I started my blog page with the intent of writing about the following three - sports, travel and books.
Staying true to the stated aim, this one is the first post on books.
For some years now, I have been having a tryst of sorts with books, trying to put myself ambitious targets for the number of books I wish to complete.
A few years back, a reading of Shashi Tharoor's "Bookless in Baghdad" highly inspired me. In one of the essays in that book, Tharoor mentions how he has been reading 365 books an year since the age of 8. Now I thought, that was impressive.
I tried keeping steep reading targets like 50 books an year. I didn't get much close to that number in any of these years, but keeping those targets did help me gradually read more and more.
This particular year, I have again been on spree of adding books but falling woefully short of reading them. I had, in fact vowed not to buy more books till I finish the backlog.
Then, it so happened that my wife Shivani and I were one of our much-cherished Saturday evening visits to Khan Market. Having put our names on the waiting list at one of the eateries and with time to kill, we walked into the quaint little bookstore "Fakirchand and Sons".
Browsing through, a black and white cover from the corner caught my eye amongst the myriad of colorful books. The simple cover featured Sanjay Gandhi's face. Now, despite being keenly interested in history, especially modern Indian history, Emergency and Sanjay are topics I had only passing knowledge about.
Naturally the book intrigued me instantly. Couple that with the fact that the author was seasoned journalist (Late) Vinod Mehta who we have often seen on television debates, and my mind was made.
The Sanjay Story - by Vinod Mehta
The book was originally written in 1978, just an year after the lifting of Emergency post Congress' defeat in the General Elections of 1977.
All forms of media had been severely curbed during the Emergency and hence, there was a spate of books immediately after its lifting. However they all focused on the Emergency. The author's claim is that he is the only biographer for Sanjay Gandhi.
However, this isn't an official or authorized one. The author tried reaching out to Sanjay, however, all access was denied for the fear that the book would contain criticism of the Gandhi scion.
The condition put forward by the Gandhi team was that the author could get free access to him if he agreed to portray Gandhi in a positive light. Mehta refused.
The book flows seamlessly and is a quick read. It is to the credit of the author that even after 40 years of its writing, the book doesn't seem archaic or complex.
It begins right at the start, from young Motilal Nehru and Anand Bhawan in Allahabad. Tracing the Nehru family's progression through Jawharlal, the introduction of a young timid Kamla to the Anglicized Nehru household, young Indira and her childhood, Feroze's queer entry into the house (the book raises some controversial points there, which I would leave for you to discover), the family's centre stage role in Indian politics, the issues in Indira's marriage, to young Rajiv and Sanjay.
Withing a span of one chapter, the author successfully puts the history of India's most important political family forward and also sets the stage to analyze Sanjay's childhood and formative years.
It delves into the (mis)adventures of Sanjay.
Sanjay's misadventures with Maruti are well-brought out. His obsession for cars and joy on working on cars in his personal garage with bare hands pushed him to setup the Maruti factory. However, what ensued was not just a monumental disaster, but also a classic case of cronyism. Despite having the access to all sorts of Govt licenses in the times of strict license Raj, the company failed to as much as take off - producing just 20 or so cars over the 5 years it was in action.
And coupled with that, proof of diversion of funds through a complex ownership structure meant the Parliament was rocked by the opposition from time to time.
The two other themes that the book brings out vividly are the Emergency (of course) and his tryst with youth Congress.
Emergency and his excesses therein are well captured. For me, it was an eye opener to know the details of one of the most watershed moments in Indian history.
In a nutshell, what emerges is that Sanjay had a good understanding of the acute problems that India faced - overpopulation, lack of sanitation, housing problems in the metropolitan cities etc. However, the approach to solving these was simply kiddish, to sum it up.
The depiction of events during the clean-up of Delhi slums and forced sterilization are laced with anecdotes that bring out the failures of Sanjay's approach very well.
My suggestion - a must read for anyone interested in the Emergency period. The author's brilliant writing ensures that despite the detailing, the book remains an easy and smooth read (I finished almost half of it on the very night I bought it). However, the book is too specific at a lot of times, and doesn't touch upon the overall political scenario in India, and for that particular reason, it might appear a drag to someone with only passing interest on the topic.
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