Of Children’s Day and winter waifs

By Rooma Mehra

ONE evening last December, I got a little late while returning home from a project. I sat huddled in a corner of the auto-rickshaw clutching my warm Kulu shawl to myself. I was wearing a pullover under it.

Yet it seemed as if a frenzy was overtaking me. My teeth were chattering. Everytime I could push back the thought of my heater at home and a hot cup of tea, I managed to concentrate on the scene around me at the Mool Chand crossing. Mostly office-goers, all shiverting under their woollens, I was sure. Then I heard a whining sound on the other side of the auto-rickshaw. A little girl, about six or seven years old, naked on top, was begging.

Her nose was understandably running. The whining might have been contrived, but the tears were not. Horrified, I gave her some money.

As I felt the chilly wind on my face again, I groped once again for the corner of my shawl and realised I was suddenly not so cold anymore.

The next day, I happily carried with me an old sweater on my way back home. The little girl seemed to have recognised a sympathiser in me and came running for money.

I quickly caught hold of her and slipped the sweater on her. It reached her ankles. Satisfied, I asked the driver to move.

Glancing back, I saw her standing there with an unfathomable expression on her face. I had done my good deed for the day and slept well that night.

During the next two days I looked around but did not see her anywhere. On the fourth day I saw her again. She was wearing nothing on top. She was shivering, her nose was running and there were tears in her eyes.

I called her over. She took a few steps towards me, then seeing who it was, decided against it and disappeared into the traffic.

What I was sure of now was that this was obviously an ingenious sympathy-extortion trick, thought of by the parents or relatives of the child. I suddenly had second, queasy thoughts about the missing arm of another child-beggar..terrible visions of Dickens’ Fagin and his Oliver Twists coming to life on the Delhi roads in front of my eyes.

I had the easily explicable urge to immediately bring to the notice of some or the other authority responsible enough to take action against such cruelty being meted out to children, in front of dozens of voyeurs of the whole drama.

For two whole weeks, I carried a camera with me trying to get a photograph..only to find at the end of the second week a sudden rise in the evening temperature..and the little girl now covered with some kind of a tattered garment.

The question that rankled in my mind was, how many hapless children who were forced into this act, succumbed to the cold every year.

The thought that depressed me was not that there is such abject poverty in my country but that there were so many voyeurs to this gruesome tamasha and while most of us will plead helplessness in this regard, was there not an authority in here capable of taking action against such exploitation of children, assuming that atleast a few out of the thousands of spectators on the roads would have taken the trouble to lodge a report.

This cold December month, on my various trips on the Delhi roads, I find the same scene being re-enacted with ominously increasing frequency.

The venues and faces are different but the "costume-designers" and "the spectators" seem to be the same.

I find myself wondering about the fate of the little girl who had held my attention last year..and I wonder about the ultimate fate of these shivering, naked little waifs let loose at strategic points on the cold Delhi roads.

The newspapers the day after "Children’s Day" on November 14, told me that the government had announced the formation of a National Commission for Children to go into all aspects of development and problems concerning children. Dare one hope? Or will this also remain an abstract, sound-good announcement for Children’s Day that will perhaps never take a concrete shape.

 
Memories of P.N. Haksar

By Mulk Raj Anand

MY first memories of P.N. Haksar are from the early thirties when he was studying for the Bar and I was teaching in the Workers’ Educational Association in the East End of London on current political events, and frequenting Toynby Hall Centre, a socialist set-up.

I met P.N. Haksar in V.K. Krishna Menon’s India League Office where some of us helped once a week to address letters about political events in India, which were despatched from that modest centre to well-wishers of India, once a week.

Among others who did the grind were K.S. Shalwankar, the then correspondent of The Hindu, Madras, Sunder Kabadi, who represented Bombay Chronicle, and Feroz Gandhi, who wrote for National Herald, Lucknow.

As we did not adjourn to a pub after work in the India League Office, we went to eat curry in an Indian restaurant started by a namesake of Menon. This food was "real hot curry", which the Tommies relished. We thought of inviting each other to our boarding houses where we cooked Indian dishes by permission of our gracious landladies — P.N. Haksar excelled in cooking and invited us frequently.

P.N. Haksar had a room in a boarding-house in a Swiss cottage in the suburbs. I was not far in Regents Park Road, so I often went to lunch with him on Sundays. After lunch, we walked in the park and discussed political events in India.

In those days British socialist intellectuals, like John Strachy, Herald Laski, Dorathy Woodman, and George Orwell were helping publisher Victor Gollancz.

In view of the rising menace of Hitler’s Fascism, the readers of Victor Gollancz’ Left Book Club had formed small clubs in their own areas. We, the Indian students, had formed one too, which met in small halls in Bloomsbury. P.N. Haksar, an intense scholar of political and social literature, often led the discussion in the Indian students’ book club. He was an avid reader and spent most of his pocket money on buying political books, from which he lent some books to those friends who he knew would give them back.

Sometimes Feroz Gandhi invited our informal club members to a Sunday lunch, to which Indira Gandhi came when ever she was in London.

During these informal meetings, naturally, our hearts and minds were in India. We watched political events, awaiting impatiently the results of negotiations between Mahatma Gandhi and M.A. Jinnah. Most Indian students were non-communal and were critical of Jinnah, who was known to enjoy the patronage of Winston Churchill.

We all felt that the Mac Donald Award of separate electorates, in the Second Round Table Conference, was divisive. We anxiously waited for news of Mahatma Gandhi, who had undertaken a fast unto death in Pune against the separate electorates posed by Ramsay Mac Donald. The Mahatma seemed to know the consequences of separate electorates.

But we dismissed all such talk as a passing phenomenon. Chaudhury Rehmat Ali, who sold pamphlets on Pakistan to students, seemed to us a joke. I remember P.N. Haksar saying, "This pamphleteer may be a joke. But in Uttar Pradesh, the big landlords wanted the rich lands of Punjab and they were backing Jinnah."

I had just then chanced to read Letters on India by Karl Marx, in which he had said that in India there ‘never was property in land’ until Lord Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement Act. By this, he vested ownership of land in India, where everyone, including the small peasants, had rights in the cultivation of land but did not own land. Haksar and I wrote a paper on the consequences of the Muslim landlords backing Jinnah as he foretold their ambition to own large estates in areas like Punjab which they hoped would come into Pakistan.

We felt that Mahatma had a deep foresight into the future and we followed everyone of his moves to change Jinnah’s mind.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s newspaper National Herald was our platform. Haksar wrote articles for the newspaper, which seemed to have come to the attention of Panditji. We were not surprised that when P.N. Haksar came back home and began practising law in the Allahabad High Court, Nehru drew him into drafting memos for the All-India Congress Committee circulars and his own Planning Commission initiatives.

After freedom in 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru needed drafts on various intricate questions and initiatives and he found P.N. Haksar a valuable asset in drafting them. Panditji did not get enough time for detail work on his nation-building activities.

After the demise of Nehru, the new young Prime Minister after Shastri,Indira Gandhi inherited the services of P.N. Haksar, and appointed him Chief Adviser in her office.

In her struggle against the old men of the Syndicate, we knew that P.N. Haksar was advising her step by step. He drafted programmes for reconstruction of the country, which brought her policies into favour, thus limiting the influence of old politicians like Morarji Desai.

Some of us knew that Morarji Desai, particularly, was dead-set against Indira Gandhi. He was known to have said that he will not be ruled by a woman, least of all a widow. And we knew how she stood up to him and asserted that there will be no place for a woman-hater in India of the future.

Although the strategies of Indira Gandhi in gathering support from the people were her own, it was P.N. Haksar who supported her by his memoranda from week to week, in the actions which she took against the challenge of those who asked for "Indira Hatao".

P.N. Haksar was aware of Indira Gandhi’s encouragement of youth, to bring them into leadership. She favoured some of the new young leaders whom her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, patronised. In her enthusiasm for the young, however, she allowed Sanjay Gandhi to take initiatives, which (Haksar felt) were individualistic, like the family planning programme. Either due to her liberal tradition or her sentimental affection for her younger son, she allowed Sanjay to act and say things which, Haksar thought, were inimical to the interest of the country. In fact, he hinted to her that such liberty might give Sanjay Gandhi the licence for actions which would discredit the Prime Minister. Of course, Sanjay Gandhi knew that Haksar was dissuading her from compliance with some of his bold initiatives.

After she declared the Emergency, P.N. Haksar discreetly withdrew from the important office he occupied. He even allowed his wife to write a book on some of the excesses of the Emergency. This bold criticism of the Emergency was resented by Sanjay Gandhi, who was later to make unfounded allegations against Haksar and his family.

While Indira Gandhi was able to persuade, specially after Sanjay’s air crash, some old affiliates, like T.N. Kaul and myself, to forgive and forget, she was not able to reconcile the old adviser into coming back to his old position.

P.N. Haksar, in his advanced years, enjoyed the respect of the Indian intelligentsia. He was nominated the Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University and his advice was sought by various bodies such as the Indian Society for Social Sciences Research. He also founded the Centre for Rural and Industrial Research in Chandigarh, which continues to do pioneering work in the study of development processes.

Though P.N. Haksar lost his eye-sight some years ago, he continued to dictate (from memory) the contents of magazine Man and Development, until he passed away.

P.N. Haksar will continue to be regarded as one of the foremost intellectuals of our country who contributed immensely in the decisive years of the development of new India.

His character was marked by an integrity which he retained until the end. Also, his affection for friends and devotion to duty will become a part of our history.