Generally, when Feroze Gandhi is mentioned, people tend to associate him with the Gandhi-Nehru family. He is seen as the son-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi’s husband, and Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi’s father. It is true that his father-in-law was the first Prime Minister of India, and later his wife and son respectively took on the office of the most powerful person in the country. But is it possible for us to see past that, to see him as a powerful leader of the ‘opposition’?
From Nehru’s government to Indira’s, Feroze Gandhi used to speak out fiercely on many subjects. It was said about him that despite his inevitable connection with the Congress, Feroze was unofficially a leader of the opposition. There was a lobby in the Central Hall of Parliament House which was called the Feroze Corner. There Feroze Gandhi and other MPs at the time used to prepare strategies for debate. After becoming the President of the Indian National Congress in 1959, the government of Namboodiripad was brought down in Kerala and President’s Rule was imposed there, leading to profound political differences between Indira and Feroze on this issue. Famous journalist Inder Malhotra told the BBC that in 1959 when Indira dropped the leftist government in Kerala in a non-constitutional way, there was a clash between husband and wife. Feroze met her that evening and apparently told Indira that he would never step into the Prime Minister’s house henceforth. That, in fact, was the last time he went there. After he died, his body was taken to the Teen Murti Bhavan.
Bertil Falk writes in ‘Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi’, “The intensity between Indira and Feroze began when Indira left her home in Lucknow, leaving her house in Allahabad and her father’s house in Allahabad.” The year was 1955. And in the same year, Indira Gandhi became the first Congress Working Committee member as well as the Central Election Committee member, but when Feroze raised the issue of corruption within the party, the relationship between them got tarnished.
Meanwhile, the image of Feroze Gandhi became like that of a whistle blower and he became close to the opposition, although he remained connected to the Nehru family and started coming to Delhi-Allahabad. Bertil Falk writes in his book that Feroze had already recognised Indira’s ‘dictatorship’ and had not been vocal about it. In the year 1959, Indira Gandhi wanted the removal of the elected government in Kerala as well as the President’s Rule.
During that time she was the president of the Congress, and Feroze Gandhi was also an active member in the government. During this time, at the breakfast table one morning, Feroze termed Indira a ‘fascist’. At that time Indira’s father Jawaharlal Nehru was also present there.
Feroze Gandhi had not spared the Nehru government too. It was he who had exposed the Mundra massacre, a case with which Nehru was very close, which led to the then finance minister TT Krishnamachari being forced to leave his post. Nehru’s government may have been troubled by some of Feroze’s behaviour, yet he did well in the Lok Sabha. In 1952, he won in the Lok Sabha by a very large margin from Rae Bareli. During the 1957 elections, he found out that his old rival Nand Kishore Naai did not have the money to pay bail in the election. Feroze called Nand Kishore and paid the amount from his own pocket. Such was his compassion, and sense of propriety. Yet, we find very little mention of him in the pages of history. This is one Gandhi lost in history.