This excerpt from the book ‘Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi’ by Bertil Falk tells the story of the first general election in India in 1952.
Rae Bareli was the place where Feroze Gandhi was ultimately launched to prove his abilities at a national level. But Rae Bareli was not new to him. Some years back, he was involved in another electoral incident, which Onkar Nath Bhargava remembers. “In 1946 the elections to the Central and Provincial Legislatures were held. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai came to assess his prospects for the election from the then reserved constituency of the Muslims from Sheogarh in the district of Rae Bareli. Raja Sahib Sheogarh organised a meeting of Muslims. All the prominent Congressmen were there and they said that the Muslim League candidate, Shamin, would lose his security. Feroze, who had a great political foresight, suggested with his characteristic frankness to Kidwai Saheb that he should not contest election from there as in his opinion there was little chance of his success. But Kidwai Saheb and other Congressmen did not listen to his advice and eventually Rafi Saheb lost the election from Sheogarh constituency.”
Feroze was an Allahabadwallah, but it was not possible for him to contest from his home ground; the reason simply being that he had competitors impossible to match with. The Congress tickets for the constituencies in Allahabad were earmarked for Jawaharlal Nehru and Masuriya Din. And there were so many others like Lal Bahadur Shastri who had much greater reason than Feroze to claim a ticket from Allahabad. (Shastri was not elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952, but to the Upper House, Rajya Sabha.) Allahabad was, as we know, not short of important Congress leaders. It was out of question that Feroze could stand as a candidate there. Thus Feroze Gandhi, like so many other freedom fighters from Allahabad, had to seek out another constituency to make his bid for the Lok Sabha.
The person who brought Feroze to Rae Bareli and took him under his wing was Rafi Ahmed Kidwai. Bhargava told me, “Rafi Ahmed Kidwai was another great leader in the country. He was a top-ranking statesman and a capable person who led a group, whose members were called ‘Rafians’, not ‘ruffians’. Feroze Gandhi was one of the important Rafians, so when he could not contest from Allahabad, Rafi brought him here. Since Rafi had done good work in Rae Bareli during the freedom struggle, he was much respected there.
“When Rafi Ahmed Kidwai introduced Feroze Gandhi, describing all his family connections to the Nehrus, it was a big event for the people of Rae Bareli. They wanted a very strong and well-connected leader, so there was a great deal of enthusiasm for getting him here. We were a little bit outside and had no strong leader. The people of Rae Bareli were happy to send such an outstanding person to the Parliament.” Bhargava continues, “I myself met Feroze for the first time in 1952, when he came here to file his nomination for that first general election of the Indian Parliament.”
Feroze Gandhi worked very hard to reach his goal and he created a very effective campaign process. “Indira also reached Rae Bareli and stayed there for several days to assist her husband in the election work. During the hectic election tours in 1952, Jawaharlal too, came to Rae Bareli and addressed three or four meetings in Feroze Gandhi’s constituency.”
Then an interesting incident took place — it was when Nehru talked to Feroze with ill-disguised disapproval. Bhargava writes, “Jawaharlal, on observing Indira, asked Feroze how many meetings he was holding per day. Indira’s health has been adversely affected, he remarked. Feroze kept mum. Indira smilingly replied, ‘Achchi to hun Papu’ (Papa, I am all right).’ The two men’s tug-of-war when it came to Indira surfaced for a split second in front of election workers.
When I met R.K. Pandey in 1997, he was the president of the Freedom Fighters Association in Rae Bareli and the treasurer of the Freedom Fighters’ Association in Uttar Pradesh as well as a member of All India Freedom Fighters’ Association. He remembers well the days when Feroze Gandhi and his wife carried out Feroze’s first electoral campaign in Rae Bareli. At that time Feroze Gandhi stayed at Laxmi Hotel while Indira Gandhi stayed at Bayli Ganj. They were campaigning at different places and they communicated through letters about each other’s programmes.
Pandey tells us, “The Congress appointed me for the security of Indiraji and I stayed with her all day, when she went in one direction and Feroze Gandhi in another… Feroze Sahib went to the villages and spoke very good Hindi. I had never seen a person as handsome as him. Because of Indiraji, he was treated like a brother-in-law in the villages, where people would even wash his feet. He was given a lot of respect and whatever he said, everybody would show their support by raising their hands. Indira was already popular before Feroze came because she was the daughter of Nehruji and she had also been here in 1930 during the Salt agitation. After Feroze was elected from here and he started doing all the work for Rae Bareli, he became more popular.
“As time passed, Feroze was treated as the major leader of our district. Whatever the people of the district asked him to do [something for them] in Delhi, he would do it. He did so much work here that he will be remembered for thousands of years. His children Rajiv and Sanjay also came here. Whatever development work you can see in the district was started from the time of Feroze Sahib. The district has a distinctive mark of Feroze Gandhi.
“Feroze had surveyed the entire district and there is no village or tehsil which is not connected by paved roads. He did all that. This was a very backward district and there were no industries here. Feroze Sahib had a survey done to decide what kind of industries could be set up here and then he brought with him industrialists from the outside. There are so many industries in our district now, such as, we did not have a milk factory but Feroze Sahib during the Green Revolution brought in cattle on an aeroplane, cattle that gave 40-50 litres of milk every day. He set up a milk plant near Thiphola; a much improved version of which is now in Salon, where the dairy farm is spread over many kilometres and there are thousands of cattle. It was later taken over by Indiraji, but was started by Feroze. The development of education, roads, water-canals, businesses — all this was started by Feroze during his time. We will not be able to give the same amount of respect that we give to him to anyone else.”
