FIVE YEARS WITH NEHRU
By late K.F. Rustamji
From Hyderabad and its mediaeval Nizam and a
newborn Congress party, I was posted to Delhi, the heart of India, as
officer-in-charge of security of all VIPs and visiting dignitaries, particularly
the urbane and dazzling Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the handsome Kashmiri,
a white sherwani with a red rose, churidars and a small baton, the man whom
India trusted infinitely, almost worshipped.
Nehru had a strong physique, did yoga regularly, stood on his head, and rode a
horse like a champion. Even his daughter, Indira, was a good rider and it was
difficult for me to keep up with them in the gullies of Pahalgam.
One day when we were alone at breakfast somewhere in the South, I asked him,
"What is the secret of your untiring energy?" "I eat little", all old men say
that, I said to myself, "and in time", he added. He was 64 at that time but
looked barely 40. As far as eating little, I remember the Dakota trip when we
were returning from the South. At Hyderabad a gentleman came with two tiffin
carriers and Nehru said he was an old friend, we should take the tiffins into
the plane.
When we started from Hyderabad for Nagpur, the plane began to buck like a wild
horse. We were all wondering how we would contain our insides in front of the
VIP. One man of the IAF could not, and we had to rush a bag to him. All of us
prayed for the plane to settle down on an even course. Suddenly JN said, "Hari,
khaana lao" (bring the lunch). Hari tottered with the dishes of the tiffin
carriers. We tried to help, but, the smell of biryani at that time was
absolutely unbearable. The PM settled down to a grand lunch - biryani, raita and
all else, while we looked out of the window wondering how to get the smell of
biryani out of our systems. "You are not eating?" he said to me. I said that I
would wait till the plane settled down a bit, almost adding, "Never touch
biryani again in my life."
My main duty in security was the protection of Pandit Nehru, whose popularity at
that time, was so overwhelming that my job was mainly directed to preventing
stampedes or disorderly public meetings. One obsession of Panditji that I had to
deal with was his dislike of masses of uniformed men, the use of sticks and
lathis to keep crowds in position, or the use of barbed wire in public meetings
to mark out the security zone.
One day in Ahmedabad he got very angry when he saw masses of policemen at the
airport on his return journey and no crowd to bid him goodbye. It was also the
day when he was interrupted repeatedly in a public meeting. That day he took his
temper out on me, and I had to take the blame severely as part of my duty. When
we got down in Delhi, he camp up to me and said, "Rustamji, why don't you come
and have lunch with me?"
A security event that I remember was in Nagpur where a half demented Baburao
stopped his car. He had a petition in one hand and a knife in the other. He was
quickly disarmed by Rajgopal and Quinn. There were other incidents that I had to
deal with. Nehru, without a cap, walked out from one gate of the house and was
stopped at the other gate. "Who are you? Where are you going? All say they are
Nehru". Nehru was surprised that the sentry did not recognize him.
There were a few threatening letters, some anonymous calls, but nothing really
that was serious except that on our return from Bombay, an explosive device was
found in the Dakota. Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB) asked me to go back
to Bombay and join the investigation at once. I was feverish, tired after a
taxing tour of Maharashtra and Naju pleaded with me to take a day's rest. The
matter seemed so urgent that I went back to Bombay immediately. The flight that
I would have taken, had I stayed behind, crashed on landing in Bombay.
A few weeks after joining Nehru as a Security Officer in 1953, we had a jeep
accident in the Rann of Kutch, when we were going to Anjar to see the damage
from an earthquake. The commissioner was driving the jeep, with the P.M. and Lal
Bahadur in front, and a driver and me at the back. In taking a turn, the jeep
skidded and turned over on its side. The P.M. and I jumped out, but Lal Bahadur
and the commissioner were trapped inside and I felt that if the jeep turned
over, they would be crushed. I shouted to the escort car group to hold the jeep.
The P.M. said "Don't shout", which was his method of saying that in an emergency
there must be no sense of alarm. The men helped to right the jeep and we went on
the Anjar.
Luck was certainly on our side when a newly acquired Russian Ilyushin aircraft
caught fire, on the day Nehru was going from Cochin to Raipur. I could see the
port engine going up in an enormous flame. I ran to Rufus, the pilot. He said an
engine was on fire and he had tried to put it out. I went to the P.M. and told
him an engine had been lost in fire. "Where are we?" he enquired. I said, "We
are trying to see whether we can land at Raichur."
He continued reading the book and appeared totally oblivious to what was
happening. That was his normal reaction - keep calm. I wrote a letter to my wife
bidding her goodbye and put it in my bushcoat pocket, hoping it would escape
incineration. With superb skill Rufus guided the aircraft slowly down. Slowly
the aircraft came lower and lower and suddenly it touched the ground and we
burst into peals of laughter as the tension broke.
What impressed me most working with him was the hard work that he put in day
after day. His day began at 8 or 9 in the morning and ended at midnight or 1
a.m. the next morning. One day in Kerala we had been moving throughout the day
going from one election meeting to another. I was so tired I fell asleep at once
on reaching Trivandrum. In the middle of the night I got up and found he was
still working. I said to him, "Don't you think, Sir, you should get some sleep?"
He smiled wryly and said, "Just five minutes more", as if he were asking for my
permission.
Great men continue to be human, I find. "Who was that foreign woman in the Press
Box?" "Did they send the orchids to Lady Mountbatten?" "Who was that lovely girl
you kissed at the dinner party?" You should have seen him glow at a reception
arranged by the film crowd of Bombay, when a bevy of beautiful actresses
surrounded him.
He was, undoubtedly, the new India, the dazzling leader of our democracy, the
intellectual who had written several books, the man who was very active and full
of life, he was well-informed with an abiding faith in the Indian people, and he
strove tirelessly to make the Americans and the Soviets understand each other,
after working out the peace in the Korean War.
Nehru was certainly well-read, an authority on Indian history which he had
studied extensively in jail and written about in the form of letters to his
daughter. Once in Dehra Dun jail, when we were being shown round the room in
which he had spent several years imprisonment, I asked him, "Did you think you
would get independence in your lifetime?" He said, "At that time I was sure.
Doubts did appear later."
Nehru was the epitome of modern India. Hindu by birth, he retained the best of
Hinduism, although he called himself an agnostic. I would consider him a true
Hindu, but against rituals, against fanatic clerics, and with a deep compassion
for those who were threatened in any way by caste or communalism. In a visit to
Ajanta and Ellora, he seemed to revel in the age of Buddhism, when Gautama
renounced the world and preached a simple doctrine of salvation.
Just as he was against some aspects of Hinduism, he was against some aspects of
Buddhism. I think his real faith was close to both. His faith in the morality of
religion and rejection of all that smacked of ancient ignorance probably came
out of his biological studies that we are the same as animals but have learned
to live together.
He was totally in agreement with Gandhiji that truth and compassion were the two
main elements of human culture. His faith in secularism was born out of a love
for Hinduism and a respect for all faiths which is the quintessence of Hinduism.
He looked upon the Ganga as sacred and his faith in that great river was
unbounded. Nehru was the new India, wanting to get out of the past of religious
skirmishes, to uplift, to care for all, and to consider no human being unfit for
his concern.
His only hatred was for the fanatic - particularly the bearded variety from all
sides, though he respected Maulana Azad sincerely. His greatest fear was that
Indian democracy would be damaged by those who would take advantage of the
simple faith of the masses, not to improve their condition, but to preach hatred
and destruction.
I wonder how much of Nehru's temper was just an act to keep discipline in the
party. He could be extremely rude to Chief Ministers. I was present on many
occasions when he gave them a dressing down, which I am sure they would never
forget. He had built up a support based in the people by regularly speaking to
them in public meetings. I calculated that more people heard him personally than
anyone else in the world. Politicians feared him, the masses cheered him, and
the Opposition respected him as a true democrat.
Underlying his self-confidence before the world, there was a basic feeling of
insecurity which perhaps all politicians have in a democracy. Churchill was
thrown out at the height of his power and after he had won a war. Change is a
definite law of democracy.
At that time, in the 50s and 60s, there was no fear of personal attacks on
Nehru, not even of verbal attacks in the media. The Opposition against him was
feeble and the only book against him was by Dosu Karaka of Bombay - "The
Lotus-eater of Kashmir". Undoubtedly he had strong likes and dislikes, loved a
certain amount of flattery and references to his rule. If he liked a man, he
would not listen to any suspicions of integrity against him.
Even some of his ministers got away when they became corrupt, because he hated
to hurt them. Once I mentioned to him that M.O. Mathai, his Secretary, was being
criticized by Intelligence, because some persons had bought property for him in
the mountains. He told me roughly that he did not believe it. In due course,
there was such a row in Parliament that he had to put out Mathai.
Like all the thinkers of that generation, he was dazzled by the theory and
achievements of communism, except that he felt strongly against the strong-arm
methods and the violence that went into its enforcement. He liked communism,
hated Stalin and found that he could talk to Bulganin and Krushchev and be able
to convince them that the United States was not bent on their destruction, if
they showed friendship towards them. He strove relentlessly to make the
Americans and Russians break out of the language of hate and more towards an
understanding of each other's ideals.
A lot of women felt that they were in love with Nehru and mistook any pleasing
gesture he made as proof of his passion for them. There was one poor woman who
would wait for an opportunity to rush into his car. Getting her out was always a
problem. There were some who even claimed that their children were the result of
a liaison with him. At the age of 64, when I began to work with him, he was
beyond the age of burning to climb into bed with someone.
Perhaps all prominent men fear a scandal. His two good friends were Padmaja
Naidu and Edwina Mountbatten. Padmaja he had known for years and he liked her
tart language and sense of fun and her acid comments on people. Edwina was like
a person from his early years in England. He liked her compassionate nature,
respected her for the work she had done with refugees and her up-to-date
knowledge of world affairs.
When she came out with the PM on tour, she sat with me under the dais and I had
to act as the translator of Nehru's speeches. She took every word in eagerly.
One evening in Aurangabad, we three were alone at dinner. I felt it would be
best to leave the two alone for the sort of intimacy they relished. Would they
let me go? Twice I asked for leave to withdraw and JN indicated that he wanted
me to stay. I felt that he did not want the media to think that he and Lady
Mountbatten had spent the evening together alone.
A trip to China in a Dakota was truly memorable, made more exciting by the large
number of reports that the plane would be shot down on the way. The reception at
Rangoon airport, led by a smiling U Nu, was as rapturous as any in India. Then
numerous receptions in Laos and Cambodia with their striking dances. At a dinner
in Thailand, a beautiful princess sitting next to me at dinner told me their
conception of beauty. She said, "A woman must have the eyes of an Indian, the
complexion of a Burman and the heart of a Thai."
Leaving Saigon, Dr Ho Chi Minh said to Indira, "It is a custom in my country to
kiss the departing guest." Indira offered her face, hoping that no Indian
photographer was there to click it. I had a short talk with the famous General
Giap who had led their army. At Saigon, there was a mix-up, because the captain
of our aircraft said that he could not take off at 10 a.m. due to bad weather
and I should inform the P.M. about it.
I rang up the palace where the P.M. was staying, but could not make myself
understood by the person at the other end, who spoke endlessly in French. I said
again and again, "I want to speak to Pt. Nehru". When he said, "Nehru, Nehru"
but would not connect me, I shouted at him in anger "You damn fool, stop saying
Nehru, Nehru." The voice at the other end said, "But, I am Nehru." I wondered
what he would say when we met in the plane the next morning. He just smiled.
Then on to China with their security restrictions of never announcing the time
of departure. We stopped midway at two places and then had a long ride to Peking
(Beijing). From the air we could see a lot of colour at the airport and we were
all wondering what it was. When the plane landed, I was amazed to find that
there were at least a thousand people, each with a stalk of Gladioli flowers in
the hand, to welcome the Indian P.M. The streets were crowded with people, all
assembled by cadres that took their allotted place according to order, and
cheered the P.M. vociferously.
One evening there was a reception given by the Indian P.M. I was standing next
to the door, suddenly the door opened and in came Chairman Mao, a tall
well-built figure, a slight stoop, almost bearish, followed by Premier,
Chou-En-Lai, Chu Teh and Lew Shao Chi, who fell out later with his leader and
was killed in a plane crash.
At that time I felt that the visit to China was a success. What I did not know
was that differences came up in the meetings over the status of Tibet, and also
because they seemed to resent our closeness to Russia. The hope of a
Russia-China-India axis was shattered in the visit. Soon after the Soviets and
China broke away from each other.
All his remaining life Nehru regretted, I think, the hasty order that he had
given to throw out the Chinese. I was there when he spoke to the press about it
and I felt that it was the stress of work, a late night full of discussion that
had made him lash out in anger. He was not given the correct briefing regarding
what was happening in Assam and other places. He had been given to understand
that the Chinese were ill-equipped, capable only of wave upon wave of attacks,
but lacking in strategy and experience of mountain warfare.
I think the blame must be shared by the top leaders of the Army and intelligence
agencies. The Defence Minister, Krishna Menon, had to go. Nehru tried to face
the moment of defeat, but deep down he was extremely hurt and the only point
that he felt grateful for was support held out to India by the United States.
Pandit Nehru may have made some mistakes; he may have trusted some people too
much; he may have condoned some dishonesty, though perfectly straight himself,
but, as a leader and theoretician he was great - secular, compassionate,
courageous, learned and tireless in his aim to lead the people and to educate
them about their duties. It will be long before we find the likes of him again
in the political field. I may be wrong, because it is the genius of India that
always produces great men for us.
On my transfer to Bhopal, Nehru asked Naju and me for lunch. It was extremely
simple - a thali lunch, hardly any attendants. I asked him to write something on
a photograph. He wrote: "To Rustamji, with all good wishes and rememberances of
many journeys performed together. - Jawaharlal Nehru." The picture is framed in
my son Cyrus' office in Toronto. - CNF
(This article by Mr K.F. Rustamji is being issued posthumously. He passed away
on March 2, 2003.)