Bits Of History In My Album

By

Amar Nath Wadehra

Rummaging through my ancient trunk I come across an almost tattered album. I had forgotten all about it. Life’s vicissitudes had erased the memory of a kinetic past that was at once exhilarating and painful. The heady student days at Ludhiana’s Arya College were a curious mix of idealism, passion and a desire for concrete action. Freedom was around the corner, so was the country’s division. Funnily, my best friends at the college were Muslims, and yet we were on the opposite sides of the politico-communal divide. While I would join anti-partition demonstrations, my friends would shout pro-Pakistan slogans.  Could a situation be more oxymoronic?

The photograph of Prof. MK Rasgotra, who was our English professor and later on became India’s Foreign Secretary, in the album reminded me when I was a member of the ‘editorial board’ of the first ever magazine published by our college.
 
I have a photograph of Sardar Patel and Dr. Rajendra Prasad sharing a settee. One accomplished the near-impossible task of hammering India into a cohesive political entity; the other in his own way exalted the office of the Republic’s President.  One can also see Nehru talking to Vijay Lakshmi Pandit – the first woman to chair the UN General Assembly. 

 In 1949 I had joined the Indian Air Force. There are assorted other photographs collected during my varicolored career in the IAF: Nehru and Nasser – two of the three giants of the Non Aligned Movement – the third being Marshal Tito. NAM is truly a dream gone sour; a boat that has lost its moorings in the post Cold War scenario. With idealism as its staple diet the movement was expected to bring sanity to a world which seemed to sit atop a nuclear powder keg, with doomsday just an accidental explosion away. Today India herself has become a nuclear weapon state. It has joined the atomic weapons race that Nehru had consciously avoided.

Then there is Krishna Menon mesmerizing airmen at the AF Station Jodhpur with his eloquence. Hello, and what is Chou Enlai doing in my album? Yes, those were the heady ‘Hindi-Chini bhai bhai’ days. At the Palam airport he is being received by Nehru et al. Ironically, 1998 is the centenary year of both Menon and Chou Enlai; one a flamboyant impulsive and highly opinionated individual, and the other cool, calculating and extremely polite. On his secret visit to China on 10th July 1971 Henry Kissinger had found Chou ‘subtle, brilliant, indirect and a politician of vision…’ Born in 1898, Chou Enlai, a consummate pragmatist, had played a vital role in the modern Chinese history. One of the earliest members of the Chinese Communist Party, in the late 1930s and 1940s he used to entertain many Americans in Yenan and Chungkin. He also led the Communist negotiating team to the unsuccessful talks with the Nationalists and Americans in the immediate post-World War-II period. Contrarily, Krishna Menon’s ego often superceded national interests. When our defenses were overrun by the Chinese he reportedly remarked, “Let them come to the plains, then we shall teach them a lesson”!

 
Menon and Fernandez have one thing in common – both love to see their names emblazoned in the media headlines. However, while Menon adored the Dragon, George Fernandes would rather slay it. No prizes for guessing who of the two is our uniformed fraternity’s bete noire.  The jeep scandal of the fifties, and the 1962 rout [there is no other word for it] ensured permanent infamy for Menon. However, Fernandez too blotted his copybook a bit thanks to the Bhagwat episode.

Reluctantly, I close the album. Many a golden opportunity lost, many an invaluable lesson learnt from blunders of yore. In my twilight years I have but one wish. May the once famous promise to wipe tears off every eye come true in my lifetime. Nuclear might, power politics, high falutin posturing… all become meaningless when a hungry street urchin cries in the streets, when a hapless woman is burnt at the dowry stakes, when a blameless undertrial languishes in the gaol, when a faceless mercenary snuffs out innocent lives…  while our elite plays Nero.

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