If this were a leap year, there would have been a February 29, instead of March 1 following February 28. And leaplings, as those born on February 29 are called, are regarded by popular belief to be “rare, due to the rarity of their birthday”. This belief about leaplings is pure and simple imagination. But two of the type did have those qualities — a coincidence.
On February 29, 1896, in an obscure village of the Bulsar (now Valsad) district of Bombay Presidency, arrived a boy, the first of eight children, born to Vajiaben, the wife of a somewhat poor Brahmin school teacher called Ranchhodji Nagarji Desai. He was named Morarji. The parents could not have guessed in their most audacious dreams that the teacup-handle-eared boy would become a deputy collector, an MLA and minister in the same Presidency under the British Raj, and then, with India winning Independence, be Bombay’s chief minister, India’s finance minister, home minister, deputy prime minister and then, prime minister (PM). If also an opinionated, conservative, dour moralist, annoying more people than he impressed, but at the end of the day, respected for his acumen as an administrator and probity. Morarji Desai was capable of doing some unexpected things. In prison during the Emergency, his biographer Arvindar Singh tells us , he observed prison rules scrupulously, declining to talk to a friend who had managed to smuggle himself into the premises, as his name was not among those permitted to meet Morarji. And as prime minister he held secret parleys with Israel’s defence minister Moshe Dayan, in the interests of India’s security. But I can say this with total confidence: Today, he woud have roundly rebuked Israel for its violent action in Iran.
On February 29, 1904, in the temple town of Madurai, Madras Presidency, in the home of Neelakantha Sastri, a stoic and scholarly Brahmin engineer in the public works department, his young wife Seshammal gave birth to their daughter, who was named Rukmini. Famed for its shrine to Meenakshi, the town was host to musicians and dancers, little Rukmini imbibing Madurai’s culture of dance and music. Her parents could not have guessed their daughter’s art would win national and international fame, founding Madras’ highly respected Kalakshetra school for culture, the arts, especially the classical dance form Bharatanatya, of which she was an exemplar, get nominated at PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s instance to the Rajya Sabha, the first woman to be so honoured in recognition of her stature as an artist and also of her pioneering interest in the fostering of animal rights. If also a severe vegetarian, a severer art-choreographer, difficult to impress, easy to irritate.
I will fast-forward to 1977.
As India’s PM, Morarji Desai heads a government with coalition partners who have, each one of them, a sense of their own self-importance. But his own sense of that quality is a tad higher than that of the others, and he believes that he can identify a suitable name for the office of the President of India and “swing it”. He is not wrong.
Rukmini Devi, a Theosophist, is relaxing in her abode in the Theosophical Society, in Madras’ Adyar suburb, a sylvan sanctuary to peacocks, mongooses, jackals, serpents and perhaps the city’s largest concentration of mosquitoes. She is perhaps more tolerant of those flying syringes than of sub-par artists. The telephone rings. Her colleague, the septuagenarian scholar Sankara Menon, answers it for her. Coming to where she is, a few seconds later, he says, “The Prime Minister wishes to speak to you.” The following ensues, more or less, as I describe it, gleaned from a conversation I had with her:
“Who? Morarjibhai?”
“Yes”.
“Whatever for?”
“It seems important.”
“Hello.”
“Good morning, this is Morarji Desai.”
“Namaskaram, Morarjibhai? To what do I owe this honour?”
“I am phoning to ask you if you would agree to be President.”
“President?…Of what?”
“India.”
“President of India?….”
“Yes, we are looking for a suitable name. No one can be more suitable than you, who is non-partisan, in fact, non-political and non-controversial. No one will oppose your candidature… Moreover, you will be the first woman to hold that office.”
“Morarjibhai, I am honoured…but let me please think over it…This is all too sudden…”
“Sure, think it over…But there is not much time to be lost…”
Rukmini Devi turned the offer down.
“I could not have accepted,” she told me. “For one thing, as a vegetarian, I just could not have had non-vegetarian food served to guests…Then, I do not use footwear all that much. Imagine me wandering around Rashtrapati Bhavan unshod…But more than anything else…I hate arms and armaments…How could I have had men wielding guns following me around, surrounding me, all the time…No…I said, I am happy to be here…my world is with my trees, my pet cats…my music, my dance…”
Rukmini Devi would not have crossed the PM’s — or the Cabinet’s — path, but, having been an independent MP for a decade, would have shown the Opposition due consideration. She would have nudged the government to be more active globally in the matter of disarmament and human rights, would have counselled against bellicosity while being mindful of security imperatives. She would have been a partisan of the natural environment and the arts. And yes, she would have made the Cabinet reconsider all recommendations for the death penalty.
India lost out on not just a great first woman President, but a great President.
Hand it to the leapling Morarji Desai that he tried.
History’s pages are enriched by those whose leaps do not trapeze to status, but repose in stature.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a student of modern Indian history and the author of The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India. The views expressed are personal
