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Feroze Gandhi

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Feroze Gandhi
फिरोज गांधी
Member of the Indian Parliament
for Pratapgarh District (west) cum Rae Bareli District (east)[1]
In office
17 April 1952 – 4 April 1957
Member of the Indian Parliament
for Rae Bareli[2]
In office
5 May 1957 – 8 September 1960
Succeeded byBaij Nath Kureel
Personal details
Born(1912-09-12)12 September 1912
Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died8 September 1960(1960-09-08) (aged 47)
New Delhi, Delhi, India
Resting placeParsi cemetery, Allahabad
Political partyIndian National Congress
SpouseIndira Gandhi
ChildrenSanjay Gandhi,
Rajiv Gandhi

Feroze Jehangir Gandhi (Firoz Jahangīr Gāndhī; Hindi: फिरोज जहाँगीर गांधी; 12 September 1912 – 8 September 1960) was an Indian politician and journalist, and publisher of the The National Herald and The Navjivan newspapers from Lucknow.[3]

He became a member of the provincial parliament (1950–1952), and later a member of the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of India's parliament. In 1942 he married Indira Nehru (later Prime Minister of India) and they had two sons, Rajiv Gandhi (also later a Prime Minister) and Sanjay Gandhi, and thus became part of the Nehru dynasty.[4]

Feroze was the youngest child of his parents. His elder brothers were Dorab Jehangir Gandhi, Faridun Jehangir Gandhi.[1][2]. He has two elder sisters one is Tehmina Kershashp Gandhi and other is Aloo Gandhi Dastur[5].[6]

In the early 1920s, after the death of his father, he and his mother moved to Allahabad to live with their[clarification needed] unmarried aunt, Shirin Commissariat, a surgeon at the city's Lady Dufferin Hospital. He attended the Vidya Mandir High School and then graduated from the British-staffed Ewing Christian College.[3] He went on to study at the London School of Economics.[7]

Early life

Feroze Jehangir Gandhi was born in Mumbai, to a Parsi family from Gujarat. He was the youngest of the five children of Faredoon Jehangir Gandhi, a marine engineer, and Rattimai Hatta (later changed to Commisariat).[8][9][3] His family had migrated to Bombay from Bharuch in South Gujarat. Their ancestral home, which belonged to his grandfather, still exists in Kotpariwad. His niece Chandan Patel(Daugher of his sister Aloo J Gandhi) married Gujarati Businessmen Mr Patel.[10]

Career

Portrait of Feroze and Indira Gandhi.

In March 1930, the youth wing of Congress Freedom fighters, the Vanar Sena was formed. Gandhi met Kamala Nehru and Indira among the women demonstrators picketing outside Ewing Christian College. Kamala fainted with the heat of the sun and Gandhi went to comfort her. The next day, he abandoned his studies in 1930 to join the Indian independence movement. He was imprisoned in 1930, along with Lal Bahadur Shastri, head of Allahabad District Congress Committee, and lodged in Faizabad Jail for nineteen months. Soon after his release, he was involved with the agrarian no-rent campaign in the United Province (now Uttar Pradesh) and was imprisoned twice, in 1932 and 1933, while working closely with Nehru.[3]

The Hindu marriage ceremony of Feroze Gandhi and Indira Gandhi, 26 March 1942 at Anand Bhawan, Allahabad

Feroze grew close to the Nehru family, especially to Indira's mother Kamala Nehru, accompanying her to the TB Sanatorium at Bhowali in 1934, helping arrange her trip to Europe when her condition worsened in April 1935, and visiting her at the sanitarium at Badenweiler and finally at Laussane, where he was at her bedside when she died on 28 February 1936.[3] In the following years, Indira and Feroze grew closer to each other while in England. They married in March 1942 according to Hindu rituals.[11]

Indira's father Jawaharlal Nehru opposed her marriage to Gandhi and approached Mahatma Gandhi to dissuade the young couple, but to no avail. However, over the years, father-in-law and son-in-law resolved their differences. The couple were arrested and jailed in August 1942, during the Quit India Movement less than six months after their marriage, he was imprisoned for a year in Allahabad's Naini Central Prison. The coming five years were of comfortable domestic life and the couple had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, born in 1944 and 1946 respectively.

After independence, Jawaharlal became the first Prime Minister of India. Feroze and Indira settled in Allahabad with their two young children, and Feroze became Managing Director of The National Herald, a newspaper founded by his father-in-law. He was also the first chairman of Indian Oil Corporation Limited.

After being a member of the provincial parliament (1950–1952), Gandhi won independent India's first general elections in 1952, from Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh. Indira came down from Delhi and worked as his campaign organizer. Gandhi soon became a prominent force in his own right, criticizing the government of his father-in-law and beginning a fight against corruption.

In the years after independence, many Indian business houses had become close to the political leaders, and now some of them started various financial irregularities. In a case exposed by Gandhi in December 1955,[12] he revealed how Ram Kishan Dalmia, as chairman of a bank and an insurance company, used these companies to fund his takeover of Bennett and Coleman started transferring money illegally from publicly-held companies for their own benefit.

In 1957, he was re-elected from Rae Bareli. In the parliament in 1958, he raised the Haridas Mundhra scandal involving the government controlled LIC insurance company. This was a huge embarrassment to the clean image of Nehru's government and eventually led to the resignation of the Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari. His rift with Indira had also become public knowledge by then, and added to the media interest in the matter.

Feroze also initiated a number of nationalization drives, starting with the Life Insurance Corporation. At one point he also suggested that Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (TELCO) be nationalized since they were charging nearly double the price of a Japanese railway engine. This raised a stir in the Parsi community since the Tatas were also Parsi. He continued challenging the government on a number of other issues, and emerged as a parliamentarian well-respected on both sides of the bench.[12]

Death

Gandhi suffered a heart attack in 1958. Indira, who stayed with her father at Teen Murti House, the official residence of the prime minister, was at that time away on a state visit to Bhutan. She returned to look after him in Kashmir.[13] Gandhi died in 1960 at the Willingdon Hospital, Delhi, after suffering a second heart attack. He was cremated and his ashes interred at the Parsi cemetery in Allahabad.[14]

His Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency seat was held by his daughter-in-law, and wife of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi from 2004 until 2006.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Biographical Sketch of First Lok Sabha". Parliament of India. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
  2. ^ "Biographical Sketch of Second Lok Sabha". Parliament of India. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
  3. ^ a b c d e Frank, Katherine (2002). Indira: the life of Indira Nehru Gandhi. Houghton Mifflin Co. ISBN 0-395-73097-X.
  4. ^ A forgotten patriot: Feroze Gandhi made a mark in politics at a comparatively young age.. The Hindu, 20 October 2002.
  5. ^ http://mjshj.blogfa.com/post-79.aspx
  6. ^ http://books.google.co.in/books?id=CTEL5QPyIkcC&pg=PA184&dq=feroze+gandhi+sister+tehmina&hl=en&ei=-xyLTvboLpCGrAe-je2aAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=feroze%20gandhi%20sister%20tehmina&f=false
  7. ^ http://books.google.co.in/books?ei=P8fDTrKrN4XsrAehv8HGCw&ct=result&id=kZY5AQAAIAAJ&dq=feroze+jehangir+gandhi&q=jehangir+#search_anchor
  8. ^ http://books.google.co.in/books?ei=P8fDTrKrN4XsrAehv8HGCw&ct=result&id=kZY5AQAAIAAJ&dq=feroze+jehangir+gandhi&q=jehangir+#search_anchor
  9. ^ http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nTNuAAAAMAAJ&q=feroze+jehangir+gandhi&dq=feroze+jehangir+gandhi&hl=en&ei=txyLTpzxH4XirAfMgZmtAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBw
  10. ^ http://books.google.co.in/books?ei=hkYWT9-9M9DPrQfrhsFg&id=2hNuAAAAMAAJ&dq=chandan+patel+cousin+rajiv&q=chandan#search_anchor
  11. ^ "Mrs. Gandhi Not Hindu, Daughter-in-Law Says". New York Times. 2 May 1984. Retrieved 29 March 2009.
  12. ^ a b Shashi Bhushan, M.P. (1977). Feroze Gandhi: A political Biography. Progressive People's Sector Publications, New Delhi,.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)p.166, 179. See these excerpts
  13. ^ "Indira Gandhi's courage was an inspiration". Samay Live. 7 November 2009.
  14. ^ Kapoor, Comi (10 February 1998). "Dynasty keeps away from Feroze Gandhi's neglected tombstone". The Indian Express.
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