From a Nehru dynasty fan to a Modi ‘Bhakt’… it

I joined Twitter in December 2008 and till about mid-March of this year I had a measly 770 odd followers. Then one day that month I got the shock of my life to discover that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had started following me. Suddenly my twitter numbers began to rise and the fun tweets became serious business. And from being just another twitter handle I was labelled a Modi bhakt!

So, it seems, following the prime minister and being followed by him has become a crime and all the ‘nobodies’ and ‘busybodies’ on Twitter have a view on that. Worse is the fact that whether I write for or against the PM I am still subjected to abuse from both sides. I have been ridiculed, insulted, abused in a language used by alcoholic lowlifes, my mother (God bless her soul) has been abused because I tweeted something where I didn’t even criticise Modi but those who criticised demonetisation. But because I support Modi, people think I’m a khaki-wearing, trishul carrying bhakt who mutters “mandir wahi banayenge” even in my sleep! Honestly, I couldn’t care less, about khaki shorts, RSS, or a trishul. Although I daresay my views about the mandir have changed since I first wrote this blogpost. It seems today it is a fate worse than death for any Hindu and more so for one who supports Modi. It’s a double whammy.

My father, Bishweshwar Prasad Sinha, was a part of Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement right from the 1930s as a youngster and while he didn’t agree with Nehru’s views he still regarded him highly. He even contested elections against the Congress from Phulpur and was the only candidate who didn’t lose his deposit. In those days, you could put up a lamppost as a Congress candidate and it would win. He was also a true blue Socialist like Ram Manohar Lohia, Madhu Limaye, Jaya Prakash Narayan and others. I remember my mother telling me how Lohia, who was a regular visitor to our home in Patna, would rubbish Nehru and his ancestry.

My mom Lakshmi, on the other hand, was a ‘dynasty fan. She was a diehard Nehru dynasty fan right from the days of Motilal Nehru. She would always speak glowingly of Jawahar Lal Nehru and how my father took her and my elder brother to meet Nehru in Delhi. Nehru supposedly hoisted my brother, who was then 3 or 4, on his shoulders and took him for a walk around the grounds of his home. Heck, she even named my elder brother Rajiv. When I was born, she was determined to name me Sanjay. Thankfully, my father put his foot down with “One Nehru/Gandhi in the family is enough!”

My mother’s family too seemed to have been big fans of Pandit Nehru and we even had Nehru staring down at us from our living room wall in our home in Pune, until, one day, I banished it into the storeroom where it stayed until it was packed and crated with the rest of the stuff when we shifted houses. I never saw it again. And in those times, a Freddie Mercury or a Gabriela Sabatini poster held more sway than one of Nehru!

Meanwhile, my grandparents, Barrister Valoor Krishna Menon (not to be confused with Nehru’s man V.K. Krishna Menon) and Janaki amma, in Thrissur, named their new home Gandhi Mandiram after the great man stayed there during his travails around the country when he launched the Quit India movement. (see attached image for story and pic of Gandhi Mandiram, which is today a Homestay).

It so happened that some Congressman (see attachment) asked my grandfather whether he

would have a problem if Gandhi stayed at their newly constructed home on Dewan Narayana Menon Road (named after my great-grandfather) in Chembukavvu and he was more than happy to oblige. Gandhi Mandiram also played host to Babu Rajendra Prasad, Madan Mohan Malavya, Pattabhi Seetharamiah and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. My mom, however, took her Nehru obsession a step further.

When my brother was getting married, imagine her delight when she heard the girl’s name was Sonia. She did something that she claimed was on a whim but I have my doubts. What she did a few weeks before the wedding was that she sent the wedding card to Rajiv Gandhi with a note “Somewhere in this world another Rajiv weds another Sonia. Won’t you grace the occasion with your presence and bless the young couple?” Expecting the PM to attend a wedding of a namesake was a far cry, I don’t think she expected even a response. When we returned from the wedding the maid told us the postman had been coming around and was refusing to hand over the letter to anyone but my mother. The next day the postman landed up and refused to hand over the letter without a hefty tip.

He said, “When I saw the Prime Minister’s seal there’s no way I could leave the letter here without a baksheesh.” The letter was a signed personally by Rajiv Gandhi. I was very impressed by the man’s class, but my mother treated the letter as some sort of proxy at the wedding reception!

Even in the elections in 1984, that followed the Delhi riots where Rajiv said those famous words, we still voted for the Congress. It was the first election I was voting and my mother made me promise I wouldn’t vote for anyone but Rajiv. Who could turn down a mother’s request, not that there was any other option in those days. So it was a custom in my family to vote for the Congress and all these years until 2014 I voted for the party. In 2014 too, I didn’t vote for Modi or the BJP/Sena candidate from our constituency. So what changed it?

In one para, the arrogance of the Gandhi family that they were above the law and above any regulations that governed this nation. That this family could do what it wanted, say what it wanted and like the royalty of old were protected by courtiers who would place a protective shield around them at all times, was something I found unacceptable. The fact was hard to swallow.

Then came the speech by Sonia Gandhi in LS on the Food Security Bill where she said: “I don’t care where the money comes from…” and then there was the Right to Education Bill and I decided I could do without the Congress brand of appeasement politics and reservations without a thought for the taxpayer, and promised I would NEVER vote again for the Congress party. Kapil Sibal said it well enough with his “They are the Gandhis, blah blah…”

Then post 2014 May, when became the PM I noticed an entire ecosystem that chanted ‘not my PM’. They were egged on by the Congress to oppose the PM and anything he did. They were finding it difficult to digest that they were out of power. That this lowly Gujarati could storm their citadel was unacceptable to them.

I think it’s clear as daylight that Rahul Gandhi just doesn’t have it in him to be an astute politician, and his sister even less. They are both living in their rarified ecosystem that fawns on them. Good for them! I’d rather vote for a Modi or anyone else this country can produce than a member of a family that believes it has the right to rule and is not answerable for its actions.

(Updated on Jan 12, 2024)

‘Truth Be Told, I Really Did Not Know My Father At All’

(Just thought I’d post this piece for posterity and for the record. This is the original piece sent to Tehelka, which was abridged for publication. It appeared on July 12, 2014. The link to that story is here.

Genes are a mysterious element in our system. It’s funny how they work behind-the-scenes.

My parents separated when I was around three or four, so whatever I heard about my father was from my mother – that he used to be a politician, journalist, lecturer. If there was more she didn’t tell me, and if she did, I was too young to remember. I only saw him as and when he occasionally dropped in at our place in Bhagalpur from Patna over the weekend, stayed the night and left in the morning. He scared me, because he had a volatile temper and used it at anyone and everyone, for any random reason. In my teens, I learnt he was a socialist and politician, who had been close to the late Jaya Prakash Narayan. Also, that his father had disowned him, when he joined the freedom struggle. Apart from that I didn’t know much else, and didn’t care. As I grew old enough to think for myself, I knew he was what I never wanted to be.

My first brush with journalism was when I was fourteen. I wrote an angry letter to a film magazine about a film I saw. They published it. I was shocked. Even more shocked when they sent me a cheque for 50 bucks. That was my brief flirtation with journalism, because I ended up working in the hotel industry in the 1980s.

In my twenties, rebellious and unemployed, a friend offered me a sub editor’s job at a local daily in Pune. I grabbed it. My father once came from Patna and asked me if I would ever become a News Editor. I said I didn’t know. I was a trainee sub editor earning 600 rupees. In the thirteen years after that, I became Assistant Editor of the daily. Then in 1994 my father passed away and neither I nor anyone from my family went for his funeral. It wasn’t possible anyway although I flew in to see him a week before he died. I don’t know who performed his last rites.

From Assistant Editor in a single-edition newspaper in Pune to a Chief Copy Editor at a seven-edition national newspaper in Chandigarh, to a Deputy News Editor at the same newspaper in Lucknow, I was now running the news desk. The day the editor called me to hand over the letter appointing me News Editor of the Lucknow edition, I broke down in her cabin.

Some years later, I settled again in Pune. I had quit journalism and gone into corporate communication. I took up teaching on a friend’s advice.  After all, twenty years was a long time to be in journalism. At my first lecture at a local college, I froze. Thankfully, that never happened again. I’ve been teaching journalism and occasionally PR for seven years now and a few hundred youngsters around the country are now my ex-students.

Then, like everyone else interested in writing, I began blogging (http://mohansblog.worpress.com), even as I returned to journalism a few years back. One day I was trolling the worldwide web and out of sheer curiosity I typed out my father’s name, and something popped out that left me stunned and turned my world upside down.

It was my father’s bio data in a book on the politicians from Bihar. It read: Educated in Darbhanga, Patna, Banaras and London; Left studies to join the non-cooperation movement, 1920; Assistant Editor and later Editor, Desh, 1921-23; Sub-Editor, Searchlight, 1924; Went to England for higher study and law, 1926-31; took part in the Civil Disobedience Movement, arrested and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, 1934-35; founder member, Bihar Socialist Party, 1934; Secretary, Bihar Socialist party, 1935-36; taught in Kashi Vidyapeeth, 1936; Editor Sangharsh, 1937-48; Secretary, UP Congress Socialist Party; Principal National High School, Lucknow, 1939-42; participated in Quit India Movement, 1942; arrested and detained, 1943-45; member, National Executive, Socialist Party, 1948; Editor Janata, 1948-69; member Praja Socialist Party, 1955-69; left politics and resumed teaching at Patna; died in 1994.

Truth be told, I really didn’t know my father at all.

(Published in Tehelka Magazine, Volume 11 Issue 28, Dated 12 July 2014)

My father, the man I hardly knew…

I always tell my students to be careful when they post things on social networking sites, because you never know when it could come back to haunt them. Of course, there are times when it does throw up things that are interesting too. Like last night.
I happened to be trawling the worldwide web looking for nothing in particular, when on a whim, I typed my father’s name in the window and clicked enter. On a whim, because I hadn’t thought of him in years, not since my mother passed away in 2003.
The relationship we (my brother and I) had with our father had been a pretty tumultuous one – my brother more than me, because while I lived with my mother since I was five or so, he stayed with my father. I guess both of us have never really forgiven my father for leaving my mother to fend for herself and her children, until he decided to take my brother along with him to Patna. Whether he did this out of some sympathy or sense of duty, I’ll never know.
I knew my father had been a lot of things like barrister, freedom fighter, lecturer and editor, but to read everything about him has left me completely stunned. My mother had never told me in details about his exploits. If she did, I was probably too young to realise the import of such things.
Anyway back to the present. So what popped up on google took me completely by surprise. It was a pretty impressive profile of my father, which I never knew existed. I was reading about things I never knew or ever heard from anyone. Call it a coincidence, but the places he stayed and worked in during his lifetime, I had unknowingly stayed and worked in as well. Then there was his career as a journalist, which was infinitely much more impressive than mine will ever be.
Then there was his career as a lecturer, teaching Law and Commerce at the Law and Commerce Colleges, respectively, in Patna, when he quit politics. I had heard from people he had taught that there were no empty chairs during his lectures and that his students kissed the ground he walked on.
I remember an incident that happened in Pune, when father came to see us. He was accompanied by a young man. When I asked him why he was there, the youngster said “Jayaprakash Narayanji told us that after his death, we should look after your father.” That left me quite unmoved, because in my book, as a husband and father he had failed. When father told me that he along with JP and others had written the Constitution of the Janata Party, headed by Morarji Desai, I caustically remarked that the experiment was then surely going to fail.
When he died at Darbhanga in 1994, neither my brother nor I went for the funeral. My mother cried when she heard the news, and I remember my brother and me telling her that she was shedding tears for a man who had deserted her and his children, when they most needed him. We had shut him out of our lives since then, to the extent that we had even given away the inherited family property to another one of our step-sisters. We wanted nothing to do with anything connected to him.
Seeing the profile on Google brought back a lot of memories. Had we (the family) misjudged him? I don’t know how my brother feels, but I think I am willing to let go off the past. I think it’s time to move on, tell my son that despite all his flaws and his philandering ways, his grandfather was a remarkable man. In his own small way, he had done his duty for his country and for his people, even though he had failed his extended family. But I guess we can’t all be perfect.