The Forgoten Gandhi

I came across a wonderful article in a Telugu weekly magazine recently,the article was about Feroze Gandhi. He who was best knwn as the husband of Indira Gandhi, almost forgotten by the media,the country and the Gandhi family itself. Its astonishing to know that he was a parliamentarian himself and a active one at that. Those were the days of a weak opposition and a complete control on the congress party by Jawhar Lal Nehuru, nobody dare to question him on any of the issues,it was Feroze Gandhi who literally made Nehuru sweat,by his questions and critical analysis on various issues.As corruption started to spread its wings in the Nehuru Government, Feroze Gandhi regularly exposed irregularities causing serious headache to the Government and Nehuru in particular. Quite surprising considering that he himself was a member of the congress party. Feroze Ghandhi was instrumental in the creation of LIC as a public enterprise,the instution which stands for reliability today was actually used to be in the hands of a few businessmen during those days. One of the businessmen was involved in corruption and graft,which of course was brought into public domain by Feroze, when he stumbled upon this scandal along with solid evidence, Nehuru asked him not to make it open to public or discuss in parliament,but Feroze stood his ground.Because of Feroze's stand,the culprit was arrested and LIC was converted into a public enterprise.This antagonized Nehuru to a large extent,apart from the fact that initially Feroze refused to accept Nehru's invitation to him and his wife Indira,to join him. Feroze also questioned Nehru's "undemocratic" ways in suppressing communist movements,including encounters and dismissing of democratically elected communist government in Kerla.His efforts actually resulted in a legislation which allowed MP's to question and discuss freely in the parliament. All this had consequences of course with defaming stories about Feroze started to appear in newspapers,he was accused of being a alcoholic and a womanizer. His fight with the government took toll on his health and at the young age of 47 he died due to a cardiac arrest,alone separated from his family by the man whom he fought major part of his life. It's 50 years now,the least we can do is to remember him.