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A Punjabi bhadralok - The Pioneer

Vrinda Gopinath ()
25 April 1997

Title : A Punjabi bhadralok
Author : Vrinda Gopinath
Publication : The Pioneer
Date : April 25, 1997

Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral may have remained a successful, safari-suited
builder and garment exporter and lifetime city councillor had it not been for a
contentious exhibition of paintings by his brother Satish Gujral. The latter had
just returned from Mexico with a certain repute as painter and muralist. Around
the time, the Government was commissioning, portraits of freedom fighters for
adorning the walls of Parliament.

Inder Kumar Gujral made a bid on behalf of his physically-challenged brother, who
was promptly contracted to do a portrait of Lala Lajpat Rai, much to the,
irritation of a culture czar, Who felt Satish didn't fit the bill. The finished
work, not surprisingly, was rejected outright by the selection committee.

Sensing the outbreak of a controversy, Inder Kumar decided on an exhibition of
Satish's paintings at Modern School. A large audience was invited; those who were
opposed to the culture czar praised the painting of Lala Lajpat Rai to the skies,
while the sour critics thought the freedom fighter's portrait resembled a monkey.
It was not long before rumblings were heard at Teen Murti, the residence of
India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who called for the, painting.

Nehru supported the czar's opponents he not only accepted the painting but even
commissioned a portrait of himself by Satish. Inder accompanied his younger
brother as a voice to his mute brother. In the course of several sittings at the,
Prime Minister's residence, the, brothers endeared themselves to the Nehru family.

Columnist Khushwant Singh says this unseemly episode provided Inder Gujral the
opportunity to present his visiting card at the Nehru-Gandhi household. And he
continued seeing his daughter Indira Gandhi even after the assignment was over.
"Being a Leftist was in his favour," chuckles Singh, "he was seen as more
progressive than the cow protectors who were clamouring in Delhi at the time and,
he never let go."

It may be churlish to call Gujral an opportunist but as his friends admit, he
certainly has the Punjabi instinct for opportune moments. And he has certainly
retained that fervour even today" Overnight, after his appointment as the new
leader of the United Front, a glossy four-page note chronicling his life and
career magically surfaced in Delhi, startling even the most inveterate cynics.

Going by its contents, no one can accuse Gujral of having a mis-spent youth. In
1931, at the age of 11, the note begins, Gujral participated in the freedom
struggle and was arrested and severely beaten by the police for organising a
movement of young children in Jhelum town, now in Pakistan. By the time he was 23,
it continues, he was thrown into jail during the Quit India movement.

But the trauma of Partition saw him discard his revolutionary cloak and adopt the
comfortable bourgeoisie lifestyle. But he continued to carry his socialist
baggage, pretty fashionable those days, and soon earned for himself the sobriquet
of "coffee house politician".

"He was a political animal," says Kuldip Nayyar, long time friend and journalist.
But Gujral's early break came from his mentor Meharchand Khanna, a minister in
Nehru's Cabinet - he was appointed senior vice-president of NDMC in 1957 and
became a talking point in Punjabi circles for his relentless work in the
rehabilitation of refugees in Delhi.

Yet this is not what one, can call political mainstream. Gujral had to wait till
Indira Gandhi began dominating the political scene. But even in the early
sixties, Gujral had become close to Indira Gandhi who, it is said, had an
unbending regard for those Who took her seriously, especially at a time when the
then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was treating her with scant respect. The
Nehru connection paid off: he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Young and ambitious, Indira Gandhi was keen to be seen as intellectual and even
went to the ridiculous extent of picking friends among the radicals. Her charmed
circle included Ashok Mehta, Romesh Thapar, Dinesh Singh, Mohan Kumaramangalam and
Inder Gujral.

These men were later to become members of her Kitchen Cabinet, as this group came
to be infamously called, after Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister, Dinesh Singh
and Gujral were managing parliamentary affairs informally but when it came to
inducting them in the Cabinet, she was surprisingly grudging.

The late Raj Thapar, wife of Romesh Thapar, recalls in her memoir, All These
Years.., "Dinesh fought hard to become Foreign Minister, she game him commerce....
But in Inder Gujral's case, it had been more difficult. He had scanned the
newspapers in the morning and was not able to sight his name in the list. In a
state of extreme dejection, he appeared at out office, his eyes looking like a
spaniel's. 'How can I show my face to anyone?' he said. And then he all but wept,
for he had no other constituency but her, no other mass base and denying him a
seat meant virtually discarding his importance... and this after all the running
around he was doing for her.... Romesh rushed off to Indira demanding an
explanation and telling her that everyone was saying that 'Inder suffered because
he sails too close to the wind.' There was an announcement next morning that IK
Gujral had been appointed Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and
Communication."

Says Khushwant Singh, "Gujral is a Punjabi bhadralok... I mean, he is more
civilised than Madan Lal Khurana. He is like a boy scoot who is always ready to
help an old woman cross the road." Perhaps this was the reason why Gujral never
confronted Indira Gandhi even when humiliated. Critics say he did not bit out
",hen he was unceremoniously booted out of the Information and Broadcasting
ministry within 12 hours of Emergency being declared in 1975. In the mother-son
scheme of things, Gujral was the least fit to carry out their propagandist zeal.

Singh comments, "Gujral toed the line with Mrs G right through Emergency except
when Sanjay got rough with him. and he refused to take orders from him." His
critics, therefore say he compromised himself by accepting his new assignment in
the Planning ministry and a year later, the ambassadorship to Moscow.

His friends, however, jump to his defence. "His ambassadorship freed him of all
political loyalties," says Nayyar, "and once he left for Moscow, he quit the party
and never rejoined it." Inder Malhotra agrees too: "Gujral never crawled back into
the Congress fold like many others after the Janata Party was voted out and Mrs
Gandhi was elected again. And he was not treated as shabbily as say Dinesh
was...."

Khushwant Singh, a self-confessed Emergence supporter, recalls a meeting with
Gujral during those "dark days." The writer, who was then editing the Illustrated
Weekly, was summoned to Delhi after he wrote a 'middle' protesting mildly against
censorship and was invited to Gujral's house for dinner (Singh suspects it was at
Mrs Gandhi's instance). "Gujral even compromised by serving me Scotch and gently
told me to keep the mood in mind and that I should understand since we both are
from the same background." Singh, however, is quick to say that at that time there
were no protestors and no heroic figures.

Gujral returned from Moscow in 1980 and settled to a life on the seminar circuit
and the rarified intellectual circle of the Indian International Centre. But he
was soon in the thick of political activity after Punjab began spinning out of
control. Gujral and Nayyar started the Punjab group and immersed themselves in
initiating a dialogue between the Government and the Akalis. Their spirit was not
dampened after Operation Bluestar and them Punjab group bravely persisted in
holding a seminar in Amritsar for a solution. This earned him the support of the
Akalis who supported his first successful foray into electoral politics when he
stood from Jalandhar in 1989. Despite their unflinching support, the Akalis grew
increasingly tone and shifting secular credentials in Delhi and Punjab.

A journalist who toured with Gujral during his campaign recalls, "The Akalis feel
he did not reciprocate their gestures. He is an Arya Samaji and the liberation
movement in Punjab has its roots in the struggle between Sikhs and non-Sikhs, who
are really the Arya Samajis. The Akalis suspected he sided with them as he never
brought up Bluestar in his campaign speeches and was careful not to annoy the
non-Sikhs (Arya Samajis). His best friends are the editors of Punjab Kesri and
Ajit, who are Arya Samajis and did not support the movement. He took a mid-term
stance and it is no wonder that he never returned to Punjab for re-election."

His next dalliance with the tricky business of electoral politics was from Patna,
in the 1991 General Election Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav had then
curtly told him to switch from safari suits to khadi kurta pyjama and refrain from
intellectual discourse. Laloo, in fact, introduced a sheepish Gujral as a
"padha-likha Gujar from Punjab." The election was subsequently elected to the
Rajya Sabha from Bihar.

Is Gujral only an efficient administrator who has persistently restrained from
being drawn into the political morass? Protests Raj Thapar's daughter, Mala Singh,
"He is streets ahead of many politicians. He is no lightweight. He was close to a
woman who ruled the country in one of its more turbulent years. They worked to
make her Prime Minister, and even won an election when the Congress split for the
first time... His intellectual integrity carried him through these years."

In a sharply polarised electorate, the United Front needs a Prime Minister who
ought to carry, at least, those sections of society who support its different
constituents. Gujral does not have a mass base, he does not have a constituency to
nurse. But this could well be to his advantage - managing the Government and its
tricky relationship with the Congress, leaving the Front's chieftains free to
battle it out in the dust bowls of India.


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