Dec. 27: Narain Datt Tiwari, the 86-year-old governor of Andhra Pradesh who resigned today, is the latest in a long list of Indian politicians who have come under the shadow of sleaze in a country which remains squeamish about the private lives of public people.

Politicians cutting across party lines are known to indulge in “socially unacceptable behaviour” and “inappropriate relationships”.

However, in most cases, the sleaze escapes the public glare because of an unwritten “public is public, private is private” consensus among the political class, intelligentsia, civil society, media and judiciary.

“Philandering” is not a recent phenomenon in India’s political system. Apart from the “intense friendship” of Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, there have been numerous cases of politicians straying from the straight and the narrow.

Nehru’s critic Ram Manohar Lohia had a rather open live-in relationship with a lady lecturer of Delhi University but it never affected his public image.

Old-timers feel parliamentary democracy may have been at a nascent stage then, but the personal lives of Nehru, Lohia and others were respected because they were devoid of sleaze or abuse of power.

Former Union minister and Congress leader Vasant Sathe had once defended Lohia, pointing out that the socialist leader was honest and never lied. “It was an alternative morality, Lohia style,” Sathe had observed, making a distinction between unconventional relations and Tiger Woods-style promiscuity.

Whispers of sleaze were first heard when a governor of Madhya Pradesh who had served in Nehru’s cabinet was said to have violated the seventh commandment and got entangled with his personal assistant in a Clinton-type situation decades before the American President earned notoriety.

Next came photographs of Jagjivan Ram’s son Suresh Ram’s sexual encounter with Sushma Chaudhury, a Delhi University student, which were published in Surya magazine, then edited by Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Maneka Gandhi. Her daring publication of the photos ran the risk of violating obscenity laws.

The revealing pictures were published apparently to discredit Jagjivan Ram, who had defected from Mrs Gandhi’s government and helped bring the Janata Party to power in 1977.

Whispers abounded about the proximity of a powerful information and broadcasting minister of the Congress to an actress who shared his name. The actress had once accused him of suggestive remarks when they were on a trip abroad.

A former Congress stalwart who held the posts of Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Union cabinet minister among other positions was accused of inappropriate behaviour. Congress gossip has it that Mrs Gandhi was outraged when this leader reached his wife’s funeral with his girlfriend.

A minister in former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s cabinet had reportedly been found returning from abroad with accessories — dolls, ropes, Spanish Fly and sex toys.

There were also whispers of a senior politician being “rescued” by the Indian embassy in Bangkok when the visiting dignitary reportedly ran out of bahts, the Thai currency, at a massage parlour. The politician was on his way back after attending the funeral of an international leader.

Away from public glare, there have been stories of another governor ordering exceptionally large quantities of honey in the Raj Bhavan every day.

Old-timers recall that Indira Gandhi used to get regular mails narrating stories of moral turpitude of some of her party colleagues.

The then Prime Minister had scant regard for anonymous complaints but used to summon the erring party leader if the objection came from a family member.

Her son Rajiv Gandhi had a reputation of laughing it off while Sonia Gandhi is known to follow the “public is public, private is private” dictum.