Opinion When the flesh is weak
The PMs heart surgery was an open matter but it wasnt always so with heads of state
On June 9,1964,at the end of a 13-day mourning for Jawaharlal Nehru,Lal Bahadur Shastri was sworn in as the countrys second prime minister. A week earlier the Congress parliamentary party had unanimously elected him its leader. At the end of the month he was scheduled to be in London for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference to which considerably more importance was attached then than is the case now,with what is called CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet). But that was not to be. The prime minister fell ill. Forced to stay at home,he deputed T. T. Krishnamachari and Indira Gandhi jointly to represent him at Marlborough House.
What followed was in complete contrast with the total transparency that has been meticulously observed about Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs heart bypass surgery. There was absolute silence about Shastris health. No government spokesperson or doctor treating the prime minister or any other official would even discuss the subject. Obviously,even after nearly two decades of independence,democratic India was still following the ancient taboo on any discussion of the rulers health.
Unfortunately,those that had issued the gag order failed to realize that whenever news is blacked out,rumour takes over. And the way rumours are blown out of all proportions,especially in this country,has to be seen to be believed. Eventually the penny dropped,and the Shastri family decided that something needed to be done to control the damage.
Consequently,the prime ministers eldest son appointed himself as some kind of a surgeon-general of the country and started briefing the press (there was no media then). At his very first venture,he fed the assembled journalists potato cutlets,which,he claimed,his father had had for breakfast. There was no hiding the scepticism of his listeners.
In far-away London,Shastris illness had a different kind of consequence. On becoming PM,he,like Nehru,had kept the external affairs portfolio to himself. But,in the changed circumstances,he transferred this responsibility to Swaran Singh,and a very successful and long lasting foreign minister the Sardar proved to be. However,Shastri had not informed,let alone consult,Indira Gandhi about the change in advance. She learnt of it from Britains Sunday newspapers and made no attempt to hide her anger over this discourtesy.
However,all this was laughed away after Shastri recovered and returned to work. As usual,he was highly accessible and chided several of us,collectively and individually,for taking too much interest in his health. I ventured to point out to him that the prime ministers health was the nations concern. He chuckled graciously and volunteered the information that what was made out to be a minor ailment was,in fact,a cardiac problem. Though only 58 at that time,he had had a heart attack earlier. The third one at Tashkent 18 months later of which I have written on this page already killed him.
Shastri never said so but some of his ardent admirers did assert that Nehrus illnesses,too,were usually hidden or underplayed. This was untrue,if only because Nehru was blessed with exceptionally good health. Until his last two years he hardly suffered any illness worth the name. In fact,into his seventies he never took a lift but ran up the stairs,whether in the South Block or Yojana Bhavan or wherever. On a visit to China in 1954,the prime minister and his party had to visit a memorial to Sun Yat Sun at Nanking that could be reached only after climbing nearly 300 steps. Nehru was cheerfully coming down after placing a wreath there while his personal physician,huffing and puffing,had managed to climb up only halfway. Ditto most of the press party accompanying the PM.
Only during his illness in the last four months of his life was there some attempt to camouflage what was wrong. There was no way to conceal the stroke Nehru suffered at Bhubaneswar during the Congress session in January 1964. For quite some time after other Congress leaders had returned to Delhi,he had to stay on in Orissas capital. Eventually,he arrived and the press was invited to cover his arrival though not at the usual spot at Palam but at some distance. This mystery was resolved when the prime minister arrived seated in his car,and spoke to us at some length but a little haltingly. Obviously,his recovery from the stroke was not yet complete. The day he could stand up and walk his photograph in the garden of the Teen Murti House was published across the world. However,his limp was perceptible.
By comparison,what happened in the case of President Ayub Khan of Pakistan after the field marshal started recovering from his stroke had a touch of the bizarre. It sent a wave of mirth in the country. The Pakistani establishment,anxious to assure the Pakistanis that Ayub was fit and fine published a photograph of him,standing up and reading,of all publications,Readers Digest. Some of Ayubs cohorts angrily asked his chief confidant,adviser and publicist,Altaf Gauhar,as to why he had handed the president this particular journal. Could he not choose something better? Gauhars curt reply was: I had to establish the pictures date.
The writer is a political commentator
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