The French writer Stephane Mallarme said, 'Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.' I am not sure my grandfather shared this belief entirely, but he did intend to publish his memoir, which he began writing in the mid-1970s, a few years after he retired from the civil service. He completed a first draft in 1981 and put it aside. Perhaps he intended to revise it, add more of his experiences and insights. We will never know. Fortunately, he kept the handwritten pages carefully and now, some forty years later, we, his family, have been able to put them together and publish this posthumous memoir.
We called him Bapu in the family. His friends and service colleagues called him Yogi. He was an affectionate father to his two sons, my father and my late Govind Chacha. To us, his grandchildren, he was the ever-caring, indulgent grandfather who pampered us, and did so much to secure our future in his inimitable style. He also had a deep connect with his nephews and nieces and others in the extended family, and some outside it, whom he influenced with his personality. He was as dear to them as they were to him. It was a reciprocal sense of belonging.
Bapu was a son of the soil, who by sheer grit and determination rose from humble beginnings in our native village, Katra, in the Bikapur tehsil of the erstwhile riyasat of Khapra Deeh, thirty-five kilometres from Faizabad/Ayodhya. He made it to the Provincial Civil Service of the United Provinces in 1936, thus becoming a part of the service that Sardar Patel was to describe as the 'steel frame' of India. For thirty-five years Bapu served his country and his people through the upheavals of the Second World War, the heady days of the Quit India movement, the tragedy of Partition, the euphoria of Independence and free India's first elections, and then the excitement, challenges and high idealism of nation-building in the 1950s and '60s.
Bapu was a larger-than-life presence for us, like a large, sheltering tree in whose shade we flourished. It is a daunting task to sum up his personality. But there is an incident I remember from my childhood which I think is revealing. I was ten years old when I witnessed an exchange between Bapu and my father. The issue was about getting some young person in need of employment a government job, and Bapu broached it with my father, himself a member of the IAS. My father politely refused, citing the rule book. At this, Bapu smilingly retorted, 'Tum log naukri karte ho, humne baadshaahat ki hai. (You people merely serve in the civil service, while in our time we were rulers.) I wrote the rule book!'
Throughout his career, Bapu was instrumental in getting jobs for a number of youngsters from his own and neighbouring villages. So much so that the village elders, he once told me, complained to him that he had denuded their villages of young blood. In retrospect, this may have made him sad as he looked back, but there was always a gleam in his eyes when he spoke about having carved out careers for many youngsters. He had made a difference in the lives of so many people, and that seems to have been what he was happiest about.
Ever since my retirement in 1971, I have been obsessed with the idea of writing my memoirs. My career encompassed fairly variegated times. I started service in the Provincial Civil Service (PCS) of the United Provinces (later, Uttar Pradesh) in 1936, during the heyday of the British Raj. At this time, I served in a number of districts reporting to various British Collectors till 1947. From 1937 to 1939, I had the privilege of working under the first Congress government. I was also part of the government effort during the Second World War. I was a witness to, and had to deal with administrative matters arising out of the national movement of the time, specially from 1940 to 1942. I also witnessed the great holocaust and exodus during India's Partition in 1947. After India won Independence, I was the Home Secretary in the then Delhi State from 1947 to 1954. It was a state with a population of around 9 lakh in 1949 but with a refugee issue that I had to handle. It was my privilege to have had a hand in the building up of Delhi's administration, the police force, and also in the construction of the Tis Hazari courts and Tihar Jail. Thereafter, I was in the Indian Airlines Corporation, from 1954 to 1958 in the initial stages, and worked out the rules, helped in establishing the headquarters, while merging the staff of different companies into an integrated Indian Airlines structure. I take pride in having been somewhat responsible for the construction of Airline House at Calcutta and Delhi.
I have functioned as Excise Commissioner of Uttar Pradesh (1958-61), as Agriculture Extension Commissioner in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (1961-64), and also as Director General, All India Radio, and as Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (1964-68). I worked with Mrs Indira Gandhi from October 1964 to January 1966-an unforgettable experience.
With these rare and valuable understandings, I have been persuaded by friends to set forth in writing some of the important events that may be of interest to others. Though historians, academicians and politicians have given their versions of what transpired during the freedom movement in 1942, there does not exist a narrative of exactly what happened in 1942 from the viewpoint of a civil servant who witnessed many events up close. I have also given an account of the British Collectors-their intelligence and commitment and also their shortcomings. And so this peep into the past may be a peep into history as well.
What had dissuaded me so far from undertaking this journey was the futility of it. A record of experiences in life, as Macbeth said in the play, is just 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. At best, it promises glimpses of a bygone age and has no more than a semi-historical value. But even histories are being re-written now, and the greatest are getting forgotten. To many, Gandhiji is just a name; and many other shining figures are fading into oblivion. The rush and speed of modern civilization is like an avalanche which is obliterating all pillars and pyramids of history.
And yet the urge to record what one has seen persists. When the river rushes on, the mountain stays and remembers. We like to remember and look back. And so is the case with this glimpse into the past.
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