problem? Cabinet minutes show that the decision on Kashmir was taken by the Cabinet when Patel was present. Mountbatten also played a role by persuading the Maharaja to sign the instrument of accession. At the same time, he dissuaded Jinnah from sending in reinforcements in the form of regular troops of the Pakistan army to assist the raiders. Kashmir was indeed a complicated issue, for which Nehru alone cannot be singled out for blame.

About the amendments in Hindu law, the experience of the last sixty years amply bear out Nehru’s vision of a modern Hindu society with full gender parity and a balanced approach towards divorce. If the Indian Muslims wish to stick on to outdated practices like triple talaq which all other Muslim countries have forsaken, they are themselves to blame.

The most uncharitable criticism is levelled at Nehru’s economic policies. People tend to forget that radical land reforms were a necessary prelude to the green revolution. They suffer from amnesia with regard to the absence of basic industries like chemicals, machine tools, steel, fertilisers, rail coaches, transport vehicles, power plants, heavy electricals and so on. It was only when Nehru gave a kick-start to these critical industries that the way was smoothened for the private sector. In that sense what Nehru did was an inevitable precondition for the emergence of private initiatives in industrial development.

The last charge against Jawaharlal Nehru was that he carried on affairs with various women. He was a famous man and a widower. He had a charming personality. Such men always attract persons of the  other sex. Whether such relations were intellectual, platonic or physical is a deeply personal matter into which we need not and should not delve.

This year when we celebrate the 125th birth centenary of this great intellectual, patriot, pacifist, freedom fighter, writer and a true blend of the nationalist and the internationalist, let us remember the radiant personality of Jawaharlal. Let us recall Chacha Nehru with his love for children. Let us see the handsome Kashmiri wearing an achkan and churidar with a rose in his lapel.