The Human Side of Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru.

(File Photo)

Much has been written and will continue to be written for centuries to come, on the life and the gigantic contribution of India's first and longest-serving Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of modern India. This essay is primarily based on the diaries of KF Rustamji, the security officer to Pundit Nehru (1952-58), compiled by another IPS officer PV Rajgopal in the book I Was Nehru's Shadow, a book published in 2014.

Rustamji took over as the chief security officer to the Prime Minister in August 1952. On Nehru, Rustamji writes, "He had a frugal lifestyle, and his eating habits were simple. JN's simplicity in his dress is well known. His usual dress was the churidar and white achkan with a red rose in the buttonhole... The cap - white and faintly worn, gave him a handsome, youthful appearance while successfully concealing his bald pate...Half the people of India would not have recognised Nehru if they had seen him without the cap."

Jawaharlal Nehru disliked wastage. "He cribbed and nagged about food wastage, stopped the car often so that someone might go and turn off a leaking tap."

In September 1956, Rustamji accompanied Nehru to Riyadh and wrote, "I found him padding around the fabulous palace specially built for his visit, switching off the lights that were blazing all around ... trying to economise in an Arabian Night's palace."

During the PM's visit to Dibrugarh (Assam) the same year, Rustamji records, "I entered his room before dinner and saw something which interested me - the black socks of the Prime Minister which had been clumsily darned in white thread by Hari (Nehru's attendant). Thereafter, I often saw Hari stitching his torn socks. The same pair of shoes went on for years."

Rustamji rightly observes, "I doubt whether there is any head of state who lived more simply and endured as much as Nehru." In his book Nice Guys Finish Second, BK Nehru (nephew of Jawaharlal Nehru) has written, "Much to Motilal's chagrin and disappointment, Jawaharlal took no interest whatsoever in the new house. In fact, he was positively non-cooperative to show his disapproval of his father's continued preoccupation with the material world. A contractor who suggested that Dadaji (Motilal) might consult the man for whom the house was being built was snubbed by being told that the 'Chhote Saheb' had no interest whatever in the house ... Father and son both wore khadder; but while the father wore the finest, brought specially from Andhra, the son wore the coarsest because that was all the peasant could afford."

Nehru wanted the food served to him to be simple. He disliked rich and spicy food. Once he caught a cold, and when his daughter Indira Gandhi asked him how his cold was, he replied that It was the rich food they had started serving in the Rashtrapati Bhavan that upset him. 'I don't mind the work, which naturally is heavy when the foreign visitors arrive, But I can't stand the feasting part of it." There were few things he hated more than a formal banquet, and he expressed his displeasure whenever he saw elaborate arrangements being made in state guest houses. "There is no reason at all why all these cooks and crockery should come from elsewhere," he remarked at a wayside guest house in Mysore.

Nehru hated anything that smacked of a low, mean mind, of ostentation and pomp, like a loud voice, formal sit-down dinners, feasting and cocktail parties, fanaticism and orthodoxy. "There was no guile or trickery in his thinking, no desire to harm anyone... his mind was open and harmless. He spoke of progress for a just and free democracy...all he wanted to do was to improve the world and make it a better and safer place to live in."

The prime minister enjoyed long road journeys and was usually cheerful and relaxed then. But once, in the Rayalaseema region, reeling under severe drought, he travelled 219 miles (353 km) at the end of which he was obviously tired. When his security officer, 27 years younger than him, asked him to curtail his programme the next day, Nehru replied, "We should not alter a programme that has once been fixed because it would cause inconvenience to so many people. Besides, it's not impossible for me ...though I may lose my temper more often."

In a separate chapter titled Nehru's Courage, Rustamji narrates many incidents relating to the accidents of Nehru's cars and aircraft, and the PM escaping death by a whisker. Due to space constraints, one such incident will suffice to exemplify Nehru's personal courage. On 26 February 1957, the PM took off from Mangalore in an Ilyushin aircraft presented by Soviet Union Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin. Somewhere in midair, one of the twin engines of the plane caught fire, and every passenger, including the crew, was naturally in a state of panic. But Nehru was absolutely calm. "What is JN thinking about," wondered Rustamji.

He was happily chatting with BR Vats, the PTI correspondent on board. Though the fire was extinguished, the extremely worried Rustamji kept his thoughts to himself. "If the fire has not been completely extinguished, it may reach the fuel tank, and then the plane will explode. We wouldn't even feel it. But what about those we leave behind?" The chief security officer, thinking that death was imminent, even wrote a touching farewell note to his wife, "My last thoughts will be of you and Kerman... forgive me for all my faults."

Rustamji began this chapter with, "Among the many facets of JN's character worthy of delineation, the one I admired most was his undoubted personal courage. Nehru was not a man who was afraid of death. He could stare death in the face without the slightest sign of nervousness. In moments of danger, he withdrew into himself and supported all who were around him with his calm courage."

In early 1954, Lal Bahadur Shastri, then Railways Minister, made efforts to persuade Nehru to have a bath in the Ganga on the occasion of Kumbh Mela. Shastri said, "It is a custom followed by millions of people. You should do it, if only out of respect for this faith and love of Ganga." Nehru replied, "It is true, the Ganga means much to me. I see on its waters the story of India... the Ganga is part of my life, and the lives of millions of people of India...To me, it is the river of history ...I enjoy bathing in it otherwise- but not during the Kumbh." Nehru was religious sans the rituals. What did he then believe in?

Rustamji notes, "His views were closest to Buddhism...but I am not sure. They were closest to the purest form of Hinduism - tolerance, compassion, faith in mankind and distrust of dogma."

Concluding the chapter Nehru - The Man, Rustamji writes, "I have a feeling that we will not see the likes of him for years to come. He was the real genius of India compounded of Buddha, Gandhi and a Western scientist of note, like Albert Einstein." Indeed the like of Jawaharlal Nehru may not be born for centuries to come.

(The writer is Editor of The Secular Saviour and a former Secretary of the AICC)