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It is a different matter that the said Claridges Hotel Astrologer couldn't save TTK from being dismissed, curiously in the wake of Nehru's own son-in-law taking a leading role in exposing the first scam in Free India:
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/long-view-indias-very-first-corruption-scandal/?_r=0
The Nehru Era was as different from his daughter's as Felis Tigris is from Felis Domesticus.
To the best of my knowledge Nehru never visited an astrologer or a swamiji even after the debilitating drumming he got from the Chinese in 1962.
On the other hand, well after she won the only decisive war of Free India in 1971, his daughter visited a Swamiji when she lost power for a brief period:
Perhaps Indira Gandhi was never told why there was a well between her and her Swamiji. The secret of the well was that it served as a barrier between a widow wearing her prohibited hair and the Swamiji who would be breaking the rules of his spiritual reign had he sat in front of her without this artifice...the water in the well acted as an absorber of evil.
Sigh!
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To his credit, Nehru never demolished a dilapidated mosque nor rebuilt the temple that was supposedly there...not even the Somnath Temple in...ahem...Gujarat...Nehru's slogan was...ahem...Development:
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Nehru was busy building dams, steel mills, and laying the foundation stone of the first IIT in India at Kharagpur...bless his soul!
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...I had learnt this lesson more than half a century ago as a cub reporter. I thought I had got a good story while interviewing an astrologer who flaunted his credentials as one who advised the former finance minister, T. T. Krishnamachari, on how to order his life. And to make the point that he was no run of the mill soothsayer, he was ensconced at the Claridges Hotel. My report did not see the light of the day as the minister moved heaven and earth to have it spiked when he got a scent of it. He knew that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru would take a dim view of one of his senior ministers patronising astrologers...
...S. Nihal Singh, DC Wednesday 23 October 2013
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It is a different matter that the said Claridges Hotel Astrologer couldn't save TTK from being dismissed, curiously in the wake of Nehru's own son-in-law taking a leading role in exposing the first scam in Free India:
...On the other hand, independent India’s first momentous political scam
broke in 1957 with what seems, in comparison, to be a pebble hurled at
the side of an ocean liner – and yet it forced the swift resignation of a
finance minister, T. T. Krishnamachari...
The Nehru Era was as different from his daughter's as Felis Tigris is from Felis Domesticus.
To the best of my knowledge Nehru never visited an astrologer or a swamiji even after the debilitating drumming he got from the Chinese in 1962.
On the other hand, well after she won the only decisive war of Free India in 1971, his daughter visited a Swamiji when she lost power for a brief period:
...Some years ago, during a visit to the South, she had gone to see the Kamakoti Acharya. Later, when I referred to her darshan, she explained, "Some of my friends in Madras persuaded me to call on the Swami. They took me somewhere and made me sit on a bench in a narrow passage, and wait for a long time, with a well in front of me. It was uncomfortable, sitting on that bench. Eventually the Swami appeared on the other side of the well. We remained in silence looking at each other across the well. My friends whispered that I should seek his guidance for any problem that I might have. I really had no questions but they pressed me. So I put him a very long question in English. I spoke to him of the travails, sufferings, and hardships of our countrymen since the beginning of history, and asked why it was so and what would help. He listened attentively but gave no reply since he was under a vow of silence but I felt I had an answer. There were no words of course but it did not mean there was no communication."...
...RKN in 'Indira Gandhi'
Perhaps Indira Gandhi was never told why there was a well between her and her Swamiji. The secret of the well was that it served as a barrier between a widow wearing her prohibited hair and the Swamiji who would be breaking the rules of his spiritual reign had he sat in front of her without this artifice...the water in the well acted as an absorber of evil.
Sigh!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
To his credit, Nehru never demolished a dilapidated mosque nor rebuilt the temple that was supposedly there...not even the Somnath Temple in...ahem...Gujarat...Nehru's slogan was...ahem...Development:
...When Sardar Patel, K. M. Munshi and other leaders of the Congress
went to Gandhi with the proposal of reconstructing the Somnath temple,
Gandhi blessed the move, but suggested that the funds for the
construction should be collected from the public and the temple should
not be funded by the state. He expressed that he was proud to associate
himself to the project of renovation of the temple[17] But soon both Gandhi and Sardar Patel died and the task of reconstruction of the temple continued under K. M. Munshi, who was the Minister for Food and Civil Supplies in the Nehru Government.[17]
The ruins were pulled down in October 1950 and the mosque present at that site was shifted few miles away.[18] In May 1951, Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the Republic of India, invited by K M Munshi, performed the installation ceremony for the temple.[19]
Rajendra Prasad said in his address "It is my view that the
reconstruction of the Somnath Temple will be complete on that day when
not only a magnificent edifice will arise on this foundation, but the
mansion of India's prosperity will be really that prosperity of which
the ancient temple of Somnath was a symbol.".[20] He added "The Somnath temple signifies that the power of reconstruction is always greater than the power of destruction"[20]
This episode created a serious rift between the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru,
who saw the movement for reconstruction of the temple as an attempt at
Hindu revivalism and the President Rajendra Prasad and Union Minister K.
M. Munshi, who saw in its reconstruction, the fruits of freedom and the
reversal of past injustice done to Hindus.[20]
...wiki
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Nehru was busy building dams, steel mills, and laying the foundation stone of the first IIT in India at Kharagpur...bless his soul!
He called these the temples of modern India...with a wink perhaps...
I guess I belong to the Nehru Era...Father was the Head Master of our High School at Muthukur in 1957 when TTK was scared of his weakness for Claridges Hotel Astrologers being exposed to Nehru by the cub reporter Nihal Singh.
Father was religious in his own way but he kept his religion wrapped up in his home. He would do Sandhyavandanam three times a day without fail. And before each spell he would wear the sacred ashes (vibhuti) on his forehead, chest and shoulders. But, before starting to his school, he took care to wipe out all those caste marks...he was a proud Government Servant and felt that Nehru would be displeased if his Government Servants showed off their religion in their official premises.
We didn't have any Muslim teacher but there were a few Christian teachers. I recall one Ranemma and one Laxmaiah. Ranemma knew that her HM wouldn't like her religious symbols to be exposed in the school. So she was liked by Father...she was married, and on the wrong side of 40 too.
And then there was this new lady teacher, Kanakavalli, young, fair, unwed, buxom and well-endowed, who came to the school on the first day with a cute pearl chain hanging from her neck and falling on her blouse, visibly displaying a Cross as its pendant. We of course liked her with it, but I guess Father sent a message to her through Ranemma to hide her Cross...which she had to do thinly but reluctantly...she was on deputation from the Coles Ackerman Memorial (CAM) Christian Missionary School at Nellore.
And later, in 1965, I went to IIT KGP...the temple that Nehru built. And the then Director was Prof S R Sengupta, as forbidding as Father in his outlook. There was no question of any Swamiji either visiting IIT in his official capacity or being received by the Director.
Things changed dramatically by 1976. Indira Gandhi took over and imposed her Emergency and we had a Director right from under her nose, New Delhi. But he was young and a democrat and likeable. So we never felt the excesses of the Emergency at IIT KGP.
But then one day there was this ardent Bhakta of the Kamakoti Acharya in our faculty. And he invited the younger Acharya for a Visit and an Address to the young IITians. And, wonder of wonders, he managed to convince the Director to permit the Reception and Address in the stupendous newly-commissioned Open Air Theater in the heart of IIT KGP...something Father would never have dreamed of in his school at Muthukur in the Nehru Era...
And I was curious to have a look at the proceedings...I was neither a devotee nor a believer but wanted to see the fun.
And lo and behold...I saw the Director himself arriving and ceremonially getting seated in the front row by the Bhakta...I was more taken aback than amused...IIT was funded totally by the Indira Gandhi Government then.
And, to top it all, midway through the function, the said Bhakta went up the podium, whispered a few words to the Acharya and started beckoning the Director with his hands to come up the stage and bow down to the Eminence and take his blessings.
And the young Director, taken aback like me, pretended not to see, but turned around as if the call was for someone else. But the Bhakta was insistent, ran down the stage, reached the front row, and took the unwilling Director by hand on to the stage. And the young Diro couldn't ask him to go to hell...he had already committed two primary errors of protocol...giving the Open Air Theater for a blatantly religious Do, and gracing it with his official presence...a thing Father would never have done for fear or favor.
That about sums up the Great Divide between Nehru and his Daughter...to say nothing of their successor regimes.
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