Leaders to remember

IN the month of November, what is called the Delhi season begins with a bang. Cottons are out, woollens are in. At long last, the endless and dry summer is over. The pollution levels are also down although the traffic makes life for the average citizen a slow moving torture. Once the underground rail starts functioning, the situation should improve. Politicians of all hues descend on the capital for the winter session of Parliament.

The number of conferences, seminars and lectures proliferates. This year's annual Jawaharlal Nehru lecture was delivered by Sunil Khilnani, the author of The Idea of India. The lecture was on November 13 on the eve of Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday. It was a very professional, sophisticated and analytical talk. He spoke on `Nehru's Faith.' Khilnani is the up and coming internationally known historian; he is in his early 40s and is currently working on a biography of Jawaharlal Nehru.

In his lecture he said:

To remind you, although in earlier days a supporter of the idea of linguistic States, after Partition Nehru feared that any redrawing of India's internal boundaries along such lines would further endanger the country's unity. He asserted as much in the early sessions of the Constituent Assembly. But, over a period of several years, in the face of demands (often violent) as well as arguments, he came to revise his views on the matter. Nehru often has been criticised for being dilatory and evasive on this subject; in fact, by temporising and by refusing to give in immediately to impassioned popular demands, by allowing positions to be stated and gradually revised, he enabled a more satisfactory solution to emerge one that actually strengthened the Union and that has endured remarkably well.

On November 19 was Indira Gandhi's 85th birthday and as I write this, I had the great privilege of sitting in a room which she used to use during her life time. On November 18, the jury for the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development met under the chairmanship of former President K.R. Narayanan. The other members of the jury were Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, I.G. Patel, Romila Thapar, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Dr. Mohammad Yunus of Bangladesh. The prize was awarded to His Majesty King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

The 2001 Indira Gandhi Prize was presented by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on November 19, 2002 to Professor Sadako Ogata, the distinguished Japanese personality who for ten years rendered great service to humanity as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Ogata is sprightly 75 but has the dynamism and energy of someone twenty years younger than her. The Indira Gandhi Prize has now become known throughout the world and the previous recipients include Sam Nujoma, Rajiv Gandhi, Jimmy Carter and General Olusegun Obasanjo. The striking thing is that Ogata is the second Japanese to be bestowed with the Prize, the other one being Dr. Saburo Okita.

No. 1 Safdarjang Road is the Indira Gandhi Memorial. This house is being kept as it was the residence of Indira Gandhi during her life time. The heart-warming things is that each day six to eight thousand people visit the museum; most of them do not belong to the affluent class but are common people who hold Indira Gandhi in high esteem.

The other day, two members of the Russian Communist Party, Sergei Nikolaevich and D. Leonid A. Ivanchenko came to see me. Both are members of the Russian Parliament. I took them to the spot where Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984. The path is covered by a crystal river, donated by the Government of Czechoslovakia. The two Russians were so deeply moved that they put their hand on their hearts and bowed in reverence and told me that even today Indira Gandhi was held in the highest esteem throughout Russia.

THE other day the greatest Israeli diplomat and orator, Aba Ebban, died, at the age of 87. As far as I can remember, the Indian media took no notice of his passing away. Aba Ebban got a triple first at Cambridge and had served as a Minister including as Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for almost two decades. He became Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations in his mid-30s. When he spoke, the U.N. General Assembly hall filled up and the Arab diplomats were not sitting in their seats but stood on the sides of the Assembly hall and heard Aba Ebban. His eloquence has a resonance that mesmerised his Muslim listeners. Aba Ebban was a prolific writer and his books on diplomacy were very widely read.

The final two decades of his life must have been very distressing for a man of his outstanding abilities. He was not given a ticket for Parliament some 15 years ago and thereafter the world began to forget him gradually although he continued to give lectures, hold seminars and write books. He used to tell his friends that he could never become Prime Minister of Israel because he was an East European Jew.

ON November 29, Sonia Gandhi delivered a memorable lecture at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Her subject was "Conflict and Co-existence in our age". The Oxford Islamic Centre has now become a leading forum which has in the past been addressed by Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia.

Sonia Gandhi gifted a portrait of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, to the late Prime Minister's colleague at Oxford Somerville. Indira Gandhi was up at Oxford between 1937 and 1939. In 1971, Oxford University honoured her with an Honorary Doctorate.