My Father, page 7
Because the protests were on account of a hunting game in which the Viceroy had been involved, Nehru asked his private secretary Dwarkanath Kachru to join the inquiry. My father and Kachru met the prime minster of Bharatpur and the arrested workers to get the stories on both sides and went on to submit the resulting report to the general secretary of the Rajputana Regional Council of the AISPC. Based on the report, the provincial leaders successfully resolved the matter with the Bharatpur government. Not only were the workers released from jail, the government agreed to democratization of the administration and to soon hold elections for a legislative assembly. Bharatpur thus moved one step closer to having people’s rule established.
In March 1947, five months before Independence, the Mewar Praja Mandal held its annual session in Bijolia, a major town of great historical significance in Mewar state. My father attended the session, which offered him the opportunity to renew contacts with Manikya Lal Verma, Bhure Lal Baya – then president of Mewar Praja Mandal – and other leaders of the organization. The leaders thanked my father for the prominence his articles and other stories in Lokvani had been giving to the activities of the Praja Mandal. They then requested him to start a weekly paper from Udaipur on behalf of the Mandal. My father was reluctant, because Udaipur already had two other dailies. Therefore, no decision could be taken on the paper and he returned to Jaipur.
The situation changed two months later, however. In May 1947, the Maharana of Mewar, Bhupal Singh, adopted a new constitution framed by K. M. Munshi, under which he agreed to hold state assembly elections. He also agreed to include two nominees of the Praja Mandal in his cabinet in the interim. With elections now on the anvil, the Praja Mandal leadership decided that it must have a weekly paper to carry its message to the people.
In July 1947, Verma and Mohan Lal Sukhadia, who later went on to become the longest-serving chief minister of Rajasthan, came to Jaipur for business at the office of the Rajputana Regional Council of the AISPC. They visited my father at his home and urged him to take charge of the proposed weekly. With the context having changed due to the impending elections, my father now saw an opportunity in the proposed newspaper. It could potentially influence the election outcome in favour of Mewar Praja Mandal. Accordingly, he accepted the proposal. Dhadda, the editor of Lokvani, readily relieved him of his duties at the newspaper.
My father wrapped up his affairs in Jaipur to move to Udaipur. Bhilwara happens to be on the way to Udaipur from Jaipur. Being aware that India was set to win its independence from the British on 15 August 1947, he decided to take the opportunity to be in Suwana on the great day before proceeding to Udaipur. He thought this would be a good opportunity to organize a celebration of India’s Independence with fellow villagers. With the birth of my second sister Kamala on 2 June 1945, his family now included my mother and two daughters. Together, they travelled first to Bhilwara and thence to Suwana.
Like the rest of the country, citizens of Suwana were hugely excited about India’s independence on 15 August. Led by my father, they organized a function at which the national flag was unfurled, speeches were given and the national anthem sung. The function ended with the slogans ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’ and ‘Pandit Nehru ki jai’. Later, the villagers constructed a platform on the spot from which speeches had been delivered that day. They named it ‘Azad Platform’.
During the celebrations, my father found that some of the villagers remained unconvinced that freedom from the British had actually been achieved. If the British had really quit India, how come the rupee coin still carried the figure of the British king, they asked sceptically. My father patiently explained that it would take some time before new coins were minted to replace the old ones. If the old coins were withdrawn even before new coins had been minted and put into circulation, people would face immense hardship in buying and selling goods and services. That seemed to satisfy the villagers.
After spending a little longer than a month in Suwana, Father left for Udaipur on 15 September 1947. My mother, who was expecting my oldest brother at the time, stayed back with the two daughters in Suwana. By the time Father arrived in Udaipur, the Praja Mandal had made all logistical arrangements for publication of the proposed weekly. An office of the newspaper had been set up. A founder-member of the Praja Mandal, who owned a press in Udaipur, had agreed to print the weekly free of charge. Freedom fighter Amritlal Sheth, founder-editor of the Gujarat daily Janmabhoomi, which continues to publish even today, had agreed to provide newsprint. Patriotic Praja Mandal workers, some of whom later became legislators and ministers, offered to serve as hawkers to distribute the weekly. The working committee of Mewar Praja Mandal formally named the weekly Mewar Praja Mandal Patrika and appointed my father as its editor.
The first issue of the weekly was published on 2 October 1947, the last birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi before he was assassinated. The paper quickly became popular and acquired a readership of 2,500, which was an impressive figure, given the tiny proportion of the population that read newspapers in those days and the prior existence of two well-established dailies in the town. Editors of both existing newspapers, who had initially resented the Praja Mandal’s starting a paper of its own, congratulated my father for the high-quality content and the design of the weekly.
The weekly highlighted the activities of the Praja Mandal and informed people all over Mewar what it would do when it came to power. It explained the significance of the first-ever elections to the state assembly. It relentlessly exposed the excesses of the feudal system and thus laid the groundwork for the abolition of jagirs and jagirdars upon the establishment of a Praja-Mandal-led popular government. It leaned heavily against the merger of the states of Rajputana into neighbouring states and championed the cause of integration of all the Rajputana states into one, which eventually did come about in the form of the state of Rajasthan.
Though the process of assembly elections began in February 1948, actual voting was to take place in the first half of April 1948. Pending formation of the assembly, under pressure from the states department of the central government, the Maharana agreed to constitute a representative interim government consisting of seven members, with four of them coming from the Praja Mandal. One of the four Praja Mandal members was to head the government as the prime minister. Kshatriya Parishad, which essentially represented the interests of the feudal lords in the state, was to appoint two members. The remaining member was to be an independent person acceptable to both the Maharana and the Praja Mandal. The Praja Mandal proposed Manikya Lal Verma as its nominee for the position of prime minister and three others as members. Kshatriya Parishad also proposed the names of two nominees from its side.
Sharp differences arose between the Maharana and the Praja Mandal, however, over the choice of the independent member. The Maharana proposed the name of Mohan Singh Mehta, the younger brother of Tej Singh Mehta, who had helped my father pay his fee for his high school examinations. Mohan Singh Mehta now served as the finance minister in the government of the Maharana and enjoyed his confidence. Unfortunately, he was persona non grata with the Praja Mandal since 1942, when, as the education minister, he had attempted to break a student strike in support of the Quit India movement. Even in the recent past, his relations with the Praja Mandal had been less than cordial. The Praja Mandal therefore opposed Mehta and suggested an alternative candidate. Given that the states department was with the Praja Mandal, the Maharana had no choice but to acquiesce. The episode left a bad taste in the mouth for him.
To complete the rest of the story, it is necessary to briefly digress towards the process of integration of the princely states of Rajputana into the Union of India, which was underway full steam at this time. By early 1948, the states department of the central government had adopted a policy whereby small princely states that did not constitute viable administrative units on their own would be merged either into neighbouring provinces or with other princely states to create a larger, viable unit. Princely states that were large enough to be viable administrative units on their own were allowed to keep their independent identity.
Following these principles, in early 1948, the states department integrated nine smaller states and two chiefships in southern and southeastern Rajputana into a single unit, christened United State of Rajasthan (USR). A problem with USR, however, was that although its component states shared a common language and culture, they lacked geographical contiguity. The only way to achieve contiguity was to either merge the USR states into Mewar or to get the latter to accede to the former. But neither alternative was available: the component states of USR did not want that a larger neighbour should gobble them up, and Mewar State did not want to lose its identity by acceding to the USR. The states department was keen on one of these alternatives, but its hands were tied. Having been in existence for more than a millennium, Mewar had demonstrated that it was a viable administrative unit and amply qualified to remain an independent state.
As mentioned earlier, the Praja Mandal had antagonized the Maharana on the question of the inclusion of Mehta in the interim cabinet. Mehta and another minister in the outgoing cabinet exploited this situation by telling the Maharana that if the Praja Mandal came to power it might not deliver many of the privileges to which he was entitled under the policy of the states department. On the other hand, if he now offered to merge Mewar into USR, the states department might reward him with a much larger package.
The Maharana was persuaded to their point of view, and he informed the states department on 23 March 1948 that he was willing to join USR, provided he were given two million rupees instead of the standard one million rupees annually in Privy Purse, he and his descendants were granted the position of rajpramukh (equivalent to governor in the previously British-ruled provinces) in perpetuity, and Udaipur was made the capital of greater USR. For the states department, this was too big a prize to pass up. It agreed to the conditions, with one exception: it granted the position of rajpramukh to the Maharana for life but not to his descendants. To get around its cap of one million rupees on the Privy Purse, it gave the Maharana half a million rupees in salary as rajpramukh and another half a million rupees for charitable and religious purposes.
On 11 April 1948, the states department got the rulers of Mewar and other component states of USR to sign the covenant. In the meantime, the Maharana and the others involved kept the matter secret so that the Praja Mandal leaders remained oblivious to the development. The Maharana also managed to delay the swearing-in of the interim government on one pretext or the other. The fact that the Praja Mandal was preoccupied with the elections to the legislative assembly made it easier for the Maharana to accomplish both objectives.
Immediately after the rulers signed the covenant acceding to USR, the states department informed the Mewar Praja Mandal of the development by telephone. At the time, the Praja Mandal had been engaged in a life-and-death struggle in the assembly elections against the feudal powers that had come to unite in their opposition to it. Aided by the Maharana, the latter stood a decent chance of victory. Therefore, the Praja Mandal leadership received the news of the acquiescence of the Maharana to Mewar’s accession to USR with great relief. More importantly, the accession effectively accomplished for the Praja Mandal the purpose for which it had been created. A defeat in the elections, which could not have been ruled out, would have left the feudal lords still in power. But Mewar’s accession to USR wiped out that possibility. A regime that had ruled Mewar for more than a millennium had finally fallen and paved the way for emergence of people’s rule. What the Praja Mandal had failed to do, the mutsaddi had accomplished for it!
The states department nominated popular leader Manikya Lal Verma as the prime minister of the newly formed USR. It then went on to advise Verma that since he and his associates lacked administrative experience, it would appoint an executive council consisting of the outgoing prime minister of Mewar, the outgoing finance minister, Mehta, and the regional commissioner of Rajputana. The department told Verma that in case of a difference of opinion between the cabinet and the executive council, a reference would be made to the states department, whose decision would be final.
Verma had fought all his life to establish people’s rule in Mewar and had no intention to head a government that would be under effective control of the same retrograde clique that had guided the Maharana. Therefore, he refused to accept the arrangement. He met Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the minister in charge of the states department, and told him that rather than head a government whose decisions were subject to veto by bureaucrats, the Praja Mandal and he would prefer to serve the people from outside. Patel got the message and dropped the proposal for the advisory council.
On 18 April 1948, Nehru came to Udaipur and inaugurated the new United State of Rajasthan. The Maharana took the oath of office of the rajpramukh and Verma of the office of prime minister. Six others, including Bhure Lal Baya, were sworn in as ministers in the cabinet. My father was proud to have witnessed the historic event first-hand.
The objective of Mewar Praja Mandal Patrika accomplished, a decision was made to close it down. My father’s experience at helming the periodical had been hugely rewarding. He had been able to actively participate in the last leg of the journey of the Praja Mandal to ‘free’ the state of Mewar from the long rule of hereditary rulers for more than a millennium. He got to observe, from a ringside seat, a critical step towards the formation of what would come to be known as the state of Rajasthan. Years later, after retirement, he would take to writing yet again and would be able to give an eyewitness account of the formation of the United State of Rajasthan in his book Rajasthan Mein Swatantra Sangram. The book would become the standard and, indeed, the only original reference of its kind on the history of the freedom movement in Rajasthan.
Anticipating the closure of Mewar Praja Mandal Patrika, Father had been planning to return to Lokvani in Jaipur and resume working with the Congress. Therefore, when Siddharaj Dhadda, the editor of the newspaper, came to Udaipur on the occasion of the inauguration of the Unites State of Rajasthan, the two of them met Prime Minister Verma. Contrary to their expectation, Verma advised against the move, telling them that he wanted the services of my father for the new state.
Having no idea what Verma had in mind, my father decided to take a break for the time being and return to Suwana. He had devoted ten to twelve hours each day on the Mewar Praja Mandal Patrika, taking only two days off to visit Hurda in Bhilwara district, where my mother had given birth to Ravi on 24 January 1948. At the time, my mother’s brother was posted in Hurda, and Ravi was born in his home. By now, my mother and the three children were back in Suwana. Therefore, Father could be in their company on his visit to Suwana before taking the next step of his professional life.
When Father arrived in Suwana, fellow villagers received him with great warmth and excitement. Once again, he had the opportunity to hold meetings with them on the grand platform outside the house. He told them stories of how the United State of Rajasthan had been formed, how Pandit Nehru had administered the oath of office to the Maharana and to Manikya Lal Verma, and how the popular leaders whom the totalitarian regime had jailed only a few years back were now ministers and governed the newly formed state.
Though he may not have realized it, my father’s own story of the preceding fifteen years mirrored that of these leaders. Back in 1936, his mother had died a lonely death after the community Panchas had heaped insult after insult on her for nearly two years. Today, he enjoyed a commanding position in the village. To his credit, he never let the miseries and insults his mother had suffered come in the way of his love for the village. In the years that followed, he did not miss a single opportunity to bring the fruits of development to the village. Having become a part of the government at the founding of the state of Rajasthan, he successfully brought in road connectivity, Ayurvedic and allopathic dispensaries, a post office, a panchayat samiti, piped water, a veterinary outpost and the first high school.
5
In the Service of the People of Rajasthan
FATHER HAD SCARCELY GOT a few days of well-deserved rest when he received a telegram from Bhure Lal Baya, minister of jagirs in the newly formed USR, asking him to leave for Udaipur immediately. When he arrived in Udaipur and went to see Baya, the latter asked him to go and see Prime Minister Verma. Verma told him that he wanted to appoint some of the younger Praja Mandal workers to suitable positions in different departments of the secretariat. Evidently, he wanted political appointees to play a critical role in the running of his government. He also told my father that now that the Praja Mandal leadership was in charge of the government, it did not make a difference whether he worked for the government or for the Congress; the two amounted to one and the same thing. My father told him that his services were at his disposal and that he could make use of them as he saw fit.
The Verma government soon appointed a dozen Praja Mandal workers from the component states of USR to key positions. Among others, they included Shiv Charan Mathur and Niranjan Nath Acharya, who would later become leading politicians in the state of Rajasthan. My father was initially appointed as head of the Directorate of Publicity, but at his request was moved to the Department of Commerce and Industry as undersecretary. The minister in charge of the department was Mohan Lal Sukhadia.
Upon taking charge, my father discovered that the former rulers of the component states of USR had strangulated the process of industrialization. They would take many years to give permission to even small-scale units to be set up. Availability of electricity was limited, and what was available was used up in lighting the palaces of the rulers. In what was one of the earliest acts of liberalizing reforms in India’s post-Independence history, my father suggested that when an entrepreneur was not seeking any assistance or concessions from the government, he should be given permission to set up industries freely and promptly. The secretary of the department expressed reservations, but the minister supported the proposal and the policy was implemented. That led to the establishment of a number of small industrial units almost immediately.
