Honeyed tongue

I got to know Siddhartha Shankar Ray — who died in Calcutta on November 6 at the age of 90 — through his wife, Maya, whom I met over 60 years ago in London. Maya’s father, Dr Bhattacharya, was Krishna Menon’s doctor before Menon became the high commissioner. It is not known to many that Menon was a drug addict. He was known to doze off at public functions held in the afternoon. He did so at a lunch given to editors of British newspapers who were to meet Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Half-way through the meal, Menon, who had had nothing besides the soup, closed his eyes and rested his head on his chest. Panditji chided me: “You don’t look after your boss. Can’t you see he is not well!” Nehru did not know that Menon was not unwell, only doped.

Bhattacharya was also our family doctor. That is how I got to know his family. Years later, I ran into Mrs Bhattacharya at the Taj Hotel book store. She told me that Maya had married Barrister Ray, who had a flourishing legal practice in the Calcutta High Court and was also the president of the Bengal Congress Committee. Soon afterwards, Ray was elected the chief minister of West Bengal.

Some months later, some Sikh association of Calcutta invited me to speak on Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary at the Great Eastern Hotel, where the chief minister and his wife were to be the chief guests. I flew to Calcutta and arrived at the venue of the meeting just in time. The hall was packed. Siddhartha and his wife were already on the dais, being garlanded by the hosts. When I got on to the stage, Maya greeted me with a Punjabi-style japhee (embrace). It met with a thunderous applause. I shook hands with Siddhartha.

Thereafter, whenever Siddhartha came to Bombay for some meeting, Maya would come over to my flat and we would spend the evenings together. I was still living in Bombay, editing The Illustrated Weekly of India when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency and put all opposition leaders in jail. Siddhartha played the key role in providing the legal requirements necessary to suspend democratic norms. The country was heading for disintegration as opposition leaders, including Jayaprakash Narayan, had crossed the limits of protest prescribed by democracy. They prevented elected members of legislatures from going to assemblies, asked people to stop paying taxes, and instigated the police and the army to revolt. There was chaos everywhere: calls for hartals, closing down of schools and colleges, rowdy processions, with people smashing cars and shop windows.

Overnight, all this came to a stop. Law and order was restored; schools and colleges re-opened, trains began to run on time. There was a huge sigh of relief. People tend to forget that when the Emergency was first imposed, it was welcomed by a vast majority of the people, including an eminent Gandhian like Acharya Vinoba Bhave. It was only after the Emergency began to be misused to settle personal scores by Mrs Gandhi and other members of her family, particularly Maneka Gandhi, her parents and husband, that it earned a bad name. The country never forgave them. Siddhartha agreed with me.

We met next after Mrs Gandhi’s ignominious defeat and return to power. After being sacked from The Illustrated Weekly, I found a young patron in Sanjay Gandhi. He had me nominated to the Rajya Sabha and appointed editor of The Hindustan Times. I had barely taken over as the editor when I received summons from the Allahabad High Court to answer charges of contempt of court for publishing an article on corruption among the judges. Siddhartha appeared for me. It was a two-judge bench. The court was packed with lawyers. For the first time, I heard Siddhartha’s honeyed tongue plead my case. The senior judge cut him short and said, “Mr Ray, we have heard you, we give your clients time till tomorrow to either tender an apology or go to jail.”

We returned to our hotel. Siddhartha told me, “I am sure I can get you out on bail. But it may take a few days. You have to decide whether or not you are willing to spend some time in prison or tender an apology.” I did not want to make myself a martyr. I opted for an apology. The next morning, both of us — the author of the article and I — tendered our apologies and were let off.

My last meeting with Siddhartha remains imprinted on my mind. Rajiv Gandhi had appointed him the governor of the Punjab, which was then under President’s Rule. He was able to bring back peace to the state, which had been in turmoil for some years. Siddhartha felt that Operation Blue Star was an avoidable blunder. What the Punjab needed was more industry to assure employment to young men. His formula worked. The President’s Rule was revoked and elections were held. The Akalis swept the polls and Surjit Singh Barnala formed the government.

I received an urgent call from Maya asking me to come over at once as her husband needed my help. He sent me his personal plane to fly to and from Chandigarh. I got there in the afternoon. Ray wanted me to help him pronounce Punjabi words while swearing in the ministers next morning. He had the text in Roman and Bengali that was barely five lines long. I went over the words many times with him but it was a lost battle. Next morning, I witnessed the swearing-in of the cabinet in the Raj Bhavan lawns. It was quite a sight. A six-foot-four-inches tall Bengali babu with a stoop, wearing glasses, towering over stalwart, turbaned, bearded sardars being sworn in by turns. He made a hash of the Punjabi we had rehearsed the evening before. “How was it?” he asked me when it was over.

“Very good.” I replied. “I could not tell whether you were speaking Punjabi or Bengali.”