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First Person Singluar

The Forgotten Grand Father ?

Aroon Sharma
Sep 2010

Genealogy fascinates me. If spiced up, it puts me off. On issues of conflict, I find www too contradictory, too weird. A site enlightens me with facts to the last figure; a second site fictionalises facts stretched to the last frontiers of wild imagination; and the third site is a sludge-fudge by anonymous wizards of the wicked, and worse. The result: what comes across as clear doesn’t convince me; what sounds convincing is not clear ! It sends me into a spin. I sign out. And I fall back on books bequeathed to me. I dust off books from libraries. I seek archives.

As I write this on Feroze Gandhi, I have sifted as much wheat as I could from the chaff. I may still be marginally off the mark. For that, I seek indulgence of the First Family of India. Ninety eight years to the month, a son, Feroze, was born to a Parsi couple with a Gujarati surname – Jehangir Feradoon Gandhi and Rattimai Gandhi at Bombay. Jehangir, a father of four, was a marine engineer who died rather early, and his wife with four children, moved to Allahabad sheltered by her husband’s well off aunt: Dr Shirin Commissariat. Began Feroze’s upbringing.

That he and Indira fell in love is passe’. What I happened to stumble upon was a doting father, Jawahar Lal Nehru’s defence of a love smitten daughter, Indira Gandhi. In its times, the Leader ( now defunct ), a daily from Allahabad, with a committed readership amongst the freedom fighters under the troika of Mahatma Gandhi, Moti Lal Nehru, his son and the Mahatma’s acolyte Jawahar Lal Nehru, front paged “Miss Indira Nehru’s Engagement” on February 21, 1942. Next day, the press throughout India picked it up, But write-ups were averse to the nuptial knot.

The father was in Calcutta then. On his return to Allahabad, he issued a statement to nip the nit picking. The Bombay Chronicle ( also defunct ), highlighted the father’s version the most amongst all newspapers. Its micro-filming is accessible. ( Jawahar Lal Nehru’s clarification, in a way, is a re-readable treatise on the domestic privacy of marriage; parental advise to the couple in love; a public figure’s ( his ) bounden duty to bare the truth; reverence to seek consent from elders ( the Mahatma in this case ); respecting his daughter wishes; AND blessing the newly weds ).

The wordsmith in Jawahar Lal Nehru wrote: “A report has appeared in the press about the engagement of my daughter Indira with Feroze Gandhi. As inquiries have been addressed to me on the subject, I should like to confirm the report. A marriage is a personal and domestic matter, affecting chiefly the two parties and their families. Yet I recognize that in view of my association with public affairs, I should take my many friends and colleagues and the public generally into my confidence. I have long held the view that parents may and should advise in the matter, the choice and…….

“……ultimate decision must lie with the two parties concerned. That decision, if arrived at after mature deliberation, must be given effect to, and it is no business of parents or others to come in the way. When I was assured that Indira and Feroze wanted to marry one another, I accepted willingly their decision and told them it had my blessing. Mahatma Gandhi, whose opinion I value not only in public affairs but in private matters also, gave his blessing to the proposal. The members of my family as well as the members of my wife’s family also gave their willing consent….

….. “Feroze Gandhi is a young Parsi who has been a friend and colleague of ours for many years and I expect him to serve our country and our cause efficiently and well. But on whomsoever my daughter’s choice would have fallen, I would have accepted it or been false to the principles I have held. I hope and trust that this marriage will be a true comradeship in life and in the larger cause we hold dear….The marriage will take place in about a month’s time in Allahabad.” ( The author was unaware that the Mahatma also lent support in his paper Harijan. )

The marriage took place at Anand Bhawan on Ram Navami: March 26, 1942. Indira wore a Nehru’s prison hand woven khadi, dyed Pink (not Red ) saree which later Sonia and Maneka wore as dynasty brides. Feroze wore a khadhi sherwani and churidars. Mahatma Gandhi did not attend. On that day, he was on a train to Delhi to meet Sir Stafford Cripps. The couple moved to a rented house at 5, Fort Road, Allahabad, later to Lucknow, then to New Delhi. Feroze was 48 when he suffered a second heart attack on September 7. Next day, he died at Wellingdon Hospital.

On September 12, 1912 born Feroze, both Parsi and Hindu rites were performed on September 8, 1960. He was cremated. Rajiv lit the funeral pyre at Nigambodh ghat. An urn of his ashes was taken to Allahabad. Half of his ashes were immersed at Sangam; half buried at the Stanley Road, Mumfordganj Parsi cemetery. Neither the father in law nor the wife thereafter visited the burial site. But Menaka (1998); Sonia (2005), Rahul (2008) did. Feroze’s epitaph reads: “He is not dead. Who lifts thy glorious mind on high to live in hearts we leave behind not to die.”

Last I interviewed Maneka was in 1985. She may not recollect it. I am tempted to ask her: “Has Feroze Varun Gandhi, the only dynasty child, who reverentially bears Feroze as his first name, been to his forgotten grandfather Feroze Gandhi’s grave ?”

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