Two years ago one member of the team, Dr G.S. Chhina, read a paper on his findings at the 26th International Congress of Physiological Sciences in Delhi. He confirmed that yogis could walk over burning coal without blistering their feet, expose their bodies to prolonged dousing in chilled water without any sign of discomfort, stick water into their rectums and even suck radio-opaque fluid into the urinary tract. In some cases, penile erections and ejaculations were performed without anything touching the genitals.
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Bellur Krishnamachar Sunderaya Iyengar (fifty-seven), a widower with five children, is the best-known teacher of yoga in India. He is a man of modest education but his book Light on Yoga (Alien & Unwin) is now in its seventh paperback edition and has been translated into many Indian and foreign languages. When Iyengar’s wife died four years ago, his students raised Rs 3.5 lakhs to build in stone and marble the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune.
The institute is designed to conform to Patanjali’s teachings on yoga. Patanjali had an obsession with the figure eight. The institute has one massive column symbolizing the human spine with eight sections branching out to eight large windows representing the eight lamps of yoga: body, breath, consciousness, mind, will, action, knowledge and surrender to god. It has three storeys representing the quest of the external, the internal and consummation with the Divine. It is seventy-one feet high. ‘Seven plus one make eight,’ explained Iyengar naively; and it has eighty-eight steps leading to the top of the dome where there is a red ochre idol of the monkey-god Hanuman, son of the wind and Hindu symbol of energy. The institute has figures of Hindu gods and goddesses but in every room the place of honour is reserved for a marble bust or photograph of the late Ramamani. ‘She gave me the strength to carry on,’ says B.K.S. Iyengar.
Iyengar has taught yoga to over 50,000 men and women all over the world. He showed me a silver Omega alarm wrist-watch presented to him by Yehudi Menuhin with the inscription ‘to my best violin teacher’. Among other celebrities taught yoga by him was the late Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians when she was eighty-four, Gina Bachauer, Lily Kraus and Clifford Curzon. Iyengar has made yoga very profitable. His American students pay the equivalent of Rs 900 for a three-week course. Over a hundred Americans come over from the States every year. He conducts yoga lessons in Bombay once every week and is paid handsome fees wherever else he goes. The one thing that distinguishes B.K.S. Iyengar from most other Indian teachers of yoga is that he restricts his instructions to teaching asanas and breathing without overloading it with Sanskrit mumbo-jumbo and mysticism. Although a strict vegetarian and a teetotaller he does not insist that his pupils do the same.
All he wears when conducting the classes is a pair of striped shorts. He has a thin red line running down the middle of his forehead to indicate that he is an Iyengar Brahmin. A dozen men and women yoga teachers from America were taking a refresher course. One lady was as bald as an egg-shell, another had a blood-shot eye, a third one had a knee injury—all three were trying out yoga as the last resort.
My eyes rested on a full-bosomed, broad-hipped woman in the headstand position. Her long hazel-brown hair was strewn over the floor. Although she was upside down she looked altogether too healthy to need more health. She noticed my interest in her and stood on her feet; her hair now hung down to her waist. She joined the palms of her hands and greeted me, ‘Namaskar, I am Jyoti Vernon.’
‘You are an American. How come you have a Hindu name?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, I am American. I was born Carol David, but ever since I started on yoga I adopted an Indian name. Everyone including my husband calls me Jyoti.’ She introduced me to her husband Eugene Vernon who is a practising attorney in San Francisco. The Vernons have one child of their own and have adopted another. They were in India to find yet another child to adopt and take a refresher course with Iyengar. She has been teaching asanas for some years and is well-acquainted with the yoga movement in California. According to Jyoti, in California alone yoga enthusiasts run into the thousands. Many go in for the spiritual instruction and are disciples of swamis, gurus and other varieties of Indian godmen. But the majority stick to the physical aspect of yoga.
Back in Benaras Hindu University I again met Dr Udupa and his assistants gathered together in the house of Vice-Chancellor Dr K.L. Shrimali, one-time minister of education in the Central government and an ardent believer in yoga. I tried to provoke them. ‘I concede that yoga asanas are good for health and perhaps achieve better results than other systems of exercises. I even concede that meditation may do some good to the mentally disturbed, but I cannot comprehend why a healthy man with a healthy mind should waste his time concentrating on some point between his eyes or his navel.’
Dr Shrimali gave a guarded reply: ‘It is said to make a healthy mind more creative. Everything anyone does he can do better after a course of meditation.’
‘There is no evidence of increased creativity following meditation. Give me one example of a creative yogi.’
They looked at each other. Once again it was Dr Shrimali who replied. ‘Sri Aurobindo.’ (A Hindu anarchist-turned-philosopher who died in December 1950).
‘Yes, Sri Aurobindo. You can’t deny he was a philosopher,’ added Dr Udupa.
‘Can you name any other? After all the number of meditating yogis runs into hundreds of thousands.’
There was complete silence. It gave me the opportunity to have my last fling. ‘Anything worthwhile is created by restless minds. World’s greatest artists, musicians, scientists, writers, poets had tortured minds. Your mental equipoise only produces mental equipoise. Nothing else.’
‘You may have a point there,’ conceded Dr Shrimali. ‘Our yoga experts should look into the effects of yogic meditation on the creative impulse. Fortunately for us we cannot do this by experimenting on rats,’ he said with a smile.
Why I Supported the Emergency
The Emergency has become a synonym for obscenity. Even men and women who were pillars of the Emergency rule and misused their positions to harass innocent people against whom they had personal grudges try to distance themselves from their past in the hope that it will fade out of public memory forever. We must not allow them to get away with it. Because of them many mistakes were made which must be avoided the next time conditions require the suspension of democratic norms for the preservation of law and order.
With some reservations I supported the Emergency proclaimed by Mrs Indira Gandhi on 25 June 1975. Let me explain why. I concede that the right to protest is integral to democracy. You can have public meetings to criticize or condemn government actions. You can take out processions, call for strikes and closure of businesses. But there must not be any coercion or violence. If there is any, it is the duty of the government to suppress it by force, if necessary. By May 1975 public protests against Mrs Gandhi’s government had assumed nationwide dimensions and often turned violent. With my own eyes I saw slogan-chanting processions go down Bombay’s thoroughfares, smashing cars parked on the roadsides and breaking shop windows as they went along. The local police was unable to contend with them because they were too few, the protesters too many. The leaders of Opposition parties watched the country sliding into chaos as bemused spectators hoping that the mounting chaos would force Mrs Gandhi to resign.
The unquestioned leader of the anti-Mrs Gandhi movement was Jayaprakash Narayan, a man for whom I had enormous respect and admiration. He had become the conscience keeper of the nation. But it was Lok Nayak, as he came to be known, who crossed the Lakshman rekha of democratic protest. His call for ‘total revolution’ included preventing elected members of state legislatives from entering Vidhan Sabha buildings. He announced his intention to gherao Parliament house and even asked the police and the army to revolt against the government. I wrote to Jayaprakash protesting that what he was advocating was wrong and undemocratic. He wrote back justifying his stand. I published both my letter and his much-longer reply in the Illustrated Weekly of India whic
h I then happened to be editing. I believe, and still believe, freedom to speak one’s mind is the basic principle of democracy.
Early June I was attending a conference in Mexico City. I arrived back in Bombay the day the Emergency was declared. The night before all the Opposition leaders had been picked up from their homes and put in jails across the country. The Times of India offices were in pandemonium. We were told that censorship had been imposed on the press: we had to toe the line or get out. I was determined to resist and thought if editors of other papers published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. would form a united front against censorship we would succeed in making the government change its mind against the press. I expected Sham Lal, editor of the Times of India, to become our leader. He bluntly refused to do so. Sham Lal’s number two, Girilal Jain, resident editor in Delhi, went one better by lauding the emergence of Sanjay Gandhi as the new leader. Not one other editor was willing to risk his job. Editors of the Navbharat Times, Maharashtra Times, Dharmyug, Filmfare, Femina, Sarika decided to stay away from the protest meeting we organized. Inder Malhotra’s behaviour was enigmatic. He kept going up and down the floors greeting everyone with ‘jai ho’ and moving on. He never looked anyone in the eye. To this day I don’t know whether he was for or against the Emergency. For three weeks I refused to publish the Illustrated Weekly. My friend from my college years in England, Rajni Patel, who became the dominant voice on the board of directors, told me bluntly: ‘My friend, if you are looking for martyrdom, we’ll give it to you.’ The board chairman, Justice (rtd) K.T. Desai, was gentler. ‘You don’t realize how serious the government is about censorship on the press. If you refuse to publish the journal we will have no option but to find another editor. Why not give it a try to see how it goes?’ I agreed to give it a try. After all, I had criticized Jayaprakash Narayan’s call for a ‘total revolution’ as undemocratic. The Allahabad high court judgement declaring Mrs Gandhi’s membership of Parliament invalid weakened her position and she was persuaded by her closest advisors to strike out.
The Emergency, when first imposed, was generally welcomed by the people. There were no strikes or hartals, schools and colleges re-opened, business picked up, buses and trains began to run on time. People are under the impression that the Emergency administrators were very efficient. They were not. A few days after it was promulgated I got a call from H.Y. Sharada Prasad asking me to come over to see the Prime Minister. I was not to tell anyone about the appointment. The next day I met her in her South Block office. I pleaded with her to withdraw censorship on the press. ‘Editors like me who support you have lost credibility. Nobody will believe that we are doing so of our free will and not being dictated to,’ I argued. She remained adamant. ‘There cannot be any Emergency without censorship on the press,’ she maintained. I returned to Bombay disappointed. Back in the office, I found in my mail a letter reading, ‘How did your meeting with Madame Dictator go?’ Signed George. George Fernandes had gone underground but someone (obviously in the PMO) had informed him about my meeting. The same afternoon four leading members of the RSS, against whom warrants of arrest had been issued, boldly walked into my office and for half an hour questioned me about what had passed between the PM and me. And then, as boldly, walked out.
The censorship was also selective and eccentric. Some papers like the Indian Express were made targets of Mrs Gandhi’s ire. Others like the Times of India and Hindustan Times were left alone. As was the weekly Blitz, owned by the most unprincipled editor of our times, Rusi Karanjia, who enthusiastically supported Mrs Gandhi. Kuldip Nayar was arrested. For no reason whatsoever, so was his eighty-two-year-old father-in-law, Bhim Sain Sachar, once chief minister of Punjab. Ramesh Thapar, once very close to Mrs Gandhi, closed down his Seminar. His sister, Dr Romila Thapar, who kept her distance from politics, was harassed by income-tax sleuths for many days. Mrs Gandhi could be very vindictive against people she had once been close to.
In Bombay, censorship had its lighter sides. Vinod Mehta, who edited the sleazy girlie magazine Debonair, was asked to have his articles and pictures cleared before they were sent to the printer. The censor looked over the pages. ‘Porn? Theek hai! Politics no.’ Most of it was soft porn. It was quickly cleared. I was not subjected to the indignity of pre-censorship except for a few hours. I happened to be at a luncheon reception given by Governor Ali Yavar Jang in honour of President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. Out of the blue the President turned to me and said loudly, ‘What is all this you keep publishing in your journal? Don’t you know there is an Emergency?’ I didn’t know what he was referring to. Nor did S.B. Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra, who overheard the President’s remark. When I returned to my office I found a pre-censorship order slapped under the CM’s authorization on the Illustrated Weekly. The offending article had in fact appeared in Femina and not in my journal. I rang up Sharada Prasad. Mrs Gandhi was due to go abroad the next day. Chavan was told to withdraw the censorship order immediately. He did so as tamely as the braggadocio with which he had imposed it.
During the Emergency I was frequently in Delhi to help out Maneka Gandhi and her mother, Amtesh, with their magazine Surya. I saw something of the caucus which was running the government. Siddhartha Shankar Ray had drafted the regulations; Sanjay was the kingpin. Besides his kitchen cabinet comprising his wife and mother-in-law, there was the old family retainer, Mohammed Yunus (Chacha); civil servant Navin Chawla; Kishan Chand, Lt Governor of Delhi, who later ended his life by jumping into a well; and Jagmohan, who was put in charge of clearing slums which he did with ruthless zeal. There was the Rasputin figure of Dhirendra Brahmachari, swamiji to the royal household; and two pretty women, Ambika Soni and Rukhsana Sultana—Sanjay had an eye for pretty women. He also had an enthusiastic supporter in Bansi Lal who had allotted him land in Haryana where he was CM on the rustic truism ‘bachda pakad lo toh ma toh peechey chali ayegee’ —catch the calf and its mother is bound to follow you. He had I.K. Gujral packed off to Moscow and replaced by the more amenable Vidya Charan Shukla as information and broadcast minister.
Because of my frequent visits to Delhi to monitor the progress of Surya, I saw quite a bit of the Gandhi family, particularly Sanjay and his in-laws. He was more relaxed with Maneka’s family than with his own. He was a man of few words but with enormous zest for work. He was a strict teetotaller and even avoided drinking tea, coffee, aerated drinks and iced water. In some ways he epitomized the slogan he had coined: Kaam ziyaada, baatein kum—work more, talk less. He was a young man in a hurry to get things done. He had no patience with tedious democratic processes and red tape, no time for long-winded politicians or bureaucrats. The fact that he had no legitimacy for imposing his fiats on the country, besides being the son of the Prime Minister, was of little consequence to him. Unlike Maneka he never used strong language and was extremely courteous towards elder people like me. In his younger days he was known to have stolen cars—he had a passion for cars. He had been in many brawls: despite his modest size he rippled with muscles. I took to him as a loveable goonda.
For many months this coterie ruled the country. Anyone who crossed their paths was promptly put behind bars. There was not a squeak of protest. Virtually, the only party which kept a passive resistance movement throughout the period were the Akalis. Long before the Emergency was lifted it had lost public support. Arbitrary arrests, the ruthless way Jagmohan bulldozed slums in Delhi made people believe the wildest canards, of the way men were picked up from bus and cinema queues to be forcibly sterilized, as true. Nobody ever verified the facts but most people lent willing ears to stories of Sanjay’s excesses. The Emergency, which was well received when it was imposed, and even justified by a sage like Acharya Vinoba Bhave, was distorted into an abominated monster which had to be destroyed for ever. There may be other occasions to impose an Emergency in the country. If we do not make the mistakes of 1975–77 we would be able to keep the country on the right track when it begins to wobble.
The Hanging of Bhutto
Kh
ushwant Singh was in Islamabad—Rawalpindi on 4 April 1979, the day Zulfikar Ali Bhutto went to the gallows. He had been given an appointment by President Zia-ul Haq for the same evening which, understandably, was called off. The first part of this article describes his experiences in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi during those fateful days. The second part gives an account of Bhutto’s last hours, and is based on interviews with eye-witnesses, including two men who actually saw the hanging.
The first thing they did was to confiscate the Scotch I had brought with me; the second was to take me in their embrace and say ‘Kush amdeed’—welcome to Pakistan. The customs official who did so explained with relentless Punjabi logic: ‘Law is law and friendship is friendship.’
The experience at Lahore airport was symbolic of the atmosphere that prevailed in Pakistan the week preceding the execution of Bhutto. Whatever he may have done—and that is fiercely debated—and whatever be the consequences of hanging him, hang he must because no one is above the law and the law found him guilty of murder.
There was a third thing about Pakistan that occurred to me even before I put foot on its soil, viz., the contrast with India. As the ‘fasten your seat belts’ sign came on and the Fokker Friendship descended from the azure sky through the dusty haze, and the landscape became clearer, I realized how little it had changed. We flew over several villages. They looked exactly as they did in 1947: a shapeless huddle of flat-roofed mud homes with usually only one building made of brick and plaster and fresh with a new coat of paint, white or green. And this one building was then as it was now invariably a mosque. As the plane touched down, the air-hostess announced the temperature at Lahore and told us to correct our watches. It occurred to me that while Pakistani time was thirty minutes behind ours Pakistan was thirty years behind us in every field of development: agricultural, industrial, educational and social. It did not make sense because they were the same people as we, man to man they were physically fitter than us, and being more united by faith and speaking one language they had fewer problems than us. To start with they had forged ahead of us, and then for some inexplicable reason slowed down and stagnated.
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 17
