"Partition was the darkest phase
of the century"

THERE are many who let time slip away like sand through feeble fingers. And there are others who mould a lifetime into an edifice of initiative. Octogenarian H.D. Shourie is one such illustrious individual. With a four-decade long career in the civil services, Shourie, in the pre-Partition days, was the city magistrate of Rawalpindi and Lahore. Interestingly, the latter was a post he retained a day prior to Partition after which he was appointed Deputy Commissioner for Refugee Relief, Punjab.

In Independent India, he established the National Productivity Council and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, each of which he headed as their first Director-General. He was also Director of Industries, Punjab; Deputy Commissioner, Rohtak; and Commissioner General of India in Japan.

Today, despite the fact that he is 88, age has not withered his ingenuity. As the team leader for a United Nations industrialisation programme in Turkey and as the International Trade Adviser in Geneva, Shourie has done India proud even after retirement.

However, it is probably as the messiah of the masses that the father of Arun Shourie, Nalini Singh and Deepak Shourie is known best. For the last 20 years he has voiced the problems of the troubled and faceless Indians, demanding solutions from the highest judicial authority — the Supreme Court.

Having founded a public interest organisation, ‘Common Cause’ and the Consumer Coordination Council of India, Shourie has networked with like-minded bodies and also single-handedly taken up causes which concern the common man.

How does a man of his immense experience feel about the development of India over the past 100 years? Shourie outlines his thoughts to

Isidore Domnick Mendis....

"For India and Indians this has been the most remarkable era. We were blessed to share a part of the century with Mahatma Gandhi who symbolised what India was and what it has the potential of becoming. To my mind the other great Indian was Rabindranath Tagore. However his influence was more on Bengal, whereas Gandhiji’s aura was universal. I still remember the day when I attended Gandhiji’s prayer meeting in Delhi little realising it would be his last before his assassination.

But if we had the good fortune of a man like Gandhiji walking amidst us, we also had our tragedies. And the greatest of them all were the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1947. Partition and its aftermath will always remain the darkest phase of our history.

Just before Partition, I was the City Magistrate of Lahore. I could see the tensions building up all around us. One very hot summer day in June, around 200 Hindus were rounded up and ordered to sit under the scorching sun at Shalmi Gate in Lahore. They were being implicated for throwing stones at a mosque. I knew the charges were baseless.

I rang up P.M. Thapar, the then Commissioner of Lahore, who in turn contacted many Cabinet ministers. Much to my annoyance everyone pleaded helplessness. But they all agreed to visit the site. So when the Cabinet ministers came, in my dejection I vent my anger on them and said ‘Nali mein doob maro’ (go down yourself in a gutter). It was only when the Governor of Lahore, who was an Englishman, intervened that the innocent people were freed.

Instead of punishing me for my impunity, I was actually rewarded for my exemplary work and immediately made the District Magistrate of the whole of Punjab.

Soon afterwards Partition took place and I was given charge of 46 refugee relief camps in Punjab. Here my main responsibility was to cater to over-one-and-a-half crore refugees who had come in from Pakistan. Simultaneously, I was also looking after the safe passage of Muslims leaving India as refugees to Pakistan.

Nehru’s unconventional leadership

One of my most memorable days was when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited a camp under me in Kurukshetra, which was home to more than two lakh refugees. At the camp, Mirduala Sarabhai, sister of great scientist Vikram Sarabhai, was leading an agitation of refugees complaining against what they perceived as poor basic amenities at the camp.

As soon as they heard that Nehru was coming, the protestors laid down on the entire stretch of the one-and-a-half-mile-long road leading to the camp. Nehru arrived, got down from his car and walked over four demonstrators. When he came to the fifth, he pulled him up and simply slapped the man across his face and told the man angrily ‘Never sleep while protesting. If you think injustice is being done to you, stand up and talk’.

Such was the stature of the man that there was pin-drop silence. The agitation was over and Nehru had made his point that the authorities were doing their best in providing relief and if there were some shortcomings, they should be borne with equanimity. The message reached home very clearly through Nehru’s rather unorthodox manner.

Tell me, is there any leader today who can dare do such a thing or who commands such respect? No, not a single one. That’s because political leaders in those days were a committed lot. They worked sincerely for the country and not for personal gains. The masses loved and related to them as they had the country’s good foremost in their mind.

Those were the days when the Prime Minister travelled without a convoy of security vehicles accompanying his car. That day Nehruji had only one escort car. In fact, there were very few police constables at the venue. The political leadership then had not assumed a sense of self-importance and self-indulgence it has today.

India’s tragedy is that today it lacks stalwarts like Nehru, Sardar Patel, G.B. Pant and Sarojini Naidu. All these doyens of the post-Independent era have today been replaced by manipulative politicians whose sole aim is to promote their personal interests. The welfare of the nation does not figure in their scheme of things. And even if it does, it is a very distant thought.

India’s great failures

With such a myopic leadership, it is not surprising that we have failed in some of the most crucial areas which contribute to the success and progress of any country. Our leadership failed to frame policies which would guarantee health to all. Till today, there are numerous villages which don’t even have the basic medical facilities. Sick people still have to travel miles to get to a doctor.

It could not universalise education with the result that every third illiterate in the world today is an Indian. Faulty planning has contributed in putting India among the most backward nations of the world as far as education is concerned.

And,thirdly, our leadership failed to make laws to control population which has now touched the one billion mark. The only man who tried was Sanjay Gandhi but his policy of family planning was so coercive that even unmarried people became victims of forced sterilisation. Today, no politician can think of strict population control laws because of the backlash of Sanjay Gandhi’s unsuitable policy. The result is that our population is increasing at a break-neck pace.

On the other hand, look at the People’s Republic of China. That country was more socially and economically backward than we were during the same period — the 1950s. Today see the strides it is making in almost all spheres. That’s because the Chinese Government took revolutionary measures to control population and simultaneously developed effective education and health policies.

On the other hand, all we have got from our politicians is empty promises and rhetoric. Over the years both India and Pakistan have been fed on a constant diet of hatred and we have come to mistrust each other. But it wasn’t so before.

I had some very close friends in Pakistan. One of my closest friends was Manzoor Hassan, an officer in the Punjab Civil Service. Fortunately we have been in close contact. My other friend, Chaudhary Mahmud, remembered me on his deathbed. He conveyed his best regards to me through an Indian who had gone to visit Pakistan a few years back.

I am not recounting my friendships during those days. All I am trying to convey is the simple fact that Indians and Pakistanis continued to enjoy amicable relationships even after Partition. But things changed with the army seizing power in Pakistan time and again.

Once again the army is back in business in Pakistan which is not good news for India. We have got to be extremely vigilant specially after the Kargil war. I think the time has come for India to make it clear to Pakistan and its allies that any violation of our territory, be it the LoC or the international frontier, would be dealt with firmly and effectively and the so-called cheap proxy war would be given a befitting reply.

But even in the next millennium, India must not give up its quest for a peaceful solution. I think if India can settle this matter peacefully, bilaterally and without outside intervention as was laid down in the Simla Agreement, it will be a good example for the other trouble spots in the rest of world.

Consumer movement in India

Another issue which is going to be of immense significance for India in the next millennium is consumerism — something which I am very closely associated with. With the globalisation of the economy, it would become absolutely vital for India to frame clear-cut policies.

Thanks to the initiative of Rajiv Gandhi, a milestone in the development of consumer consciousness in the country was established in the form of the cohesive 40-page Consumer Protection Act in 1986. Now we have to quickly built upon that. That’s because every individual, whether he lives in a slum or a palace, is a consumer.

It’s only that previously the consumer knew that what he was getting was usually value for money. As a student in Lahore when I would go to the Anarkali Bazar to buy a pair of Bata shoes, I was sure that the one rupee and four annas that I was paying for the pair guaranteed me quality. If I brought a piece of cloth or ordered a suit to be made. I was sure that what I was going to get was correct for the price I was paying.

The element of unscrupulousness was not there to extent that it exists today. With the passing of time traders and providers of goods have become greedier and quality has been sacrificed and prices increased of many commodities.

Ever since the Consumer Protection Act has come into being, more than 11 lakh cases have been filed in these courts and the government sources state that over eight lakh cases have been disposed of. This is a very positive development and needs to be encouraged in the next millennium.

I feel contented with what I have contributed to my country in this century. Whether as an administrator or at the level of a consumer I have done what I have felt is right. But the work which has given me the utmost satisfaction is the consumer movement I started called Common Cause. I feel I have contributed to enlightening the Indian consumer about his or her rights." — NF