Dying unwept and unsung

By Inder Malhotra

Some may consider it rather late in the day for me to write about B.K. Nehru, one of the most distinguished Indians of our times and a rare blend of a civil servant, diplomat, Governor, financial guru and, in his later years, something of an elder statesman. But it is not so. It is not merely that a lot yet needs to be said about his many qualities hitherto noticed only scantly.

The more pertinent point is that we Indians are not only disinterested in history but are also strangely remiss about acknowledging our debt of gratitude to those who have done the country yeoman service in the past. Only at the demise of someone currently in power, no matter how mediocre he or she might have been, do we mourn extravagantly, often by declaring a public holiday. This tragic trend has been accentuated, as Mr. H.Y. Sharada Prasad has underscored, by the virtual disappearance from major newspapers of the obituary columns.

Nearly two years ago, Lieutenant-General Harbaksh Singh, an authentic military hero, had died practically unwept and unsung. So had more recently another eminent civil servant, Dharma Vira at 94. He had served as Cabinet Secretary, Governor of Punjab and West Bengal during turbulent times and Chairman of the National Police Commission.

Let's revert to B.K. Nehru who was born at Allahabad in a house called Anand Bhavan, later renamed Swaraj Bhavan, owned by his uncle, Motilal Nehru. Educated at the then famed university in the same city and later at London School of Economics, he joined the coveted `heaven-born' Indian Civil Service (ICS) in 1934. He made his mark as a competent and intrepidly independent-minded officer at an early age.

At the time of Independence, he was a Joint Secretary in the Finance Ministry but wielded more authority than Secretaries to the Government do today or have done for three decades. His intimate association with the international financial institutions began then and it was in this field that he was to do the country proud.

With foreign exchange reserves having risen to $ 45 billion, few remember the crippling foreign exchange crunch of the mid-Fifties that had imperilled the execution of the Second Five Year Plan and the formulation of the Third. The worried Government decided to appoint B.K. Commissioner-General for Economic Affairs based in Washington. His mission was to mobilise the maximum possible foreign aid. He accomplished it so brilliantly that the then U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, remarked: ``With the possible exception of Genghis Khan, no one has moved so much gold from one part of the world to another as has B.K.'' A no less remarkable feat of his was to have persuaded Morarji Desai, then Finance Minister, to allow liquor to be served at a reception given in honour of the apostle of prohibition.

Thereafter B.K. was appointed Ambassador to the U.S. much to the resentment of his colleagues in the Foreign Service several of whom were very senior to him. But his work spoke for itself and earned him the longest tenure in the prized diplomatic post. Sadly, it was during this assignment that he had the ``worst day of my life'' when he had to deliver to JFK Nehru's pathetic letter asking for military aid to counter the Chinese attack in 1962.

During the Emergency, when he was High Commissioner to Britain, B.K.'s lot was unenviable. Privately he was advising Indira Gandhi to lift it (and to restrain her son Sanjay). Publicly he was duty-bound to defend it.

In the summer of 1984, as Governor of Kashmir, B.K. firmly refused to dismiss the Ministry of Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Indira Gandhi transferred him to Gujarat. I asked him why he was accepting the transfer instead of resigning. He replied that there was a point beyond which he could not annoy her - a feeling that grew much the stronger after her assassination barely three months later.

Stories about B.K. Nehru's personal magnetism, professional excellence and love for good food in company both congenial and convivial are legion. But let me conclude what is perhaps his most profound comment on India's march from the Raj to the golden jubilee of the Swaraj.

On the day young B.K. arrived in Lahore at his maternal grandfather's house as the youngest member of the `steel-frame', all of Punjab's notables had gathered to congratulate and bless him. The most prominent of them, Malik Sir Umar Hayat Khan Tiwana, was enraged when the young man told him that he would enforce ``complete equality before the law''. Nawab Tiwana cursed the British and sternly told B.K. that a hakim (ruler) who ``could not help his family and friends and harm his enemies was no good at all''. A badly shaken B.K. dismissed the grandee as an ``oddity'' not worth listening to.

Sixty-three years later, he was to record in his memoirs that having `painfully (watched) the gradual destruction of the democratic and constitutional structure', he had realised that Tiwana was `no freak at all' but represented the values and attitudes so ubiquitous today. Independent India, B.K. noted ruefully, was `practising the precepts which the Nawab had prescribed for me.'

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