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30th November 2012: I.K. Gujral, 12th Prime Minister of India, passed away

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 11/30/2020 11:46:54 AM

Inder Kumar Gujral, who left a mark on India’s foreign policy and served as the country’s 12th prime minister, was born on December 4, 1919, in Jhelum (in presentday Pakistan). He died on November 30, 2012. Gujral’s parents Avtar Narain and Pushpa Gujral took an active part in the Indian freedom struggle. The young Gujral took an early liking to Urdu, a love affair with the language and its poetry that would last a lifetime. He finished his college education in Lahore and for some time became a member of the Communist Party of India. He had to go to jail along with his parents in 1942 for taking part in the Quit India movement. After Partition, the family moved to Delhi. When he became prime minister half a century later, Gujral recalled the traumatic days of 1947-48, in an article in Outlook magazine: “In September 1947, as the riots worsened, my father decided to shift to India… Karachi was aflame by early ’48. A friend… traced me to a hotel I’d shifted for safety, put me on a Delhi-bound plane. Thus I arrived, a refugee in India. Everything lost: my business in Karachi, our properties in Jhelum. We never anticipated such a rigid border. We thought it’ll be easy. That’s why the Partition hurt.” He served in the local government in Delhi in several positions until he became a Rajya Sabha member of the Congress in 1964. When Indira Gandhi declared Emergency in 1975, he was shunted out from the ministry of information and broadcasting. In her biography of Indira Gandhi, Katherine Frank describes a confrontation between Gujral and Indira’s son, Sanjay: “[Gujral] was accosted by Sanjay Gandhi in the reception room outside Indira’s office. Sanjay ordered Gujral from now on to submit all news bulletins to him before they were broadcast. Gujral told Sanjay that this was ‘not possible’.” After the 1996 Lok Sabha elections when Deve Gowda became prime minister, Gujral was again made minister of external affairs. This was when he came up with the famous ‘Gujral Doctrine’, which he developed further as prime minister. As foreign minister Gujral articulated India’s concerns over nuclear disarmament and national security, saying that “national security and our moral posture coincided”. He toldOutlook in an interview: “[I]f at any stage our security planners come to the conclusion… that a [nuclear] test is called for, then whatever the world might say, we have to do it. Security decisions are not taken on the basis of referendum or popularity.” In 1997, the Congress withdrew support to the Deve Gowda government leading to its collapse. The Congress instead.