Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay diedIt was Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay died who fathered sanjay ? Mohammad Yunus?
Rape and the ugly Indian Such barbarism in a country that dreams to be a world power
If only India's other stats - on economy, poverty alleviation, healthcare - grew at the rate crimes against women are climbing up in this country. At an increase of 31% it is exponential. It is also shocking, amazing and ridiculous. A 2006 report by the National Crime Records Bureau said in India a woman is raped every half hour and is killed every 75 minutes. And this is according to 2004 data. Factor in a one-third jump and do the math. Also, make space for the large number of women, perhaps larger than the ones reporting their violation, who keep quiet and bury their shame forever in their hearts for fear of another round of abuse, this time from family, society, police.
Such barbarism in a country that dreams to be a world power and demands every seat at every global high table should indeed be humiliating not only for its leaders but also its people. But few are moved by the plight of half the nation's population, still living in such dread, such suffocating coexistence. And this in 2009 - the 21st century.
Where do the perpetrators get such courage and confidence from that they stop a running bus, pull out a woman and leave her by the roadside after raping her, that they trap a foreign diplomat and rape her in a car, that they catch hold of a college student and violate her atop a building even as heavy traffic passes by a few feet below? How is it that a cop instead of protecting a young girl shuts her inside a police post and does the unthinkable?
The arrogance mostly comes from a knowledge that in a society like India's the victims will be silenced "naturally and culturally". It comes from the deadly and deeply ingrained dynamics of a feudal nation that treats women as second class citizens. And it comes from hundreds of years of brainwashing of the male mind after Manu said women were little better than cattle. Importantly, it derives an insidious power of its own by the silent suffering of women themselves, by their own reluctance to fight for the space they rightly deserve and are perpetually denied.
Top police officers say the number of rape cases reported may not even be a fraction of the one that's actually committed. Social activists echo this. For every woman who reports her violation, there are 10 who will not speak up. Somehow, the Indian male - and a predominantly male-dominated police and administration - continues to put the onus of the crime, rather incredibly, on the victims: you must have sent some signal; you must have been dolled-up and dressed provocatively; maybe you are crying rape because you have been caught; why did you have to answer nature's call when you know there could be thugs lurking around; what shame you have brought on us; why you.
This is enough to kill the spirit of most women and for those that can transcend this psychological brutality there is the crude questioning by cops and lawyers, something many victims say is like going through a second rape. Not surprising that they prefer to seal their lips and kill their sense of dignity and honour. And we are not even talking about the numerous others subjected to molestation, groping, eve teasing and degrees of verbal and physical abuse - at the movie hall, in the bus, in crowded bylanes, markets, trains, almost everywhere. As one female colleague who used to take the metro in Kolkata to commute said, "The first time I was groped, I created a ruckus. And fought like mad. But after a few times, it got hard. In any case, the stares you get after that is almost, like, killing. If you are a working woman in India not rich enough to take your own car to office, groping is a routine reality."
A group of informed citizens have started a cyber campaign against rape, clamoring for stricter laws, including death sentence if it involves minors and handicapped. It's already got robust support and, clearly, many think it's a step in the right direction. The courts will have to get stringent - many still persuade the rapist to marry his victim - but there is urgent need for another three-pronged effort. One, investigating agencies will have to be sensitized on how to deal with such cases. Two, society at large will have to change its attitude towards victims and make the leap from judgemental censure to empathy. Finally, women themselves will have to fight their demons and come out in the open about their various abuses.
India, as an article in TOI recently said, is now one of the most dangerous places for women to be in. We can do without this dubious distinction.
SRINAGAR: J&K CM Omar Abdullah didn't go to meet governor N N Vohra first after he left the assembly. He drove back home, drafted his
resignation — which is apparently so worded that it can be said to be ambigious about his insistence on immediate resignation — and reached Raj Bhavan with state finance minister Abdul Rahim Rather and political advisor Devendra Rana to hand it in.
Vohra is said to have reasoned with the 39-year-old chief minister, urging him not to act emotionally. He is learnt to have told him that he would not accept the resignation until the allegation was probed and determined one way or the other and Omar should carry on with his work until then.
Omar has finally agreed to stay on provided a clear time frame is given for the probe. The CM hasn't made a statement after that but he bared his mind — and anguish — in the assembly: "I know it's a false allegation. But I want to resign until I am cleared of this false charge. I cannot work till I am proved innocent. This is a blot on my character...Under the law, one is innocent until proven guilty. But that's for routine crimes. Since the allegations raise questions on my morality, I consider myself guilty until proven innocent."
His resignation letter is said to be a little more nuanced. It said, "I will be grateful if you could inquire into the allegations against me in a time-bound manner and...if you are satisfied that there is any basis in these allegations please accept my resignation immediately."
His tormentor Muzaffar Beig appeared unmoved by the drama. Reacting to the CBI’s denial of his claim, he said, ‘‘The agency is trying to cover up the issue as it has been doing since it was formed.’’
He added PDP leaders named in the CBI list had been denied party tickets in 2008 assembly elections. Beig said Farooq Abdullah’s name, too, figured in the list as entry No. ‘C-38’.
Already the CBI has arrested G M Mir and Raman Mattoo, both ministers in the former PDP government, besides Iqbal Khandey, the former principal secretary to then chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
Meanwhile, Vohra has reached Delhi to discuss the simmering crisis with government leaders.
The Rediff Interview/Khushwant Singh
Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay diedIt was Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay died who fathered sanjay ? Mohammad Yunus?
The Rediff Interview/Khushwant Singh
October 27, 2004
Few journalists interacted with Indira Gandhi the way Khushwant Singh, doyen of Indian journalism, did. As editor of the now defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India and later The Hindustan Times, he was witness to some of the most historic moments in Indira Gandhi's 16-year-long rule.
Now 90, Khushwant Singh's door has a warning: 'Do not ring the bell unless you are expected.' The years have not numbed his extremely sharp mind as he took a journey down memory lane with Deputy Managing Editor Amberish K Diwanji to recreate the life of Indira Gandhi.
The first of a series of interviews and features on rediff.com to mark Indira Gandhi's 20th death anniversary.
Twenty years later, how do you look back on Indira Gandhi?
There are two aspects to Indira Gandhi: one as the politician and the other as a human being.
As a politician, it is common knowledge about her but as a human being, very few know about her, such as her family and her staff. The rest is conjecture and make believe.
How did you get to know her?
I first met her when she was still unmarried and came to Lahore on her way to Kashmir, and she was staying with friends who had brought her over.
I have a photograph of her at our house. She was very shy and wouldn't talk much.
I next met her when she was president of the Congress. It was at a meeting over which she was presiding and I was speaking on Madam Cama, I think. Then when she became information and broadcasting minister in (Lal Bahadur) Shastri's government, I was asked to do an article for TheNew York Timeson the possibility of her becoming prime minister.
The article was an adverse account because I quoted people saying her leading the country was not possible. India has never been led by a woman. We might have had a Razia Sultan but that was it. I also said she was not qualified except for being Nehru's daughter and the fact that she had no political base except for having become Congress president by her father.
But she did become prime minister, with the second longest tenure till date?
The fact is after Shastri, people did not want Gulzarilal Nanda or Morarji Desai, and so she became prime minister, selected by a bunch who thought they could control her. But this bunch had not reckoned with her innate political sense or that being prime minister has its own power.
She soon sidelined Morarji Desai and others like Kamaraj. She really ruled a bit like a dictator. People would say the Cabinet has only one man (Indira Gandhi) and that the rest are all hijras (eunuchs), but the fact is she reduced them to that level.
How do you look back at her rule?
There is nothing spectacular about her rule.
She was incapable of tolerating any criticism and she picked up an aversion to some persons because she thought they were challenging her, among them Jayaprakash Narayan, a good, honest man. She couldn't stand him because he was a challenge to her as the leader of the country, especially as people grew disillusioned with her rule. There were problems, droughts, challenges and Jayaprakash Narayan had emerged as a leader.
During her reign, corruption increased to enormous levels. She was really very tolerant of corruption, which was another negative mark against her. She knew perfectly well that some of her ministers were extremely corrupt, yet she took no steps against them till it suited her.
If she knew someone was corrupt, she tolerated him but if it suited her, she used the same corruption charge to get rid of him. She really had no strong views on corruption, which went sky high during her time.
Also, she felt uncomfortable with educated, sophisticated people. So you have the rise of people like Yashpal Kapoor, R K Dhawan, who was a stenographer who worked in her office, Mohammad Yunus, who just hung around her.
I believe this was because she had no real education.
She went to Shanti Niketan, then she went to Badminton School abroad, then to Oxford. Nowhere did she pass an exam or acquire a degree.
I think that bred a sort of inferiority complex of not being recognised as an educated person. She would pretend to have read a lot of books. She spoke French, which she picked up when she accompanied her ailing mother Kamala to Switzerland, which went in her favour. There were pros and cons but there was this sense of insecurity when it came to highly intelligent people and people with clear records. She felt more comfortable with second-rate people.
How did her insecurities, about which much has been written, affect India?
In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy. She packed Parliament with her supporters with loyalty being more important than ability; she superseded judges; she corrupted the civil service. Favouritism became a great sport with her.
She also knew how to use people against each other and was quite a master of that. She would patronise somebody and when she thought he was getting too big, instead of appointing him to a senior post, she would appoint his close associate, knowing this would create a rift between them.
The best example is of V P Singh. It was his elder brother (Santa Bux Singh) who believed he would be made minister but instead she picked V P Singh, the lesser qualified of the two brothers, which only created enmity between the brothers. She would do this with calculated skill and in the bargain cause enmity between brothers, split up families.
In the long run it was not good for the country to play such games as she did.
What is her greatest achievement?
Her greatest moment, the triumph in her life, was the way she handled the Bangladesh crisis, where all her skills came together. She made a complete fool of the Pakistanis.
India faced a huge crisis with a flood of refugees entering the country. She tried to garner international support and went round the world telling them what was happening but got no backing except from the Soviet Union, which any way was with us.
Then, when she realised the crisis had to reach a climax, she proved very astute. For instance, an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked. Today we know that it was the Indians who manoeuvred to get the plane to land in Lahore. Then, in Lahore, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (then Pakistan's foreign minister) proved stupid enough to have the plane blown up in his presence. This gave India the excuse it needed to stop flights between West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) over India, something that gave India a clear edge as the war drew nearer. Now, Pakistani planes had to fly all the way round India and refuel in Sri Lanka to communicate between the two wings.
I also think it was on her advice that the Indian Army built up the Mukti Bahini. And by the time (then Pakistan President General) Yahya Khan realised what was happening and declared war, the Indian Army was, I think, well about 100 miles inside Bangladesh. In less than a fortnight, the Pakistani army surrendered. The Pakistanis prepared to defend the towns but the Indian troops just avoided the towns and headed straight for Dhaka. It was by all accounts a master strategy and Indira Gandhi very deservedly got the Bharat Ratna.
But the problem of reaching a height is that you can only come down from there. And then we have the Emergency.
Yes, that is true. But when it came to the Emergency, I think the Opposition too behaved very recklessly. There was no doubt that the country was fast sliding into chaos. I recall schools not opening, colleges not opening, huge processions, riots.
I think Jayaprakash Narayan made a mammoth mistake when he led this huge rally in New Delhi where he told the people to gherao legislators, not allow them to attend office, like it was happening in Gujarat at that time (where the Nav Nirman riots were going on and crowds had mobbed the Gujarat legislature). He asked people to do the same to Parliament in New Delhi and not allow elected people to attend to their duties. Worse, he asked the police and the Indian Army personnel to remove (the legislators).
Now, there are limits to protests in any democracy and this was exceeding the limits altogether. There were the other leaders, you can name them all, who were thoroughly enjoying her discomfiture, thinking she would fall on her own.
I wrote a letter to Jayaprakash Narayan. I knew him and was very fond of him, but I wrote that he was transgressing the boundaries of limits in a democracy. He wrote back a long letter, which I published in The Illustrated Weekly.
But before anything else could happen, the Allahabad high court judgment came through and she clamped the Emergency. I believe she was right and there was no other choice.
Do you believe after all these years that the Emergency was justified?
I still believe that when she imposed the Emergency, she had every right then because leaders of the Opposition were behaving in a total reckless, irresponsible and anti-national manner, just enjoying the spectacle.
I recall very clearly that when the Emergency was imposed, there was a general sense of relief throughout the country. Schools reopened, colleges reopened, trains ran on time, and there was a sense of gratitude that the country was back to normal.
Of course, the freedom of the people had been taken away. I called on her and told her she must not gag the press. I told her there were people like me who supported her but that no one would believe us, saying you can't say anything else or she will lock you up.
But she didn't agree saying you can't have (a state of) Emergency and freedom of the press because that would create problems. I thought she'd lock me up but she didn't, maybe because I had defended her and her son, Sanjay, long enough.
Anyway, she lifted the Emergency because she was totally misled by the CBI into believing that she was hugely popular and would win the election. And when elections were held, she was surprised to learn that she had earned so much hatred throughout the country that she was defeated.
If I can step back a bit, you said when she imposed the Emergency, there was relief in the country, yet she lost the election? So what went wrong?
What went wrong was, I think, the misuse of power by some…
Sanjay Gandhi included…
When you say Sanjay, he had no legitimacy. He was only the prime minister's son. What he had in mind was absolutely correct. All the family propaganda was not working so he made it the top priority. Then slum clearing. People took the cases to court and they went on for years. He said demolish the slums but give them alternative arrangements that were done. The family planning stories were vastly exaggerated: people being picked up from cinema line queues, from villages, etc… only a tenth of them was true but these stories spread like wildfire and she paid the price. The Emergency was made into a monster.
But there must have been reasons for the Emergency to be demonised?
She had locked up so many people, including 85 year olds. Anyone who said anything was locked up. But it wasn't her alone. It was Sanjay, his wife Maneka, his mother-in-law, Mohammad Yunus, who were running riot and anyone who said anything suddenly found himself in the lockup.
But if you have the Emergency and draconian laws, such excesses are bound to occur…
True, but I don't think she realised it.
Perhaps the problem started from the fact that you had the Emergency in the first place, or that you had it for so long?
I think it could have been a short Emergency and she could have handled the situation better. She could have put her foot down when she realised that people were misusing the Emergency, and there were far too many people around her who were misusing it. Also, putting the maharanis of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi, and of Gwalior, Vijaya Raje Scindia, in jail with pickpockets and prostitutes simply revealed the vindictive nature of her character. It also created a large number of enemies in very important places. That all together created hatred for the whole family.
Don't you think that when Justice Sinha passed the verdict against her, she should have stepped down?
It was a very dubious judgment: that she could sit in Parliament but she could not vote. (Nani) Palkhivala, who was her lawyer, told her that he would win the case for her in appeal. He said this verdict was a bit like locking up a person for a small traffic offence. But by then, she had become very nervous and people like Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Sanjay Gandhi advised her to impose the Emergency.
But I think if she had not done what she did, then she would have been a bigger figure. After she imposed the Emergency, Palkhivala refused to fight her case in court. Then they (Mrs Gandhi's cronies) harassed Palkhivala, he was removed from various Tata boards. And that kind of vindictiveness followed, which only created more enemies all along the way, which they needn't have done.
But then she came back to power. Now was this because the Janata Party was inept or was it also because the people said, 'Okay, we punished you, but now we want you back!' Or was it a combination of both?
Yeah, I think you are right. The anger and rancour against her had mitigated by then. Morarji Desai and Charan Singh proved totally inept in handling the situation and people said she was better than this lot.
But was not her next few years in power her worst? None of the strength of purpose that she had earlier seemed to be there.
I think that can be timed from Sanjay Gandhi's death (barely six months after she took office in January 1980). She lost her moorings when he died because he dominated her. He was a very dominating figure and she was certainly building him up to be the prime minister, totally ignoring Rajiv who she thought was a buddhu (lacking in intelligence).
After Sanjay died, she dithered, she couldn't make up her mind, she became a nervous wreck… She wouldn't sleep at nights, walking around the lawns of her residence, there was this permanent tick in her eyes, and I think it showed in the way she bungled over (Operation) Bluestar.
You believe she erred in Operation Bluestar?
I believe she was misled. I think her own judgement would have been right. She had no prejudice at all, not against the Muslims, not against the Sikhs or anyone. She consulted the people and got contrary advice from different people. She didn't trust (President) Zail Singh because he was playing both sides, sometimes supporting (Jarnail Singh) Bhindranwale against Darbara Singh (the then Congress chief minister of Punjab).
Operation Bluestar, 20 years on
So she turned to the Army and I know for certain, despite what they (the Army) say, that she was assured by people like General (Arun) Vaidya and (then Lieutenant General K S) Sundarji that once the army went in and surrounded the (Golden) Temple, no fight would be put up and Bhindranwale would surrender. I think they even said the operation would be over in two hours. It was a total miscalculation.
Bhindranwale was a thug, a fanatic, and he fought like a fanatic and didn't give in. The battle instead of two hours lasted two days and nights. And with a heavy toll.
I know that when she went to the Temple two or three days later, she was horrified because bodies were still floating in the Sarovar, there were bloodstains that were being cleaned up. She turned to [then Major General K S] Brar and asked, 'What is all this?'
She had believed the Army when it told her there would be no fighting.
Nehru Dynasty
Harmohan Singh Walia
At the very beginning of his book, "The Nehru Dynasty", astrologer K. N. Rao mentions the names ofJawahar Lal's father and grandfather. Jawahar Lal's father was believed to be Moti Lal and Moti Lal's father was one Gangadhar Nehru. And we all know that Jawahar Lal's only daughter was Indira Priyadarshini Nehru; Kamala Nehru was her mother, who died in Switzerland of tuberculosis. She was totally against Indira's proposed marriage with Feroze. Why? No one tells us that! Now, who is this Feroze? We are told, by many that he was the son of the family grocer. The grocer supplied wines, etc. to Anand Bhavan, previously known as Ishrat Manzil, which once belonged to a Muslim lawyer named Mobarak Ali. Moti Lal was earlier an employee of Mobarak Ali. What was the family grocer's name?
One frequently hears that Rajiv Gandhi's grandfather was Pandit Nehru. But then we all know that everyone has two grandfathers, the paternal and the maternal grandfathers. In fact, the paternal grandfather is deemed to be the more important grandfather in most societies. Why is it then nowhere we find Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather's name? It appears that the reason is simply this. Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh area of Gujarat. This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan had married a Parsi woman after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Rajiv's father Feroze was Feroze Khan before he married Indira, against Kamala Nehru's wishes. Feroze's mother's family name was Ghandy, often associated with Parsis and this was changed to Gandhi, sometime before his wedding with Indira, by an affidavit.
The fact of the matter is that (and this fact can be found in many writings) Indira was very lonely. Chased out of the Shantiniketan University by Guru Dev Rabindranath himself for misdemeanor, the lonely girl was all by herself, while father Jawahar was busy with politics, pretty women and illicit sex; the mother was in hospital. Feroze Khan, the grocer's son was then in England and he was quite sympathetic to Indira and soon enough she changed her religion, became a Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Nehru was not happy; Kamala was dead already or dying. The news of this marriage eventually reached Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi urgently called Nehru and practically ordered him to ask the young man to change his name from Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion, from Islam to Hinduism for instance. It was just a case of a change of name by an affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi. The surprising thing is that the apostle of truth, the old man soon to be declared India's Mahatma and the 'Father of the Nation' didn't mention this game of his in the famous book, 'My Experiments with Truth'. Why?
When they returned to India, a mock 'Vedic marriage' was instituted for public consumption. On this subject, writes M. O. Mathai (a longtime private secretary of Nehru) in his renowned (but now suppressed by the GOI) 'Reminiscences of the Nehru Age' on page 94, second paragraph: "For some inexplicable reason, Nehru allowed the marriage to be performed according to Vedic rites in 1942. An inter-religious and inter-caste marriage under Vedic rites at that time was not valid in law. To be legal, it had to be a civil marriage.
It's a known fact that after Rajiv's birth Indira and Feroze lived separately, but they were not divorced. Feroze used to harass Nehru frequently for money and also interfere in Nehru's political activities. Nehru got fed up and left instructions not to allow him into the Prime Minister's residence Trimurthi Bhavan. Mathai writes that the death of Feroze came as a relief to Nehru and Indira. The death of Feroze in 1960 before he could consolidate his own political forces is itself a mystery. Feroze had even planned to remarry.
Those who try to keep tabs on our leaders in spite of all the suppressions and deliberate misinformation are aware of the fact that the second son of Indira (or Mrs. Feroze Khan) known as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze. He was the son of another Moslem gentleman, Mohammad Yunus. Here, in passing, we might mention that the second son was originally named Sanjiv. It rhymed with Rajiv, the elder brother's name. When he was arrested by the British police in England and his passport impounded for having stolen a car it was changed to Sanjay. Krishna Menon was then India's High Commissioner in London. He offered to issue another passport to the felon who changed his name to Sanjay.
Incidentally, Sanjay's marriage with the Sikh girl Menaka (now they call her Maneka for Indira Gandhi found the name of Lord Indra's court dancer rather offensive!) took place quite surprisingly in Mohammad Yunus' house in New Delhi. And the marriage with Menaka who was a model (She had modeled for Bombay Dyeing wearing just a towel) was not so ordinary either. Sanjay was notorious in getting unwed young women pregnant. Menaka too was rendered pregnant by Sanjay. It was then that her father, Colonel Anand, threatened Sanjay with dire consequences if he did not marry her daughter. And that did the trick. Sanjay married Menaka. It was widely reported in Delhi at the time that Mohammad Yunus was unhappy at the marriage of Sanjay with Menaka; apparently he had wanted to get him married with a Muslim girl of his choice.
It was Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay died in the plane accident. In Yunus' book, 'Persons, Passions & Politics' one discovers that baby Sanjay had been circumcised following Islamic custom, although the reason stated was phimosis. It was always believed that Sanjay used to blackmail Indira Gandhi and due to this she used to turn a blind eye when Sanjay Gandhi started to run the country as though it were his personal fiefdom. Was he black mailing her with the secret of who his real father was? When the news of Sanjay's death reached Indira Gandhi, the first thing she wanted to know was about the bunch of keys which Sanjay had with him.
Nehru was no less a player in producing bastards. Atleast one case is very graphically described by M. O. Mathai in his "Reminiscences of the Nehru Age", page 206. Mathai writes: "In the autumn of 1948 (India became free in 1947 and a great deal of work needed to be done) a young woman from Benares arrived in New Delhi as a sanyasin named Shraddha Mata (an assumed and not a real name). She was a Sanskrit scholar well versed in the ancient Indian scriptures and mythology. People, including MPs, thronged to her to hear her discourses. One day S. D. Upadhyaya, Nehru's old employee, brought a letter in Hindi from Shraddha Mata. Nehru gave her an interview in the PM's house. As she departed, I noticed (Mathai is speaking here) that she was young, shapely and beautiful. Meetings with her became rather frequent, mostly after Nehru finished his work at night. During one of Nehru's visits to Lucknow, Shraddha Mata turned up there, and Upadhyaya brought a letter from her as usual. Nehru sent her the reply; and she visited Nehru at midnight.
"Suddenly Shraddha Mata disappeared. In November 1949 a convent in Bangalore sent a decent looking person to Delhi with a bundle of letters. He said that a young woman from northern India arrived at the convent a few months ago and gave birth to a baby boy. She refused to divulge her name or give any particulars about herself. She left the convent as soon as she was well enough to move out but left the child behind. She however forgot to take with her a small cloth bundle in which, among other things, several letters in Hindi were found. The Mother Superior, who was a foreigner, had the letters examined, and was told they were from the Prime Minister. The person who brought the letters surrendered them. "I (Mathai) made discreet inquiries repeatedly about the boy but failed to get a clue about his whereabouts. Convents in such matters are extremely tightlipped and secretive. Had I succeeded in locating the boy, I would have adopted him. He must have grown up as a Catholic Christian blissfully ignorant of who his father was."
Coming back to Rajiv Gandhi, we all know now that he changed his so called Parsi religion to become a Catholic to marry Sania Maino of Turin, Italy. Rajiv became Roberto. His daughter's name is Bianca and son's name is Raul. Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as Priyanka and Rahul. What is amazing is the extent of our people's ignorance in such matters. The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference, Rajiv boasted that he was NOT a Hindu but a Parsi. Mind you, speaking of the Parsi religion, he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His grandmother (father's mother) had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi religion to marry Nawab Khan.
It is the western press that waged a blitz of misinformation on behalf of Rajiv. From the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, the big guns raised Rajiv to heaven. The children's encyclopedias recorded that Rajiv was a qualified Mechanical Engineer from the revered University of Cambridge. No doubt US kids are among the most misinformed in the world today! The reality is that in all three years of his tenure at that University Rajiv had not passed a single examination. He had therefore to leave Cambridge without a certificate. Sonia too had the same benevolent treatment. She was stated to be a student in Cambridge. Such a description is calculated to mislead Indians. She was a student in Cambridge all right but not of the University of Cambridge but of one of those fly by night language schools where foreign students come to learn English. Sonia was working as an 'au pair' girl in Cambridge and trying to learn English at the same time.
And surprise of surprises, Rajiv was even cremated as per vedic rites in full view of India's public. This is the Nehru dynasty that India worships and now an Italian leads a prestigious national party because of just one qualification - being married into the Nehru family. Maneka Gandhi itself is being accepted by the non-Congress parties not because she was a former model or an animal lover, but for her links to the Nehru family. Saying that an Italian should not lead India will amount to narrow mindedness, but if Sania Maino (Sonia) had served India like say Mother Teresa or Annie Besant, i.e. in anyway on her own rights, then all Indians should be proud of her just as how proud we are of Mother Teresa.
| This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources.Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2009) Find sources: (Mohammad Yunus (diplomat)– news, books, scholar) |
Mohammad Yunus was a close associate of Indira Gandhi and He served as Indian ambassador to many countries including Turkey, Indonesia, Iraq and Spain.
He was born on June 26, 1916 in the city of Abbottabad, North-West Frontier Province to Haji Ghulam Samdani and late Smt. Murvari Jan, he studied at Muslim University School, Aligarhand Islamia College, Peshawar. He worked with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan from 1936 to August, 1947. He was imprisoned during the Quit India Movement and again in Kashmir in 1946. He joined the Indian Foreign Servicein 1947, during which time he served as adviser to the Joint Secretariat set up to organise the Bandung Conference in April 1955. He represented India at the Non-Aligned Summits at Lusaka, Algiers, Colombo, New Delhi and Harare. He retired as Secretary to the Ministry of Commerce in 1974 and was appointed as Special Envoy of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in 1975. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in June 1989. He died at the age of 85 on June 17, 2001 at the AIIMS New Delhi after a protracted illness.
He authored a few books .The first book was `Frontier Speakers' (with a Foreword byJawaharlal Nehru and a Preface by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. It was banned by the government in 1942. The other books are "Kaidi ke Khat", in Urdu, translated into English and Hindi, and his memoirs, "Persons, Passions and Politics" published in November, 1979.
Unlike his fellow Pashtun colleagues in the Congress party, he elected to stay on in the new post-partition Indian union rather than relocate full base to politics in his home in the North-West Frontier Province of the new nation of Pakistan.
Source: Known as Shri Mohammad Yunus S/O Haji Ghulam Samadani (British Army Contractor
At the very beginning of his book, "The Nehru Dynasty", astrologer K.N. Rao
mentions the names of Jawahar Lal's father and grandfather.
Jawahar Lal's father was believed to be Moti Lal and Moti Lal's father was
one Gangadhar Nehru. And we all know that Jawahar Lal's only daughter was
Indira Priyadarshini Nehru; Kamala Nehru was her mother, who died in
Switzerland of tuberculosis. She was totally against Indira's proposed
marriage with Feroze. Why? No one tells us that!
Now, who is this Feroze? We are told by many that he was the son of the
family grocer. The grocer supplied wines, etc. to Anand Bhavan, previously
known as Ishrat Manzil, which once belonged to a Muslim lawyer named Mobarak
Ali. Moti Lal was earlier an employee of Mobarak Ali. What was the family
grocer's name? One frequently hears that Rajiv Gandhi's grandfather was
Pandit Nehru. But then we all know that everyone has two grandfathers, the
paternal and the maternal grandfathers. In fact, the paternal grandfather is
deemed to be the more important grandfather in most societies. Why is it
then no where we find Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather's name? It appears
that the reason is simply this. Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a
Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh area of Gujarat .
This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan, had married a Parsi woman
after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of
Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Rajiv's father Feroze was Feroze Khan
before he married Indira, against Kamala Nehru's wishes.
Feroze's mother's family name was Ghandy, often associated with Parsis and
this was changed to Gandhi, sometime before his wedding with Indira, by an
affidavit.
The fact of the matter is that (and this fact can be found in many writings)
Indira was very lonely. Chased out of the Shantiniketan University by Guru
Dev Rabindranath himself for misdeveanor, the lonely girl was all by
herself, while father Jawahar was busy with politics, pretty women and
illicit sex; the mother was in hospital.
Feroze Khan, the grocer's son was then in England and he was quite
sympathetic to Indira and soon enough she changed her religion, became a
Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Nehru was not
happy; Kamala was dead already or dying. The news of this marriage
eventually reached Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi urgently called Nehru
and practically ordered him to ask the young man to change his name from
Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion, from Islam to
Hinduism for instance !. It was just a case of a change of name by an
affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi.
The surprising thing is that the apostle of truth, the old man soon to be
declared India 's Mahatma and the 'Father of the Nation' didn't mention this
game of his in the famous book, 'My Experiments with Truth'. Why? When they
returned to India , a mock 'Vedic marriage' was instituted for public
consumption. On this subject, writes M. O. Mathai (a longtime private
secretary of Nehru) in his renowned (but now suppressed by the GOI)
'Reminiscences of the Nehru Age' on page 94, second paragraph:
"For some inexplicable reason, Nehru allowed the marriage to be performed
according to Vedic rites in 1942. An inter-religious and inter-caste
marriage under Vedic rites at that time was not valid in law. To be legal,
it had to be a civil marriage.
It's a known fact that after Rajiv's birth Indira and Feroze lived
separately, but they were not divorced. Feroze used to harass Nehru
frequently for money and also interfere in Nehru's political activities.
Nehru got fed up and left instructions not to allow him into the Prime
Minister's residence Trimurthi Bhavan. Mathai writes that the death of
Feroze came as a relief to Nehru and Indira.
The death of Feroze in 1960 before he could consolidate his own political
forces, is itself a mystery. Feroze had even planned to remarry. Those who
try to keep tabs on our leaders in spite of all the suppressions and
deliberate misinformation, are aware of the fact that the second son of
Indira (Mrs. Feroze Khan) known as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze.
He was the son of another Moslem gentleman, Mohammad Yunus. Here, in
passing, we might mention that the second son was originally named Sanjiv.
It rhymed with Rajiv, the elder brother's name. It was changed to Sanjay
when he was arrested by the British police in England and his passport
impounded, for having stolen a car. Krishna Menon was then India 's High
Commissioner in London . He offered to issue another passport to the felon
who changed his name to Sanjay. Incidentally, Sanjay's marriage with the
Sikh girl Menaka (for Indira Gandhi found the name of Lord Indra's court
dancer rather offensive!) took place quite surprisingly in Mohammad Yunus'
house in New Delhi . And the marriage with Menaka who was a model (she had
modelled for Bombay Dyeing wearing just a towel) was not so ordinary either.
Sanjay was notorious in getting unwed young women pregnant. Menaka too was!
rendered pregnant by Sanjay. It was then that her father, Colonel Anand,
threatened Sanjay with dire consequences if he did not marry her daughter.
And that did the trick. Sanjay married Menaka.
It was widely reported in Delhi at the time that Mohammad Yunus was unhappy
at the marriage of Sanjay with Menaka; apparently he had wanted to get him
married with a Muslim girl of his choice. It was Mohammad Yunus who cried
the most when Sanjay died in the plane accident. In Yunus' book,'Persons,
Passions & Politics' one discovers that baby Sanjay had been circumcised
following Islamic custom, although the reason stated was phimosis. It was
always believed that Sanjay used to blackmail Indira Gandhi and due to this
she used to turn a blind eye when Sanjay Gandhi started to run the country
as though it were his personal fiefdom. Was he black mailing her with the
secret of who his real father was? When the news of Sanjay's death reached
Indira Gandhi, the first thing she wanted to know was about the bunch of
keys which Sanjay had with him.
Nehru was no less a player in producing bastards. At least one case is very
graphically described by M. O. Mathai in his "Reminiscences of the Nehru
Age", page 206. Mathai writes: "In the autumn of 1948 ( India became free in
1947 and a great deal of work needed to be done) a young woman from Benares
arrived in New Delhi as a sanyasin named Shraddha Mata (an assumed and not a
real name). She was a Sanskrit scholar well versed in the ancient Indian
scriptures and mythology. People, including MPs, thronged to her to hear her
discourses. One day S. D. Upadhyaya, Nehru's old employee, brought a letter
in Hindi from Shraddha Mata. Nehru gave her an interview in the PM's house.
As she departed, I noticed (Mathai is speaking here) that she was young,
shapely and beautiful. Meetings with her became rather frequent, mostly
after Nehru finished his work at night. During one of Nehru's visits to
Lucknow, Shraddha Mata turned up there, and Upadhyaya brought a letter from
her as usual. Nehru sent her the reply; and she visited Nehru at midnight
...
"Suddenly Shraddha Mata disappeared. In November 1949 a convent in Bangalore
sent a decent looking person to Delhi with a bundle of letters. He said that
a young woman from northern India arrived at the convent a few months ago
and gave birth to a baby boy. She refused to divulge her name or give any
particulars about herself. She left the convent as soon as she was well
enough to move out but left the child behind. She however forgot to take
with her a small cloth bundle in which, among other things, several letters
in Hindi were found. The Mother Superior, who was a foreigner, had the
letters examined and was told they were from the Prime Minister. The person
who brought the letters surrendered them...
"I (Mathai) made discreet inquiries repeatedly about the boy but failed to
get a clue about his whereabouts. Convents in such matters are extremely
tightlipped and secretive. Had I succeeded in locating the boy, I would have
adopted him. He must have grown up as a Catholic Christian blissfully
ignorant of who his father was."
Coming back to Rajiv Gandhi, we all know now that he changed his so called
Parsi religion to become a Catholic to marry Sania Maino of Turin , Italy .
Rajiv became Roberto. His daughter's name is Bianca and son's name is Raul.
Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as
Priyanka and Rahul.! What is amazing is the extent of our people's ignorance
in such matters.
The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as
prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference,
Rajiv boasted that he was NOT a Hindu but a Parsi. Mind you, speaking of the
Parsi religion, he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His grandmother (father's
mother) had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi religion to marry
Nawab Khan. It is the western press that waged a blitz of misinformation on
behalf of Rajiv. From the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times and the
Washington Post, the big guns raised Rajiv to heaven.
The children's encyclopedias recorded that Rajiv was a qualified Mechanical
Engineer from the revered University of Cambridge . No doubt US kids are
among the most misinformed in the world today! The reality is that in all
three years of his tenure at that University Rajiv had not passed a single
examination. He had therefore to leave Cambridge without a certificate.
Sonia too had the same benevolent treatment. She was stated to be a student
in Cambridge . Such a description is calculated to mislead Indians. She was
a student in Cambridge all right but not of the University of Cambridge but
of one of those fly by night language schools where foreign students
come to learn English. Sonia was working as an 'au pair' girl in Cambridge
and trying to learn English at the same time. And surprise of surprises,
Rajiv was even cremated as per vedic rites in full view of India 's public.
Besr Regards
Few journalists interacted with Indira Gandhi the way Khushwant Singh, doyen of Indian journalism, did. As editor of the now defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India and later The Hindustan Times, he was witness to some of the most historic moments in Indira Gandhi's 16-year-long rule.
Now 90, Khushwant Singh's door has a warning: 'Do not ring the bell unless you are expected.' The years have not numbed his extremely sharp mind as he took a journey down memory lane with Deputy Managing Editor Amberish K Diwanji to recreate the life of Indira Gandhi.
The first of a series of interviews and features on rediff.com to mark Indira Gandhi's 20th death anniversary.
Twenty years later, how do you look back on Indira Gandhi?
There are two aspects to Indira Gandhi: one as the politician and the other as a human being.
As a politician, it is common knowledge about her but as a human being, very few know about her, such as her family and her staff. The rest is conjecture and make believe.
How did you get to know her?
I first met her when she was still unmarried and came to Lahore on her way to Kashmir, and she was staying with friends who had brought her over.
I have a photograph of her at our house. She was very shy and wouldn't talk much.
I next met her when she was president of the Congress. It was at a meeting over which she was presiding and I was speaking on Madam Cama, I think. Then when she became information and broadcasting minister in (Lal Bahadur) Shastri's government, I was asked to do an article for TheNew York Timeson the possibility of her becoming prime minister.
The article was an adverse account because I quoted people saying her leading the country was not possible. India has never been led by a woman. We might have had a Razia Sultan but that was it. I also said she was not qualified except for being Nehru's daughter and the fact that she had no political base except for having become Congress president by her father.
But she did become prime minister, with the second longest tenure till date?
The fact is after Shastri, people did not want Gulzarilal Nanda or Morarji Desai, and so she became prime minister, selected by a bunch who thought they could control her. But this bunch had not reckoned with her innate political sense or that being prime minister has its own power.
She soon sidelined Morarji Desai and others like Kamaraj. She really ruled a bit like a dictator. People would say the Cabinet has only one man (Indira Gandhi) and that the rest are all hijras (eunuchs), but the fact is she reduced them to that level.
How do you look back at her rule?
There is nothing spectacular about her rule.
She was incapable of tolerating any criticism and she picked up an aversion to some persons because she thought they were challenging her, among them Jayaprakash Narayan, a good, honest man. She couldn't stand him because he was a challenge to her as the leader of the country, especially as people grew disillusioned with her rule. There were problems, droughts, challenges and Jayaprakash Narayan had emerged as a leader.
During her reign, corruption increased to enormous levels. She was really very tolerant of corruption, which was another negative mark against her. She knew perfectly well that some of her ministers were extremely corrupt, yet she took no steps against them till it suited her.
If she knew someone was corrupt, she tolerated him but if it suited her, she used the same corruption charge to get rid of him. She really had no strong views on corruption, which went sky high during her time.
Also, she felt uncomfortable with educated, sophisticated people. So you have the rise of people like Yashpal Kapoor, R K Dhawan, who was a stenographer who worked in her office, Mohammad Yunus, who just hung around her.
I believe this was because she had no real education.
She went to Shanti Niketan, then she went to Badminton School abroad, then to Oxford. Nowhere did she pass an exam or acquire a degree.
I think that bred a sort of inferiority complex of not being recognised as an educated person. She would pretend to have read a lot of books. She spoke French, which she picked up when she accompanied her ailing mother Kamala to Switzerland, which went in her favour. There were pros and cons but there was this sense of insecurity when it came to highly intelligent people and people with clear records. She felt more comfortable with second-rate people.
How did her insecurities, about which much has been written, affect India?
In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy. She packed Parliament with her supporters with loyalty being more important than ability; she superseded judges; she corrupted the civil service. Favouritism became a great sport with her.
She also knew how to use people against each other and was quite a master of that. She would patronise somebody and when she thought he was getting too big, instead of appointing him to a senior post, she would appoint his close associate, knowing this would create a rift between them.
The best example is of V P Singh. It was his elder brother (Santa Bux Singh) who believed he would be made minister but instead she picked V P Singh, the lesser qualified of the two brothers, which only created enmity between the brothers. She would do this with calculated skill and in the bargain cause enmity between brothers, split up families.
In the long run it was not good for the country to play such games as she did.
What is her greatest achievement?
Her greatest moment, the triumph in her life, was the way she handled the Bangladesh crisis, where all her skills came together. She made a complete fool of the Pakistanis.
India faced a huge crisis with a flood of refugees entering the country. She tried to garner international support and went round the world telling them what was happening but got no backing except from the Soviet Union, which any way was with us.
Then, when she realised the crisis had to reach a climax, she proved very astute. For instance, an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked. Today we know that it was the Indians who manoeuvred to get the plane to land in Lahore. Then, in Lahore, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (then Pakistan's foreign minister) proved stupid enough to have the plane blown up in his presence. This gave India the excuse it needed to stop flights between West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) over India, something that gave India a clear edge as the war drew nearer. Now, Pakistani planes had to fly all the way round India and refuel in Sri Lanka to communicate between the two wings.
I also think it was on her advice that the Indian Army built up the Mukti Bahini. And by the time (then Pakistan President General) Yahya Khan realised what was happening and declared war, the Indian Army was, I think, well about 100 miles inside Bangladesh. In less than a fortnight, the Pakistani army surrendered. The Pakistanis prepared to defend the towns but the Indian troops just avoided the towns and headed straight for Dhaka. It was by all accounts a master strategy and Indira Gandhi very deservedly got the Bharat Ratna.
But the problem of reaching a height is that you can only come down from there. And then we have the Emergency.
Yes, that is true. But when it came to the Emergency, I think the Opposition too behaved very recklessly. There was no doubt that the country was fast sliding into chaos. I recall schools not opening, colleges not opening, huge processions, riots.
I think Jayaprakash Narayan made a mammoth mistake when he led this huge rally in New Delhi where he told the people to gherao legislators, not allow them to attend office, like it was happening in Gujarat at that time (where the Nav Nirman riots were going on and crowds had mobbed the Gujarat legislature). He asked people to do the same to Parliament in New Delhi and not allow elected people to attend to their duties. Worse, he asked the police and the Indian Army personnel to remove (the legislators).
Now, there are limits to protests in any democracy and this was exceeding the limits altogether. There were the other leaders, you can name them all, who were thoroughly enjoying her discomfiture, thinking she would fall on her own.
I wrote a letter to Jayaprakash Narayan. I knew him and was very fond of him, but I wrote that he was transgressing the boundaries of limits in a democracy. He wrote back a long letter, which I published in The Illustrated Weekly.
But before anything else could happen, the Allahabad high court judgment came through and she clamped the Emergency. I believe she was right and there was no other choice.
Do you believe after all these years that the Emergency was justified?
I still believe that when she imposed the Emergency, she had every right then because leaders of the Opposition were behaving in a total reckless, irresponsible and anti-national manner, just enjoying the spectacle.
I recall very clearly that when the Emergency was imposed, there was a general sense of relief throughout the country. Schools reopened, colleges reopened, trains ran on time, and there was a sense of gratitude that the country was back to normal.
Of course, the freedom of the people had been taken away. I called on her and told her she must not gag the press. I told her there were people like me who supported her but that no one would believe us, saying you can't say anything else or she will lock you up.
But she didn't agree saying you can't have (a state of) Emergency and freedom of the press because that would create problems. I thought she'd lock me up but she didn't, maybe because I had defended her and her son, Sanjay, long enough.
Anyway, she lifted the Emergency because she was totally misled by the CBI into believing that she was hugely popular and would win the election. And when elections were held, she was surprised to learn that she had earned so much hatred throughout the country that she was defeated.
If I can step back a bit, you said when she imposed the Emergency, there was relief in the country, yet she lost the election? So what went wrong?
What went wrong was, I think, the misuse of power by some…
Sanjay Gandhi included…
When you say Sanjay, he had no legitimacy. He was only the prime minister's son. What he had in mind was absolutely correct. All the family propaganda was not working so he made it the top priority. Then slum clearing. People took the cases to court and they went on for years. He said demolish the slums but give them alternative arrangements that were done. The family planning stories were vastly exaggerated: people being picked up from cinema line queues, from villages, etc… only a tenth of them was true but these stories spread like wildfire and she paid the price. The Emergency was made into a monster.
But there must have been reasons for the Emergency to be demonised?
She had locked up so many people, including 85 year olds. Anyone who said anything was locked up. But it wasn't her alone. It was Sanjay, his wife Maneka, his mother-in-law, Mohammad Yunus, who were running riot and anyone who said anything suddenly found himself in the lockup.
But if you have the Emergency and draconian laws, such excesses are bound to occur…
True, but I don't think she realised it.
Perhaps the problem started from the fact that you had the Emergency in the first place, or that you had it for so long?
I think it could have been a short Emergency and she could have handled the situation better. She could have put her foot down when she realised that people were misusing the Emergency, and there were far too many people around her who were misusing it. Also, putting the maharanis of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi, and of Gwalior, Vijaya Raje Scindia, in jail with pickpockets and prostitutes simply revealed the vindictive nature of her character. It also created a large number of enemies in very important places. That all together created hatred for the whole family.
Don't you think that when Justice Sinha passed the verdict against her, she should have stepped down?
It was a very dubious judgment: that she could sit in Parliament but she could not vote. (Nani) Palkhivala, who was her lawyer, told her that he would win the case for her in appeal. He said this verdict was a bit like locking up a person for a small traffic offence. But by then, she had become very nervous and people like Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Sanjay Gandhi advised her to impose the Emergency.
But I think if she had not done what she did, then she would have been a bigger figure. After she imposed the Emergency, Palkhivala refused to fight her case in court. Then they (Mrs Gandhi's cronies) harassed Palkhivala, he was removed from various Tata boards. And that kind of vindictiveness followed, which only created more enemies all along the way, which they needn't have done.
But then she came back to power. Now was this because the Janata Party was inept or was it also because the people said, 'Okay, we punished you, but now we want you back!' Or was it a combination of both?
Yeah, I think you are right. The anger and rancour against her had mitigated by then. Morarji Desai and Charan Singh proved totally inept in handling the situation and people said she was better than this lot.
But was not her next few years in power her worst? None of the strength of purpose that she had earlier seemed to be there.
I think that can be timed from Sanjay Gandhi's death (barely six months after she took office in January 1980). She lost her moorings when he died because he dominated her. He was a very dominating figure and she was certainly building him up to be the prime minister, totally ignoring Rajiv who she thought was a buddhu (lacking in intelligence).
After Sanjay died, she dithered, she couldn't make up her mind, she became a nervous wreck… She wouldn't sleep at nights, walking around the lawns of her residence, there was this permanent tick in her eyes, and I think it showed in the way she bungled over (Operation) Bluestar.
You believe she erred in Operation Bluestar?
I believe she was misled. I think her own judgement would have been right. She had no prejudice at all, not against the Muslims, not against the Sikhs or anyone. She consulted the people and got contrary advice from different people. She didn't trust (President) Zail Singh because he was playing both sides, sometimes supporting (Jarnail Singh) Bhindranwale against Darbara Singh (the then Congress chief minister of Punjab).
Operation Bluestar, 20 years on
So she turned to the Army and I know for certain, despite what they (the Army) say, that she was assured by people like General (Arun) Vaidya and (then Lieutenant General K S) Sundarji that once the army went in and surrounded the (Golden) Temple, no fight would be put up and Bhindranwale would surrender. I think they even said the operation would be over in two hours. It was a total miscalculation.
Bhindranwale was a thug, a fanatic, and he fought like a fanatic and didn't give in. The battle instead of two hours lasted two days and nights. And with a heavy toll.
I know that when she went to the Temple two or three days later, she was horrified because bodies were still floating in the Sarovar, there were bloodstains that were being cleaned up. She turned to [then Major General K S] Brar and asked, 'What is all this?'
She had believed the Army when it told her there would be no fighting.
Nehru Dynasty
Harmohan Singh Walia
At the very beginning of his book, "The Nehru Dynasty", astrologer K. N. Rao mentions the names ofJawahar Lal's father and grandfather. Jawahar Lal's father was believed to be Moti Lal and Moti Lal's father was one Gangadhar Nehru. And we all know that Jawahar Lal's only daughter was Indira Priyadarshini Nehru; Kamala Nehru was her mother, who died in Switzerland of tuberculosis. She was totally against Indira's proposed marriage with Feroze. Why? No one tells us that! Now, who is this Feroze? We are told, by many that he was the son of the family grocer. The grocer supplied wines, etc. to Anand Bhavan, previously known as Ishrat Manzil, which once belonged to a Muslim lawyer named Mobarak Ali. Moti Lal was earlier an employee of Mobarak Ali. What was the family grocer's name?
One frequently hears that Rajiv Gandhi's grandfather was Pandit Nehru. But then we all know that everyone has two grandfathers, the paternal and the maternal grandfathers. In fact, the paternal grandfather is deemed to be the more important grandfather in most societies. Why is it then nowhere we find Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather's name? It appears that the reason is simply this. Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh area of Gujarat. This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan had married a Parsi woman after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Rajiv's father Feroze was Feroze Khan before he married Indira, against Kamala Nehru's wishes. Feroze's mother's family name was Ghandy, often associated with Parsis and this was changed to Gandhi, sometime before his wedding with Indira, by an affidavit.
The fact of the matter is that (and this fact can be found in many writings) Indira was very lonely. Chased out of the Shantiniketan University by Guru Dev Rabindranath himself for misdemeanor, the lonely girl was all by herself, while father Jawahar was busy with politics, pretty women and illicit sex; the mother was in hospital. Feroze Khan, the grocer's son was then in England and he was quite sympathetic to Indira and soon enough she changed her religion, became a Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Nehru was not happy; Kamala was dead already or dying. The news of this marriage eventually reached Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi urgently called Nehru and practically ordered him to ask the young man to change his name from Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion, from Islam to Hinduism for instance. It was just a case of a change of name by an affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi. The surprising thing is that the apostle of truth, the old man soon to be declared India's Mahatma and the 'Father of the Nation' didn't mention this game of his in the famous book, 'My Experiments with Truth'. Why?
When they returned to India, a mock 'Vedic marriage' was instituted for public consumption. On this subject, writes M. O. Mathai (a longtime private secretary of Nehru) in his renowned (but now suppressed by the GOI) 'Reminiscences of the Nehru Age' on page 94, second paragraph: "For some inexplicable reason, Nehru allowed the marriage to be performed according to Vedic rites in 1942. An inter-religious and inter-caste marriage under Vedic rites at that time was not valid in law. To be legal, it had to be a civil marriage.
It's a known fact that after Rajiv's birth Indira and Feroze lived separately, but they were not divorced. Feroze used to harass Nehru frequently for money and also interfere in Nehru's political activities. Nehru got fed up and left instructions not to allow him into the Prime Minister's residence Trimurthi Bhavan. Mathai writes that the death of Feroze came as a relief to Nehru and Indira. The death of Feroze in 1960 before he could consolidate his own political forces is itself a mystery. Feroze had even planned to remarry.
Those who try to keep tabs on our leaders in spite of all the suppressions and deliberate misinformation are aware of the fact that the second son of Indira (or Mrs. Feroze Khan) known as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze. He was the son of another Moslem gentleman, Mohammad Yunus. Here, in passing, we might mention that the second son was originally named Sanjiv. It rhymed with Rajiv, the elder brother's name. When he was arrested by the British police in England and his passport impounded for having stolen a car it was changed to Sanjay. Krishna Menon was then India's High Commissioner in London. He offered to issue another passport to the felon who changed his name to Sanjay.
Incidentally, Sanjay's marriage with the Sikh girl Menaka (now they call her Maneka for Indira Gandhi found the name of Lord Indra's court dancer rather offensive!) took place quite surprisingly in Mohammad Yunus' house in New Delhi. And the marriage with Menaka who was a model (She had modeled for Bombay Dyeing wearing just a towel) was not so ordinary either. Sanjay was notorious in getting unwed young women pregnant. Menaka too was rendered pregnant by Sanjay. It was then that her father, Colonel Anand, threatened Sanjay with dire consequences if he did not marry her daughter. And that did the trick. Sanjay married Menaka. It was widely reported in Delhi at the time that Mohammad Yunus was unhappy at the marriage of Sanjay with Menaka; apparently he had wanted to get him married with a Muslim girl of his choice.
It was Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay died in the plane accident. In Yunus' book, 'Persons, Passions & Politics' one discovers that baby Sanjay had been circumcised following Islamic custom, although the reason stated was phimosis. It was always believed that Sanjay used to blackmail Indira Gandhi and due to this she used to turn a blind eye when Sanjay Gandhi started to run the country as though it were his personal fiefdom. Was he black mailing her with the secret of who his real father was? When the news of Sanjay's death reached Indira Gandhi, the first thing she wanted to know was about the bunch of keys which Sanjay had with him.
Nehru was no less a player in producing bastards. Atleast one case is very graphically described by M. O. Mathai in his "Reminiscences of the Nehru Age", page 206. Mathai writes: "In the autumn of 1948 (India became free in 1947 and a great deal of work needed to be done) a young woman from Benares arrived in New Delhi as a sanyasin named Shraddha Mata (an assumed and not a real name). She was a Sanskrit scholar well versed in the ancient Indian scriptures and mythology. People, including MPs, thronged to her to hear her discourses. One day S. D. Upadhyaya, Nehru's old employee, brought a letter in Hindi from Shraddha Mata. Nehru gave her an interview in the PM's house. As she departed, I noticed (Mathai is speaking here) that she was young, shapely and beautiful. Meetings with her became rather frequent, mostly after Nehru finished his work at night. During one of Nehru's visits to Lucknow, Shraddha Mata turned up there, and Upadhyaya brought a letter from her as usual. Nehru sent her the reply; and she visited Nehru at midnight.
"Suddenly Shraddha Mata disappeared. In November 1949 a convent in Bangalore sent a decent looking person to Delhi with a bundle of letters. He said that a young woman from northern India arrived at the convent a few months ago and gave birth to a baby boy. She refused to divulge her name or give any particulars about herself. She left the convent as soon as she was well enough to move out but left the child behind. She however forgot to take with her a small cloth bundle in which, among other things, several letters in Hindi were found. The Mother Superior, who was a foreigner, had the letters examined, and was told they were from the Prime Minister. The person who brought the letters surrendered them. "I (Mathai) made discreet inquiries repeatedly about the boy but failed to get a clue about his whereabouts. Convents in such matters are extremely tightlipped and secretive. Had I succeeded in locating the boy, I would have adopted him. He must have grown up as a Catholic Christian blissfully ignorant of who his father was."
Coming back to Rajiv Gandhi, we all know now that he changed his so called Parsi religion to become a Catholic to marry Sania Maino of Turin, Italy. Rajiv became Roberto. His daughter's name is Bianca and son's name is Raul. Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as Priyanka and Rahul. What is amazing is the extent of our people's ignorance in such matters. The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference, Rajiv boasted that he was NOT a Hindu but a Parsi. Mind you, speaking of the Parsi religion, he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His grandmother (father's mother) had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi religion to marry Nawab Khan.
It is the western press that waged a blitz of misinformation on behalf of Rajiv. From the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, the big guns raised Rajiv to heaven. The children's encyclopedias recorded that Rajiv was a qualified Mechanical Engineer from the revered University of Cambridge. No doubt US kids are among the most misinformed in the world today! The reality is that in all three years of his tenure at that University Rajiv had not passed a single examination. He had therefore to leave Cambridge without a certificate. Sonia too had the same benevolent treatment. She was stated to be a student in Cambridge. Such a description is calculated to mislead Indians. She was a student in Cambridge all right but not of the University of Cambridge but of one of those fly by night language schools where foreign students come to learn English. Sonia was working as an 'au pair' girl in Cambridge and trying to learn English at the same time.
And surprise of surprises, Rajiv was even cremated as per vedic rites in full view of India's public. This is the Nehru dynasty that India worships and now an Italian leads a prestigious national party because of just one qualification - being married into the Nehru family. Maneka Gandhi itself is being accepted by the non-Congress parties not because she was a former model or an animal lover, but for her links to the Nehru family. Saying that an Italian should not lead India will amount to narrow mindedness, but if Sania Maino (Sonia) had served India like say Mother Teresa or Annie Besant, i.e. in anyway on her own rights, then all Indians should be proud of her just as how proud we are of Mother Teresa.
Mohammad Yunus was a close associate of Indira Gandhi and He served as Indian ambassador to many countries including Turkey, Indonesia, Iraq and Spain.
He was born on June 26, 1916 in the city of Abbottabad, North-West Frontier Province to Haji Ghulam Samdani and late Smt. Murvari Jan, he studied at Muslim University School, Aligarhand Islamia College, Peshawar. He worked with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan from 1936 to August, 1947. He was imprisoned during the Quit India Movement and again in Kashmir in 1946. He joined the Indian Foreign Servicein 1947, during which time he served as adviser to the Joint Secretariat set up to organise the Bandung Conference in April 1955. He represented India at the Non-Aligned Summits at Lusaka, Algiers, Colombo, New Delhi and Harare. He retired as Secretary to the Ministry of Commerce in 1974 and was appointed as Special Envoy of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in 1975. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in June 1989. He died at the age of 85 on June 17, 2001 at the AIIMS New Delhi after a protracted illness.
He authored a few books .The first book was `Frontier Speakers' (with a Foreword byJawaharlal Nehru and a Preface by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. It was banned by the government in 1942. The other books are "Kaidi ke Khat", in Urdu, translated into English and Hindi, and his memoirs, "Persons, Passions and Politics" published in November, 1979.
Unlike his fellow Pashtun colleagues in the Congress party, he elected to stay on in the new post-partition Indian union rather than relocate full base to politics in his home in the North-West Frontier Province of the new nation of Pakistan.
Source: Known as Shri Mohammad Yunus S/O Haji Ghulam Samadani (British Army Contractor
At the very beginning of his book, "The Nehru Dynasty", astrologer K.N. Rao
mentions the names of Jawahar Lal's father and grandfather.
Jawahar Lal's father was believed to be Moti Lal and Moti Lal's father was
one Gangadhar Nehru. And we all know that Jawahar Lal's only daughter was
Indira Priyadarshini Nehru; Kamala Nehru was her mother, who died in
Switzerland of tuberculosis. She was totally against Indira's proposed
marriage with Feroze. Why? No one tells us that!
Now, who is this Feroze? We are told by many that he was the son of the
family grocer. The grocer supplied wines, etc. to Anand Bhavan, previously
known as Ishrat Manzil, which once belonged to a Muslim lawyer named Mobarak
Ali. Moti Lal was earlier an employee of Mobarak Ali. What was the family
grocer's name? One frequently hears that Rajiv Gandhi's grandfather was
Pandit Nehru. But then we all know that everyone has two grandfathers, the
paternal and the maternal grandfathers. In fact, the paternal grandfather is
deemed to be the more important grandfather in most societies. Why is it
then no where we find Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather's name? It appears
that the reason is simply this. Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a
Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh area of Gujarat .
This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan, had married a Parsi woman
after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of
Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Rajiv's father Feroze was Feroze Khan
before he married Indira, against Kamala Nehru's wishes.
Feroze's mother's family name was Ghandy, often associated with Parsis and
this was changed to Gandhi, sometime before his wedding with Indira, by an
affidavit.
The fact of the matter is that (and this fact can be found in many writings)
Indira was very lonely. Chased out of the Shantiniketan University by Guru
Dev Rabindranath himself for misdeveanor, the lonely girl was all by
herself, while father Jawahar was busy with politics, pretty women and
illicit sex; the mother was in hospital.
Feroze Khan, the grocer's son was then in England and he was quite
sympathetic to Indira and soon enough she changed her religion, became a
Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Nehru was not
happy; Kamala was dead already or dying. The news of this marriage
eventually reached Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi urgently called Nehru
and practically ordered him to ask the young man to change his name from
Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion, from Islam to
Hinduism for instance !. It was just a case of a change of name by an
affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi.
The surprising thing is that the apostle of truth, the old man soon to be
declared India 's Mahatma and the 'Father of the Nation' didn't mention this
game of his in the famous book, 'My Experiments with Truth'. Why? When they
returned to India , a mock 'Vedic marriage' was instituted for public
consumption. On this subject, writes M. O. Mathai (a longtime private
secretary of Nehru) in his renowned (but now suppressed by the GOI)
'Reminiscences of the Nehru Age' on page 94, second paragraph:
"For some inexplicable reason, Nehru allowed the marriage to be performed
according to Vedic rites in 1942. An inter-religious and inter-caste
marriage under Vedic rites at that time was not valid in law. To be legal,
it had to be a civil marriage.
It's a known fact that after Rajiv's birth Indira and Feroze lived
separately, but they were not divorced. Feroze used to harass Nehru
frequently for money and also interfere in Nehru's political activities.
Nehru got fed up and left instructions not to allow him into the Prime
Minister's residence Trimurthi Bhavan. Mathai writes that the death of
Feroze came as a relief to Nehru and Indira.
The death of Feroze in 1960 before he could consolidate his own political
forces, is itself a mystery. Feroze had even planned to remarry. Those who
try to keep tabs on our leaders in spite of all the suppressions and
deliberate misinformation, are aware of the fact that the second son of
Indira (Mrs. Feroze Khan) known as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze.
He was the son of another Moslem gentleman, Mohammad Yunus. Here, in
passing, we might mention that the second son was originally named Sanjiv.
It rhymed with Rajiv, the elder brother's name. It was changed to Sanjay
when he was arrested by the British police in England and his passport
impounded, for having stolen a car. Krishna Menon was then India 's High
Commissioner in London . He offered to issue another passport to the felon
who changed his name to Sanjay. Incidentally, Sanjay's marriage with the
Sikh girl Menaka (for Indira Gandhi found the name of Lord Indra's court
dancer rather offensive!) took place quite surprisingly in Mohammad Yunus'
house in New Delhi . And the marriage with Menaka who was a model (she had
modelled for Bombay Dyeing wearing just a towel) was not so ordinary either.
Sanjay was notorious in getting unwed young women pregnant. Menaka too was!
rendered pregnant by Sanjay. It was then that her father, Colonel Anand,
threatened Sanjay with dire consequences if he did not marry her daughter.
And that did the trick. Sanjay married Menaka.
It was widely reported in Delhi at the time that Mohammad Yunus was unhappy
at the marriage of Sanjay with Menaka; apparently he had wanted to get him
married with a Muslim girl of his choice. It was Mohammad Yunus who cried
the most when Sanjay died in the plane accident. In Yunus' book,'Persons,
Passions & Politics' one discovers that baby Sanjay had been circumcised
following Islamic custom, although the reason stated was phimosis. It was
always believed that Sanjay used to blackmail Indira Gandhi and due to this
she used to turn a blind eye when Sanjay Gandhi started to run the country
as though it were his personal fiefdom. Was he black mailing her with the
secret of who his real father was? When the news of Sanjay's death reached
Indira Gandhi, the first thing she wanted to know was about the bunch of
keys which Sanjay had with him.
Nehru was no less a player in producing bastards. At least one case is very
graphically described by M. O. Mathai in his "Reminiscences of the Nehru
Age", page 206. Mathai writes: "In the autumn of 1948 ( India became free in
1947 and a great deal of work needed to be done) a young woman from Benares
arrived in New Delhi as a sanyasin named Shraddha Mata (an assumed and not a
real name). She was a Sanskrit scholar well versed in the ancient Indian
scriptures and mythology. People, including MPs, thronged to her to hear her
discourses. One day S. D. Upadhyaya, Nehru's old employee, brought a letter
in Hindi from Shraddha Mata. Nehru gave her an interview in the PM's house.
As she departed, I noticed (Mathai is speaking here) that she was young,
shapely and beautiful. Meetings with her became rather frequent, mostly
after Nehru finished his work at night. During one of Nehru's visits to
Lucknow, Shraddha Mata turned up there, and Upadhyaya brought a letter from
her as usual. Nehru sent her the reply; and she visited Nehru at midnight
...
"Suddenly Shraddha Mata disappeared. In November 1949 a convent in Bangalore
sent a decent looking person to Delhi with a bundle of letters. He said that
a young woman from northern India arrived at the convent a few months ago
and gave birth to a baby boy. She refused to divulge her name or give any
particulars about herself. She left the convent as soon as she was well
enough to move out but left the child behind. She however forgot to take
with her a small cloth bundle in which, among other things, several letters
in Hindi were found. The Mother Superior, who was a foreigner, had the
letters examined and was told they were from the Prime Minister. The person
who brought the letters surrendered them...
"I (Mathai) made discreet inquiries repeatedly about the boy but failed to
get a clue about his whereabouts. Convents in such matters are extremely
tightlipped and secretive. Had I succeeded in locating the boy, I would have
adopted him. He must have grown up as a Catholic Christian blissfully
ignorant of who his father was."
Coming back to Rajiv Gandhi, we all know now that he changed his so called
Parsi religion to become a Catholic to marry Sania Maino of Turin , Italy .
Rajiv became Roberto. His daughter's name is Bianca and son's name is Raul.
Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as
Priyanka and Rahul.! What is amazing is the extent of our people's ignorance
in such matters.
The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as
prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference,
Rajiv boasted that he was NOT a Hindu but a Parsi. Mind you, speaking of the
Parsi religion, he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His grandmother (father's
mother) had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi religion to marry
Nawab Khan. It is the western press that waged a blitz of misinformation on
behalf of Rajiv. From the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times and the
Washington Post, the big guns raised Rajiv to heaven.
The children's encyclopedias recorded that Rajiv was a qualified Mechanical
Engineer from the revered University of Cambridge . No doubt US kids are
among the most misinformed in the world today! The reality is that in all
three years of his tenure at that University Rajiv had not passed a single
examination. He had therefore to leave Cambridge without a certificate.
Sonia too had the same benevolent treatment. She was stated to be a student
in Cambridge . Such a description is calculated to mislead Indians. She was
a student in Cambridge all right but not of the University of Cambridge but
of one of those fly by night language schools where foreign students
come to learn English. Sonia was working as an 'au pair' girl in Cambridge
and trying to learn English at the same time. And surprise of surprises,
Rajiv was even cremated as per vedic rites in full view of India 's public.
Besr Regards
Indira Gandhi was a tough cookie coming from a very high profile family in India. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said that Indira Gandhi was not a very good student at Berkley. By all accounts circulating in the media Mrs Indira Gandhi had a list of lovers. There are the known ones:
1) “Remington Randy” her father’s typist: Mathai Merely ( M. O. Mathai author of “Reminiscences of the Nehru Age“ and “My Days With Nehru”, 1979)
2) Her Yoga Teacher: Dhirendra Brahmachari
3) The Foreign Minister: Sardar Swaran Singh
4) Dhinesh Singh
5) Mohammad Yunus author of the book, ‘Persons, Passions & Politics’
Here is a sketch of at least three:
Controversy was the second name of Dhirendra Brahmachari. He was mentioned in the press during his hey days as the Rasputin of India. He was a charishmatic yoga teacher who befriended the Nehru-Gandhi Family. He was also the personal tutor of Indira Gandhi. It was rumored that he had an affair with Indira gandhi, which might be quite possible as he was a handsome healthy man. He had an open access to Indira Gandhi’s house when she was the prime minister of india and many of the sychophants around Indira were quite jealous of Brahmachari’s proximity to Indira Gandhi. Kushwanth Singh has mentioned a lot of incidents of his encounter with dhirendra brahmachari. Kushwanth singh devotes an entire chapter in his book ‘God and Godmen of India’ for Dhirendra Brahmachari:(http://drvasu.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/dhirendra-brahmachari-sukshma-vyayama/)
Mr. Sardar Swaran Singh, Minister of External Affairs of India (from 27 June 1970 to 10 October 1974)
Mathai Merely: There is much information available on Mr. M. O. Mathai who befriended Mr. Nehru and then became one of the most powerful men in his office. Mr. Merely has said some very nasty stuff about Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
(http://books.google.com/books?id=0eolM37FUWYC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=Nehru%27s+typist&source=web&ots=KfkLh_u1TS&sig=oB_BiKqIHbZ3ULE2dFPgnfZZxSg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA207,M1)
This is what Khuswant Singh says about Indira Gandhi.
There is nothing spectacular about her rule.
She was incapable of tolerating any criticism and she picked up an aversion to some persons because she thought they were challenging her, among them Jayaprakash Narayan, a good, honest man. She couldn’t stand him because he was a challenge to her as the leader of the country, especially as people grew disillusioned with her rule. There were problems, droughts, challenges and Jayaprakash Narayan had emerged as a leader.
During her reign, corruption increased to enormous levels. She was really very tolerant of corruption, which was another negative mark against her. She knew perfectly well that some of her ministers were extremely corrupt, yet she took no steps against them till it suited her.
If she knew someone was corrupt, she tolerated him but if it suited her, she used the same corruption charge to get rid of him. She really had no strong views on corruption, which went sky high during her time.
Also, she felt uncomfortable with educated, sophisticated people. So you have the rise of people like Yashpal Kapoor, R K Dhawan, who was a stenographer who worked in her office, Mohammad Yunus, who just hung around her.
I believe this was because she had no real education.
She went to Shanti Niketan, then she went to Badminton School abroad, then to Oxford. Nowhere did she pass an exam or acquire a degree.
I think that bred a sort of inferiority complex of not being recognised as an educated person. She would pretend to have read a lot of books. She spoke French, which she picked up when she accompanied her ailing mother Kamala to Switzerland, which went in her favour. There were pros and cons but there was this sense of insecurity when it came to highly intelligent people and people with clear records. She felt more comfortable with second-rate people.
How did her insecurities, about which much has been written, affect India?
In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy. She packed Parliament with her supporters with loyalty being more important than ability; she superseded judges; she corrupted the civil service. Favouritism became a great sport with her.
She also knew how to use people against each other and was quite a master of that. She would patronise somebody and when she thought he was getting too big, instead of appointing him to a senior post, she would appoint his close associate, knowing this would create a rift between them.
The best example is of V P Singh. It was his elder brother (Santa Bux Singh) who believed he would be made minister but instead she picked V P Singh, the lesser qualified of the two brothers, which only created enmity between the brothers. She would do this with calculated skill and in the bargain cause enmity between brothers, split up families.
In the long run it was not good for the country to play such games as she did. Few journalists interacted with Indira Gandhi the way Khushwant Singh, doyen of Indian journalism, did. As editor of the now defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India and later The Hindustan Times, he was witness to some of the most historic moments in Indira Gandhi’s 16-year-long rule.
SEX LIFE OF INDIRA GANDHI OF INDIA: The Indian Matahiri:- Indira’s tryst with seduction
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was known as a feisty young woman and a uber-hyper leader. Indira Gandhi was the only child of Kamla and Jawaharlal Nehru. She always had a big libido, probably inherited from her father who had a line of affairs, the most famous with Un-Lady Edwina Mountbatten. Stanley Wolpert and other have provided proof that Jawaharlal Nehru was gay and he consorted with the gay Viceroy of India Lord Mountbatten. Indira had lovers when she was young. She was friendly with Mohandas, and may have participated in his infamous and perverted Bharamacharya sexual experiments.
“Indira Gandhi had the developed instincts of an animal, she always responded to people with her skin” Singer-writer Sheila Dhar (Mrs. P. N. Dhar), who knew Mrs. Gandi well
Indira finally settled for one Feroze, someone who was docile and would interfere with her desire for other men. Some say she was pregnant when she wanted to marry a young man Feroze. Due to caste issues, she ran into problems. Mohandas adopted Feroze so that he could have the last name Gandhi. This made it appear that she was marrying a person with the last name Gandhi. This is a very strange episode because Indira already had a famous last name “Nehru”. The Gandhi nomenclature had more to do with religion than anything else. Her belligerence withworld leaders is well known. She constantly tangled with Henry Kissinger and they were not even on speaking terms. While in power Indira Gandhi liasons were pretty much an open secret to those who had access to the corridors of power in New Delhi.
Wolpert had always possessed the most authentic credentials for being unfailingly second rate. This book suggested that Nehru’s many wild oats were not sown exclusively among womankind: he had also favoured mankind when young. Wolpert’s creative enthusiasm for the multiple exercise of Nehru’s crotch, which had failed to intrigue earlier biographers like S. Gopal and Michael Brecher, caused him to forget that there happens to be a boundary between speculation and fact. His book was temporarily banned in India: “stopped at Customs for inspection”.
Unlike her father, who himself would never have banned Wolpert, Indira Gandhi was no Voltairean liberal. During her lifetime no one would have dared openly accuse her of wanting men in bed. P. N. Haksar and P. N. Dhar, both strikingly handsome Kashmiri pandits who served her with integrity and distinction and have written fine memoirs, analyse her emotions with perception but say nothing about their boss’s private life. In fact the most perceptive observation about Indira Gandhi was once made by the singer-writer Sheila Dhar (Mrs. P. N. Dhar), who knew Mrs. G. well enough to notice that “Indira Gandhi had the developed instincts of an animal, she always responded to people with her skin”. The political animal that was Indira Gandhi has long been known and done to death: there have been biographies by Pupul Jayakar, Zareer Masani and Inder Malhotra. It is high time someone gave us an insight into the human animal and showed us her feet of clay.http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/04/29/stories/13290463.htm
The Indian Matahiri, The promiscuous Indira Gandhi: A tryst with seduction, and inveiglement. What lures the willing males to the black widow?
Who tops the list of amorous licentious women? Puissance has its own allure. Power the ultimate aphrodisiac makes one seductive and desirable. Many have used power to charm and seduce. Was Helen seduced or was she the seductress? Move over Matahari, and the Greek enchantress Venus. Cleopatra, you are nothing. Forget the sirens who tried to tempt Odysseus away from his journey. Who has the best Matahiri skills?
Venus de Milo you have met your match!
Ignore Aphrodite and leave the Roman Godess of Love in the dust.
The Roman techniques of seduction are passe. The Aphrodite is now in ruins but the knowledge lives. We have a new lady who knew more about the aspects of seduction than any of the real Goddesses of Greek, Roman, or Vedic mythology.
Bill Clinton’s affairs with Gina Gershon, Belinda Stronach
Sex: One in 3 US wives get some on the side
Nehru was Gay! Affair with Edwina also
It is now evident the Grand seductress of all was Mrs. Indira Gandhi who as part of her religious Brahman training was adept at the art of the Kama Sutra. Indira used her training to seduce many men. Like father like daugher:..Sex Life of Nehru: Menege De Trios:-Tryst with Homosexuality:-Love triangle Edwina, Nehru and Lord Mountbatten changed history
After all it is in the grand tradition as described in the Mahabharta. Draupathi in the story had 5 husbands. As in Braham temple custom, did the Nehrus get formal training in the art of sex and seduction? Certainly seems like it. Nehru seduced bother Edwina and Lord Mountbatten and his daughter Mrs. Gandhi used sex to her advantage and to move up the corridors of power.
..the list is long…read on for salacious details.
In 1964, the year of her father’s death, Indira Gandhi was for the first time elected to Parliament, and she was Minister of Information and Broadcasting in the government of Lal Bahadur Shastri, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack less than two years after assuming office. The numerous contenders for the position of the Prime Ministership, unable to agree among themselves, picked Indira Gandhi as a compromise candidate, and each thought that she would be easily manipulable. But Indira Gandhi showed extraordinary political skills and tenacity and elbowed the Congress dons — Kamaraj, Morarji Desai, and others — out of power. She held the office of the Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Independent/Indira.html
There was much to write about during the years that Mrs. Gandhi in power.
“It is an indication of the intellectual condition of the Congress Party that its old horses, who are very hoarse and very old, are in a flutter about the fact that Mrs. G. may actually have had an enjoyable sex life. My instinct is to applaud, but this just will not do. Even in an era accustomed to scurrility, sleaze and Shobha De, the Indian Caesar’s daughter should be seen to be chaste, Hindu and properly womanly. Whereas, if the stories told are true – and in such matters every substantial accumulation of rumours substitutes for proof – Indira Gandhi may even have been a bad case of epitomising the brilliant parodic one-liner against Hindu hypocrisy which says caste no bar lekin sex baar-baar. Mrs. Gandhi had, it seems, nearly as much love for the pleasures of her residential bed as of her prime ministerial chair. The Kissa was as much Kursi Ka as Palang Ka.
Her list of hits is impressively long. A Parsihusband who turned philanderer, a scandal-mongering Malayalioldenough to be her father’s typist (he was once appropriately called a Remington Randy), a yoga teacher who degenerated into a physical instructor, a poodle Foreign Minister who never stepped far from her Home Ministrations – how wonderful to learn that even as she was shackling her country with authoritarianism, she was unshackling her libido at home. What a riproaringly wonderful and motley crew of purdah paramours our Rushdiean Widow seems to have had. Our hearts go out to poor R. K. Dhawan. How awful he must feel to be left out of this litany of lovers. Can we hope for a memoir by him which regales us with proclamations of his non- innocence? Can we hope that Mrs. Shobha De’s publishers have given her an “undisclosed sum” as royalty advance for her next potboiler on a subject which seems so entirely tailor-made to suit her well-polished talons?
Anyone with half an eye can see that Indira Gandhi’s life can be made, beyond the politics and jingoistic nationalism, the very stuff of sex drama, of Babban Khan’s Punjabi farce “Chaddhi Javaani Buddhe Noo” (which translates roughly as “The Old Chap’s Turning Horny”), of the carnivalesque Restoration Comedy tradition of parodying the aristocracy, of the “lewd” literature of subversion which has such strong popular roots in so many of the country’s regional languages.
Though it is now too late, the material within Frank’s biography could even have been made, for instance, into an Italian romantic film starring Gina Lollobrigida as the lovely Indira, Marcello Mastroanni as Feroze, Edward G. Robinson as the seductively ugly M. O. Mathai and Anthony Quinn as the rugged yoga teacher. Surely Sonia Gandhi, liminally poised between India and Italy, could have been persuaded to script such a film? The finances would naturally have been provided by a joint venture set up between the Quattrochi Family and the Sangh Parivar.
The Guests of Honour at the first screening would have been Khushwant Singharmin arm with Maneka Gandhi. What scenario other than the private life of Indira Gandhi could possibly give such an equal measure of delight, for such diverse reasons, to secularists and feminists, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)?
By art alone might such contraries be fused, enmities overcome. As exponents of the comic tradition – from Aristophanes to Shakespeare to Swift to Rushdie to Yes Minister to Spitting Image to R. K. Laxman to Jaspal Bhattito Black Adder – have shown, the literary inflation and consequent deflation of politicians into caricatures via comic art is the only certain method for the ordinary citizen to get even with those who exercise everyday power over us, to make us feel that our ordinariness at least transcends the insanities of their politics. Those who love the exercise of power fear ridicule even more than they fear retirement. Mrs. G. seems to have feared it most of all. In this seems to lie the psychological roots of the Emergency.
If the Congress Party were less stuffed with hypocritical geriatrics it would realise that in this epoch, when Kaliyugahas gone global and formed a multinational joint venture withthebold and the beautiful, withliberalisationand liberalism, the world of vice has, in large sections of urban India, been turned upside down into the world of virtue. If you want to be politically correct, sexuality and hedonism in the woman now betoken female power. The idea of womanly virtue, of the fallen woman, has fortunately no more stability than the Berlin Wall. It may remain generally embedded as a patriarchal ideal, but everyone knows that the winds of gender equality in sexual matters have been blowing hard and chilling the traditional Indian male’s privates into a deep recession.
Yes, there is no doubt about it, Frank has done us a favour by making Indira Gandhi roll out of her Cleopatra rug, by making the skeletons in her bedsheets come tumbling out withher. It is time we took the politics out of Indira’s life and started to democratically look her straight in the face. What if Katherine Frank has got minor dates and details wrong? The next printing will sort those out. Meanwhile, how delightful to know at last that Mrs. G. was only as human as any of us, that the peccadilloes for which JawaharlalNehru was moralistically castigated merely inaugurated a tradition which continued and flourished with his daughter. As we await the future biographies of Rajiv and Sanjay, Sonia and Maneka, Varun and Priyanka, we can only pray that this tradition of a rich and varied sexuality is being actively maintained even now by India’s immortal First Family. Rukun Advani is the author of Beethoven Among the Cows and runs Permanent Black, a publishing company in New Delhi.”
By 1973 the decline had begun. This was just the beginning of the end for Indira Gandi.
1973, Delhi and north India were rocked by demonstrations angry at high inflation, the poor state of the economy, rampant corruption, and the poor standards of living. In June 1975, the High Court of Allahabad found her guilty of using illegal practices during the last election campaign, and ordered her to vacate her seat. There were demands for her resignation.
Mrs. Gandhi’s response was to declare a state of emergency, under which her political foes were imprisoned, constitutional rights abrogated, and the press placed under strict censorship. Meanwhile, the younger of her two sons, Sanjay Gandhi, started to run the country as though it were his personal fiefdom, and earned the fierce hatred of many whom his policies had victimized. He ordered the removal of slum dwellings, and in an attempt to curb India’s growing population, initiated a highly resented program of forced sterilization. In early 1977, confident that she had debilitated her opposition, Mrs. Gandhi called for fresh elections, and found herself trounced by a newly formed coalition of several political parties. Her Congress party lost badly at the polls.
In the second, post-Emergency, period of her Prime Ministership, Indira Gandhi was preoccupied by efforts to resolve the political problems in the state of Punjab. In her attempt to crush the secessionist movement of Sikh militants, led by Jarnail Singh Bindranwale, she ordered an assault upon the holiest Sikh shrine in Amritsar, called the “Golden Temple”. It is here that Bindranwale and his armed supporters had holed up, and it is from the Golden Temple that they waged their campaign of terrorism not merely against the Government, but against moderate Sikhs and Hindus. “Operation Bluestar”, waged in June 1984, led to the death of Bindranwale, and the Golden Temple was stripped clean of Sikh terrorists; however, the Golden Temple was damaged, and Mrs. Gandhi earned the undying hatred of Sikhs who bitterly resented the desacralization of their sacred space. In November of the same year, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, at her residence, by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, who claimed to be avenging the insult heaped upon the Sikh nation. (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Independent/Indira.html)
WILL THE FILM ON INDIRA SHOW HER AFFAIRS?What else could the main opposition party in center have thought of than to have a full-length feature film on its late leader Mrs. Indira Gandhi? The film has made headlines right from the day it was announced that veteran journalist, television personality and littérateur Kamleshwar is writing a film script on the life of late Congress leader who stayed as prime minister of India for a very long time. The latest news is that Manisha Koirala who shot to fame for her controversial film Ek Chhoti Si Love Story , has been selected to portray Indira Gandhi on the silver screen. This was formally announced in Mumbaiveryrecently. The film titled Indira Gandhi-A Tryst WithDestinywill roll in the beginning of the next year and will be released worldwide by the end of the same year. This happens to be 100th film for its writer Kamleshwar.But it is the second film for producer Nitin Keni who last made Gadar-Ek PremKatha with director Anil Sharma
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