Pushp Saraf
Today (May 3) my father Mr Om Prakash Saraf would have been 96 and I would have rushed early in the morning to wish him a happy birthday. I miss a routine for the first time that had been followed with utmost regularity. It is a feeling of emptiness. He passed away on November 25, 2017. He immensely enjoyed his varied pursuits with similar zeal, sincerity, dedication and credibility— journalism, active politics and social activism — with democracy and secularism as his creeds.
He allowed himself to be influenced by only what he felt was logical and in the best interests of people, society and environment around him. His decision to donate his body for science and research was one such example. Very early in our lives he had let us be known by his actions rather than words that the probity in public life involves us all, the purpose of education was emancipation of mind and not materialistic pursuits and it was important to honour the trustworthiness of the word — both spoken and written.
The human side of his politics and personality was strong. He disagreed with his opponents without being disagreeable as he put forward his point of view decently, cogently and forcefully backed by substantive and reasoned arguments based on fact and logic. Despite his ideological disagreement he treated those elder to him with utmost respect. As I moved to Delhi for good in 1970 he instructed me to everyday call on the seriously ailing Jan Sangh stalwart Pandit Prem Nath Dogra who was lodged at the RSS headquarters in Jhandewalan. I would meet Panditji and spend some time with him daily. On one occasion some people from Jammu came to the national capital to greet the late Bharatiya Janata Party stalwart Kidar Nath Sahani on becoming the Governor of Sikkim. Some of them started speaking against father. Taken aback, Mr Sahani cut them short and told them to shut up: “His political views may be different. We respect his integrity.” As Pondicherry Lt Governor K.R. Malkani, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue, learning about father’s presence (he spent almost every winter there in a simple guest house for about 20 years) sent his vehicle inviting him for a long discussion. Mr Malkani also invited him to stay as his guest which he politely declined.
‘Honest opponent’
In 1977, as a sports reporter at that time, I was staying in Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium along with some other professional colleagues from Delhi for a meeting of the Sports Journalists Federation of India (SJFI) and a week-long all-India sports journalists’ cricket tournament. One fine morning a Jammu boy who had come all the way to join the Bollywood turned up at the stadium along with local editions of the Times of India and the Navbharat Times both of which prominently carried a statement by the Congress leader and former Sadar-e-Riyasat Dr Karan Singh that for the first time he faced an opponent against him he could not say anything. It was through this piece of information in the absence of faster modes of communication those days that I came to know that father had joined the electoral contest in the Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency.
Father remained humble all through even as he carried out tough assignments and faced political struggles. He was officially made in charge of organising publicity following the tribal invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1948 when everything was virtually in debris — a job he carried out in an honorary capacity. He was a leading light of the National Conference at one time and was the first top leader to be expelled from the party perhaps because, among other things, while he worked for and celebrated the abdication by Maharaja Hari Singh, he did not agree that the former ruler should be asked to leave the State something that Sheikh Abdullah insisted upon persuading Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel to toe his line; the expulsion letter was signed by the Sheikh himself and carried by D.P. Dhar. Ironically Dhar later was part of the troika along with Dr Karan Singh and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad who planned to wake up the Sheikh from his sleep when he was riding high as the “Prime Minister” and put him behind the bars on August 9, 1953.
He founded the first Jammu and Kashmir unit of a pro-India national party, Praja Socialist Party (PSP), with the avowed objective of winning over hostile elements. He was chairman of the all-party reception committee for Sheikh Abdullah when he was set free after more than a decade in jail and accompanied the Sheikh to Pakistan and “Azad” Kashmir, as the Pakistan-occupied territory is locally known; the Sheikh was sent by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to hold talks with Pakistan’s military dictator Ayub Khan and other leaders — a trip cut short by Nehru’s death in New Delhi.
Mridula Sarabhai was well aware of father’s simple and austere life and telephonically conveyed to him on behalf of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that he should accompany Frontier Gandhi Abdul Ghafffar Khan on his visit to India on behalf of the Central Government; he regretted his inability but offered every help in case the veteran freedom-fighter’s itinerary included Jammu and Kashmir. He could bring bitter foes on the negotiating table. It was little surprising that the topmost Bharatiya Janata Party (then Jan Sangh) leaders greeted the Sheikh as the latter stepped out of jail in Jammu and the pro-Pakistan elements in the Kashmir Valley returned to the mainstream under the banner of the Janata Party. He represented national and international newspapers and although he helped most of them set up their offices on either side of the Pir Panjal he did not accept a staff job. Some examples of his indomitable courage and maturity as a journalist while staving off political and bureaucratic assaults on J&K’s first newspaper “Ranbir” and the love-hate relationship with Sheikh Abdullah are recorded in my grandfather Mr Mulk Raj Saraf’s autobiography “Fifty Years As A Journalist.” The “Ranbir” was founded by my grandfather, an orphaned child who came to be known as the Father of Journalism in J&K, and father stood by him all along as No 2 in the newspaper which vigorously campaigned for J&K’s accession with India and Sheikh Abdullah’s release from jail in 1947.
Today I would just recount three incidents to underline his spirit of independence, zest for a clean personal and political life and untiring effort for building a harmonious society.
Probity in public life
This is something that happened when I was a child but is firmly etched on my mind. Five of us brothers and sisters were playing on the lawns of Srinagar’s Tourist Reception Centre (TRC). An elderly gentleman walked up to us. He had apparently come to know whose children we were. He patted us on the back and gave us Rs 10 each which we refused. He insisted and pushed the money into our hands. After some time father came to the spot. We handed over the money to him and gave him all the details. Since we recognised the person, a prominent leader who held important political positions from time to time and also became the country’s ambassador in a foreign country, we had little difficulty in mentioning his name. Father searched for him and not finding him there went to his home and returned the money asking him not to act like this again. Decades later when there was a massive public reception for father in Jammu — I had gone from Delhi to witness it — father saw this gentleman sitting in the crowd and immediately called him to the stage in deference to his constitutional position at that time. The first incident was a lesson for us that for the integrity like charity begins at home and for life to be meaningful and credible one must keep one’s eyes and ears open resisting all temptations. The second underlined the need for maintaining one’s sense of propriety in public life.
1962 Amirakadal assembly election
I vividly recollect our neighbour Mr Devi Dass Thakur who had moved to the Jammu city from his remote mountainous village in a remarkable journey to become a distinguished lawyer, Deputy Chief Minister and Assam Governor, coming home one fine morning. There was nothing unusual about his visit. Our families closely interacted and he was also a leader of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) of which father was the founder-chairman. One part of their conversation struck me. Mr Thakur asked father: “What would have you done if police had not heeded to your warning to withdraw.” Father replied: “Then they would have seen.” It turned out that shaken by father’s decision to oppose the ruling party candidate in the Amirakadal assembly constituency the Government tried to create an atmosphere of fear and terror and deployed police to disrupt father’s public meeting at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk. As the uniformed men moved closer remote controlled by their political bosses, father took the mike in his hand and told the police to leave the venue or face repercussions. Sensing the public mood the authorities withdrew their ill-advised move but it did not prevent them from using other unfair means. The Amirakadal constituency continues to be politically sensitive and important.
1977 Udhampur elections: Cleanest battle
How I came to know about father contesting the Udhampur Parliamentary seat is mentioned above. A section of the erstwhile Jan Sangh (it had formally merged with the Janata Party) had already made its resentment known against his candidature and staged a protest but was confronted by Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee who staged a dharna at the Jammu railway station to counter them. Sheikh Abdullah as the Chief Minister had ensured that the State by and large was free from Emergency; as a result there were no significant curbs on individual liberties and freedom of the press. Somehow, however, he felt obliged to enter into electoral alliance with Indira Gandhi. Dr Karan Singh was a direct beneficiary of this pact between the Congress and the National Conference. He lost in almost every Congress stronghold but gained immensely in the NC’s areas of influence and the RSS-dominated segment of Reasi to eventually emerge victorious. It was an entirely different Dr Singh and the Sheikh, however, as the news came in of Mrs Gandhi’s defeat in Raebareli. The former turned a critic of Indira Gandhi and as a result could never completely win back her favour or that of her successors. On the other hand, the Sheikh offered regrets at a public meeting in Shahidi Chowk (Jammu) for having betrayed “my friend Om Saraf.” Political commentator G.N. Gauhar recorded in his book “Elections in Jammu and Kashmir”: “… a principled scholar and son of the last Dogra ruler had to save his honour with ‘unfair means’ which amounts to a moral defeat… Simultaneously it was the worst defeat for Sheikh Abdullah also who patronised fraud in favour of his enemy and that too against a friend who from 1953 had stood like a rock to work against excesses committed upon the same Sheikh Abdullah and his associates.” He has also written that the politicians like Mr Om Saraf were “ineffective in Jammu and Kashmir where political charisma lies in deceit, fraud, misleading oratory, philanthropic distribution of largesse amassed from the embezzled assets.”
The Udhampur contest got wide notice in the country as the cleanest election ever with father and Dr Singh taking care that there was no mud-slinging.
Every day there are one or two calls feeling father’s absence. Mainstream segments of society and politics as well as those on the separatist spectrum in J&K have spoken with one voice paying almost identical moving tributes to him. “His body donation has boosted our morale. We only kept talking about it. He has done it,’ Dr Swaran Singh, a private medical practitioner associated with a rationalists’ society in Jammu, rang up: “His legend will grow with each passing year.”
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