One afternoon in the summer of 2003, George Fernandes called me to see him at the Defence Ministry office in South block. The topic of the discussion was his escalating differences with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
But the discussion somehow meandered all way to his childhood and the remarkable journey of his life.
Fernandes was in an emotional state due to the growing bickering in the Janata Dal (U) and at one point tears brimmed in his eyes when he started recalling how he had tried to build the party which was now treating him as a pariah.
Somehow that opened the floodgate of memory in him. Among the many milestones, he recalled, I’d never forget a transformative one when landed in Mumbai (then Bombay) in late 1950s after leaving his home for good and spent the first night on a pavement. “Someone kicked me late at night and demanded me to pay for occupying the pavement. It was the time I realised that even the streets were not free for the homelesss poor. That incident changed my life forever,” he had said.
This was sometimes after he had left the seminary at Mangalore where he was undergoing training to become Catholic priest.
He went on to become a union leader in Mumbai and, was a Member of Parliament from South Bombay.
During around two hours of his journey down the memory lane, George talked at length about his great escapade during the Emergency, his numerous adventure during those “dark days”, and his associates of those difficult periods.
A photograph of Fernandes, with his shock of unkempt hair, raising a manacled hand in defiance remains one of the most enduring images of those times.
He recalled how one night when he was travelling from Ranchi to Patna by car, the gun-wielding Maoists stopped his vehicle, but no sooner they identified him, they escorted him all the way to safety zone. “None will harm you, if they know you love them,” he said. The sentence that still rings in my ear.
I’d be visiting him residence Krishna Menon Marg frequently when UPA I was power at the Centre. Even when the ruling alliance looked formidable and everything seemed going smoothly for it, George never gave up hope that it could be brought down any day. He would be forever in touch with leaders outside and within the UPA to engulf the ruling alliance in crisis. “I’m now old and still I don’t give up hope. If others have the same spirit, this Government will fall under the weight of its corruption and bickering in weeks,” he would say.
An avid book lover, George would receive a copy of every interesting book that was published in India from one of his acquaintances. I visited him once at midnight to convey something urgent at the request of one of his party colleagues. My pretext was that I’d left my glasses at his place when I visited him during the day. Even at that hour, I found him lost in some tome of history. When I conveyed him the missive, he immediately reacted and issued necessary instruction to deny party ticket to someone who had supposedly met UPA chairpersons Sonia Gandhi during the day. That averted a major crisis within the JD(U).
George was pained the way he was treated by his party colleagues when he was removed from any decision-making position in the party. He would often recall how he dreamt to make JD(U) a mass movement. When the crisis within the party peaked one day he talked about his bond with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and said if forced to move out of his own party he would always be welcomed by “neta ji”.
One of India’s most firebrand union leaders who remained a socialist activist even in his several stints as Union Minister, George was a rebel from youth and agitated for better facilities and food for students in the seminary.
Fernandes life was also a bundle of contradiction and irony. As union leader he organised India’s biggest railway strikes and later became Railway Minister. A committed socialist he became the Industry Minister and was locked in a bitter acrimony with Dhirubhai Ambani. As Industry Minister he also forced Coca-Cola and IBM to leave India in 1977. He disliked the RSS and later embraced the BJP. The biggest of all ironies was the fact while no one ever questioned his personal honesty, he had to resign as Defence Minister due to corruption charges against associates.
A man who supported every type if agitation and struggle, George was simplicity personified. His official residence was open to everyone anytime. Dressed mostly in a crumpled kurta pajama and slippers, he would look no different from one of those hundreds of visitors who would meet him every day to seek help and solace.
A man who created an international furore by his famous remark that China was India’s number one enemy, Fernandes will be fondly remembered by the
Army jawans as a Defence Minister who truly cared for them-he visited Siachen more than 30 times.
A fighter to the core, Ferandes will always remind us of the memorable quote from Hemingway’s THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA — Man can be destroyed but not defeated.
