Feroze Gandhi was a 'kaamdar' not a 'naamdar'

Long before Rahul Gandhi, there was Feroze Gandhi. In a recent debate in Parliament, BJP attacked Congress on Jawaharlal Nehru, saying if Nehru was indeed such a great leader why did the current Gandhi family not bear his name, and why did they instead choose to call themselves ‘Gandhi’. The answer is of course simple: Rahul and Priyanka, as is the near-universal norm, bear the surname of their paternal grandfather Feroze Gandhi, husband of Indira, their grandmother. Ironically, Feroze himself had no political pedigree. He wasn’t a dynast. He was an entirely self-made yet stellar parliamentarian. His family may today be accused of nepotism and dynasticism, cast as Lutyensland “naamdaars”, in the seeming culture war of “naamdaar” vs “kaamdaar”. But Feroze himself was an Allahabadi “kaamdaar”. A Parsi who spoke fluent Hindustani as well as several Allahabadi dialects, his constituency Raebareli elected him with record margins in the elections of 1952 and 1957. Indira didn’t inherit Raebareli from her father (whose constituency was Phulpur), but from her husband. Mahatma Gandhi said of Feroze: “If I could get 7 boys like Feroze to work for me, I will get Swaraj in 7 days.” Feroze was born in 1912 in Bombay to marine engineer Jehangir Faredoon Gandhi and his wife Rattimai, a Parsi family with deep roots in south Gujarat. There is no documentation to show that Feroze was born Muslim as some have suggested. Some have also said Feroze’s name was spelt Gandhy in a birth certificate. Gandhy is simply an anglicised Parsi community spelling of Gandhi and the two were used interchangeably in British India. medium nocaption98214196Feroze himself wrote his name as Gandhi, even though some members of his family, for example his sister Tehmina, used the surname Gandhy. Newspaper items in the 1930s about Feroze use the name ‘Gandhi’. To imply that the present day Gandhis have adopted Feroze’s surname to claim a link to Mahatma Gandhi is to ignore the fact that Gandhi is a fairly common surname in Gujarat and there are many Gujarati families named ‘Gandhi’ who have no links or family claims on the Mahatma. Feroze’s own political career was short-lived but outstanding. Not only did he never have any help from his father-in-law, the two had a difficult, often adversarial relationship. Family members remarked on Feroze’s often discourteous and aloof behaviour with Nehru, whom he also greatly admired. Feroze was drawn to the independence movement because of his deep attachment for Kamala Nehru and Nehru. However, when it came to Feroze marrying Indira, Nehru was so implacably opposed to the match that Mahatma had to intervene. However, once they were married, Nehru did try to help Feroze’s career by making him director of the National Herald. Feroze made a mess of the job until he found his metier as a parliamentarian. In the Lok Sabha, Feroze took his father-in-law’s government to task on many issues. “Red [a reference to Feroze’s fair complexion], round and Pickwickian, Feroze enlivened Central Hall with his sense of humour, his designated corner now named Feroze’s Corner,” veteran journalist Inder Malhotra recalled. Feroze shot into the limelight when through a careful investigation he exposed how the LIC bailed out Haridas Mundhra, a big donor to Congress, through a loan. The “Mundhra Scandal” rocked Parliament and Nehru’s close associate and finance minister TT Krishnamachari had to resign. Nehru was forced to set up an inquiry commission because of his son-in-law’s exposé. Feroze kept up his attacks on Nehru’s government throughout his tenure as MP. He introduced the Proceedings of Legislature (Protection of Publication) Bill, 1956 giving journalists the freedom to report parliamentary proceedings. In 1959, when the Nehru government dismissed the EMS Namboodiripad-led communist government in Kerala, Feroze went on the warpath with both his wife (Indira was then Congress president) and father-in-law. He called Indira a fascist and a bully and had violent arguments with her. “Feroze seems to resent my very existence,” Indira wrote to her friend Dorothy Norman at this time. Unlike today’s family-trumpeting politicians, Feroze had nothing to do with the VIP cult around his wife and father-in-law. He proved his worth by performing remarkably well as a parliamentarian. Feroze died when he was 48, in 1960. Struck by the huge crowds that turned up at his funeral, Nehru remarked: “I didn’t know Feroze was so popular.” So, Feroze Gandhi wasn’t a nobody with just a famous surname. He was a gifted multi-faceted man. BJP needs to find better ways to corner Nehru-Gandhis than pointing to Feroze, who remains a symbol of uniquely democratic behaviour. He was a son-in-law unafraid to challenge his own powerful father-in-law repeatedly and publicly on points of constitutional principle, Feroze was a man who scorned the “family raj”.Portraits by Sunil Singh