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Morarji Desai

Shri Morarji Desai was born on February 29, 1896 in Bhadeli village, now in the Bulsar district of Gujarat. His father was a school teacher and a strict disciplinarian. From his childhood, young Morarji learnt from his father the value of hard work and truthfulness under all circumstances. He was educated St. Busar High School and passed his matriculation examination. After graduating from the Wilson Civil Service of the then Bombay Province in 1918, he served as a Deputy Collector for twelve years. Shri Desai and Gujraben were married in 1911. Of their five children, one daughter and a son are surviving.

In 1930, when India was in the midst of the freedom struggle launched by Mahatma Gandhi, Shri Desai, having lost his confidence in the British sense of justice, decided to resign from Government service and to plunge into the struggle. It was a hard decision to take but Shri Desai felt that 'when it was a question of the independence of the country, problems relating to family occupied a subordinate position'. Shri Desai was imprisoned thrice during the freedom struggle. He became a Member of the All India Congress Committee in 1931 and was Secretary of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee untill 1937.

When the first Congress Government assumed office in 1937 Shri Desai became Minister for Revenue, Agriculture, Forest and Co-operatives in the Ministry headed by Shri B.G. Kher in the then Bombay Province. The Congress Ministries went out of office in 1939 in protest against India involvement in the World War without the consent of the people.

Shri Desai was detained in the individual Satyagraha launched by Mahatma Gandhi, released in October, 1941 and detained again in August, 1942 at the time of the Quit India Movement. He was released in 1945. After the elections to the State Assemblies in 1946, he became the Minister for Home and Revenue in Bombay. During his tenure, Shri Desai launched a number of far-reaching reforms in land revenue by providing security tenancy rights leading to the 'land to the tiller' proposition. In police administration, he pulled down the barrier between the people and the police, and the police administration was made more responsive to the needs of the people in the protection of life and property.

In 1952, he became the Chief Minister of Bombay. According to him, unless the poor and the under privileged living in villages and towns enjoy a decent standard of life, the talk of socialism will not have much meaning. Shri Desai gave concrete expression to his anxiety by enacting progressive legislations to ameliorate to the hardships of peasants and tenants. In this, Shri Desai's Government was far ahead of any other State in the country. And what was more, he implemented the legislation with an unswerving sincerity earning wide reputation for his administration in Bombay.

After the reorganisation of the States, Shri Desai joined the Union Cabinet as Minister for Commerce and Industry on November 14, 1956. Later, he took the Finance portfolio on March 22, 1958. Shri Desai translated into action what he had professed in matters of economic planning and fiscal administration. In order to meet the needs of defense and development, he raised large revenues, reduced wasteful expenditure and promoted austerity in Government expenditure on administration. He kept deficit financing very low by enforcing financial discipline. He brought curbs on extravagant living of the privileged section of society.

In 1963, he resigned from the Union Cabinet under the Kamraj Plan. Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Pt. Nehru as Prime Minister, pursuaded him to become Chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission for restructuring the administrative system. His long and varied experienced of public life stood him in good stead in his task. In 1967, Shri Desai joined Smt. Indira Gandhi's cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister in charge of Finance. In July, 1969, Smt. Gandhi took away the Finance portfolio from him. While Shri Desai conceded that the Prime Minister has the prerogative to change the portfolios of colleagues, he felt that his self-respect had been hurt as even the common courtesy of consulting him had not shown by Smt. Gandhi. He, therefore, felt he had no alternative but to resign as Deputy Prime Minister of India.

Profound changes in India's polity also contributed to the decline of the Congress. The development of new and more-differentiated identities and patterns of political cleavage made it virtually impossible for the Congress to contain the competition of its members within its organization. Dissidence and ultimately defection greatly weakened the Congress's electoral performance. The Congress split into two in 1969, the new factions being the Congress (O)--for Organisation -- and Mrs. Gandhi's Congress (R) -- for Requisition. The Congress (R) continued in power with the support of non-Congress groups, principally the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK -- Dravidian Progressive Federation).

When the Congress Party split in 1969, Shri Desai remained with the Organisation Congress. He continued to take a leading part the opposition. He was re-elected to Parliament in 1971. In 1975, he went on an indefinite fast on the question of holding elections to the Gujarat Assembly which had been dissolved. As a result of his fast, elections were held in June, 1975. The Janata Front formed by the four opposition parties and Independents supported by it, secured an absolute majority in the new House. After the judgement of the Allahabad High Court declaring Smt. Gandhi's election to the Lok Sabha null and void, Shri Desai felt that in keeping with democratic principles, Smt. Gandhi should have submitted her resignation.

By 1974 Indira Gandhi's popularity was waning due to economic stagnancy and demographic pressures from refugees created by the war with Pakistan among ether reasons. In June 1975 Mrs. Gandhi declared a state of national emergency as a reaction to deteriorating conditions and public demands that she resign. Thousands of her opponents were jailed, civil rights were curtailed, and rigid censorship was clamped on the press. During the next 21 months her regime tightened governmental powers of preventive detention, forced sterilizations, destroyed slums, and retroactively amended the Indian Constitution to make it all legal.

Shri Desai was arrested and detained on June 26, 1975, when Emergency was declared. He was kept in solitary confinement and was released on January 18, 1977, a little before the decision to hold elections to the Lok Sabha was announced. In 1977 Gandhi unexpectedly ended the emergency and called for elections. She apparently miscalculated the effects of her Draconian measures during the emergency period, for she lost her position to an old political rival of the Nehru days, Morarji Desai. He campaigned vigorously throughout the length and breadth of the country and was largely instrumental in achieving the re-sounding victory of the Janata Party in the General Elections held in March, 1977 for the Sixth Lok Sabha. Shri Desai was himself selected to the Lok Sabha from the Surat Constituency in Gujarat.

Desai, a conservative Brahman, became India's fourth prime minister (1977-79). He was later unanimously elected as Leader of the Janata Party in Parliament and was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on March 24, 1977. As Prime Minister, Shri Desai was keen that the people of India must be helped to become fearless to an extent where even if the highest in the land commits a wrong, the humblest should be able to point it out to him. "No one, not even the Prime Minister", he was repeatedly said "should be above the law of the land". For him, truth was an article of faith and not an expediency. He seldom allowed his principles to be subordinated to the exigencies of the situation. Even in the most trying circumstances, he stood by his convictions. As he himself observed, 'one should act in life according to truth and one's faith'.

Opposition political parties often had more effectively articulated differing views regarding foreign policy, but even these views had little impact on policy making until the 1990s. Other than the Congress (I) -- (I for Indira), only the communist parties, the Janata Party, and the Jana Sangh and one of its successors, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP -- Indian People's Party), developed coherent platforms on foreign policy. After the mid-1950s, the communist parties were broadly supportive of Indian foreign policy.

At the beginning of Janata Party rule (1977-79), Prime Minister Desai promised to return to "genuine nonalignment." However, security considerations forced Desai and his minister of external affairs, Jana Sangh stalwart Atal Behari Vajpayee, to adhere to the foreign policy path carved out by the Congress (I) -- nonalignment with a pro-Soviet orientation. BJP foreign policy positions differed most strongly from those of the Congress (I). The BJP criticized nonalignment and advocated a more vigorous use of India's power to defend national interests from erosion at the hands of Pakistan and China. The BJP favored the overt acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Within the Congress Party, easily the largest and most national party in India, there had been strong arguments on the nuclear issue. Until the mid-1960s, none of the national leaders, whether of so-called "left" or "right" wings, whether in favor of, or opposed to, the leadership of Indira Gandhi, had favored an Indian nuclear weapon. Some thought it significant that leaders of the two extremes, Morarji Desai, the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, who opposed Mrs. Gandhi for the succession to Shastri and was considered both conservative and a Hindu nationalist, and Krishna Menon who, before he left the Congress, was very critical of Mrs. Gandhi's government on the ground that it had moved away from socialism, had taken strong positions against an Indian bomb in large part on moral grounds.

Morarji Desai, who headed the Janata Party, an amalgam of five opposition parties, had been on record for some time against nuclear weapons for India. He is quoted as saying, "We can drive out any aggressor even without the bomb." He adds: "If China were to throw an atomic bomb on the Indian border, she would create an impenetrable barrier for herself." In his first public press conference since his election as Prime Minister he also expressed doubt as to whether a nuclear explosive program would be useful for India and advised returning to "cottage industry."

Nonproliferation was a central issue during the presidential campaign of former nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter but after assuming office in 1977, President Carter determined to reconcile this objective with a competing desire to strengthen U.S.-India relations. Carter had a fondness for the country where his mother had served as a Peace Corps volunteer, and believed India to be "an influential regional power that should be addressed on its own terms."

President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Morarji Desai signed the Delhi Declaration, in January 1978. It said, "The disparities in economic strength that exist among nations must be bridged and a more equitable international economic order fashioned if we are to secure international peace." It recognized "the right of each people to determine its own form of government and each nation its own political, social and economic policies" and spoke against war and stockpiles of nuclear and conventional weapons. President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were closely surrounded by smiling, hand-shaking, flower-bearing crowds wherever they went, including Daulatpur village, 30 kilometers from New Delhi, which was later renamed Carterpuri. President Carter shared a vision of greater agricultural productivity with Prime Minister Desai, who toured a soybean farm in Nebraska during his U.S. visit in June 1978.

President Carter established dialogue with Prime Minister Morarji Desai, and Desai verbally agreed to "reject future nuclear explosions" even though New Delhi did not formally accept this provision. In return, Carter promised that he would authorize one more pending shipment of U.S. fuel supplies to India. In 1978, however, Congress intervened and officially blocked the administration from exporting fuel to India by passing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. Congress simply did not trust the executive branch to promote decisively the American and international interest in nonproliferation.

Desai's government, from its inception, became notorious for its factionalism and furious internal competition. As it promised, the Janata government restored freedom and democracy, but its inability to effect sound reforms or ameliorate poverty left people disillusioned. Desai lost the support of Janata's left-wing parties by the early summer of 1979, and several secular and liberal politicians abandoned him altogether, leaving him without a parliamentary majority. A no-confidence motion was about to be introduced in Parliament in July 1979, but he resigned his office; Desai's government was replaced by a coalition led by Chaudhury Charan Singh (prime minister in 1979-80). Although Singh's life-long ambition had been to become prime minister, his age and inefficiency were used against him, and his attempts at governing India proved futile; new elections were announced in January 1980.

Each day for much of his life, former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai drank his own urine. He lived to be ninety-nine. On the occasion of his ninety-ninth birthday in 1995, Desai attributed his longevity to drinking his morning urine on a daily basis. Chester Bowles, the US Ambassador to India, had a wonderful Irish couple - Faith and Harry - in the Embassy kitchen for whom adjusting to some of the Indian visitors was difficult. When Morarji Desai visited the US Embassy, and word reached the kitchen that he drank his own urine, this proved insurmountable for Faith and Harry. Faith said, "Well, if that is true, he can do it on his own. I'm not participating."

Urine drinking in India is a part and parcel of the Hindu culture. Brahmanic Ayurvedic medicine proffers many cures by drinking Urine. One such powerful practice for healing that continues to flourish today is Shivambu Shastra, respected for thousands of years as the "Mother of Ayurvedic Medicine" and commonly known as "Self-Urine Therapy". Shivambu literally means "Water of Shiva", referring to the auspiciousness of the practice. Its "method of drinking urine for rejuvenation" is outlined in the Shivambu Kalpa Vidhi, part of a 5000-year-old document called the Damar Tantra, linking this practice back to the Vedas, the sacred Hindu texts.