The Polyester Prince (4 page)

Hirachand Ambani made little money, and lived in extremely austere circumstances. The family home still stands in a hamlet called Kukaswada, two or three miles outside the main part of Chorwad. It is a two-roomed stone dwelling with a stamped carthern floor, entered by a low doorway and dimly lit by openings under the caves. Ambani was married twice, having a son from his first marriage (named Samadasbhai) before being widowed. His second marriage gave him five more children, with Dhirajlal-or Dhirubhai as his diminutive became-in the middle.

The family’s poverty did not keep the Ambanis from contact with better-off members of their social peer group. The Bania occasionally got together for meals or picnics. The Ambani children mixed freely with the Shahs, who were already prospering from a move to the then hub of British commerce in Calcutta, where they set up India’s first factory making aluminium cooking pots.

The two houses of the Shah family in Chorwad, Shanti Sadan and Anand Bhavan, were big and rambling in the traditional style. As well as learning all the ways of business, the children were expected to learn various sports including horse riding, swimming and athletics, and to take their turn milking the 20 cows and 10 buffaloes kept in the gardens.

The Shah family had become early followers of Mahatma Gandhi-also a Bania from Kathiawar-and often gave him accommodation in Calcutta. An uncle of Viren Shah and Jayan Shah had even retired from business and become a Gandhian social activist in Chorwad, carrying out upliftment work among its Harijans (the former Untouchables) and running a fitness camp for youth.

Jayan Shah remembers Dhirubhai, who was about seven years younger than him, coming to Anand Bhavan. Jayan Shah’s father took an interest in’other people’s children, lending them books to read and asking them to do odd jobs around the house. Dhirubhai was welcomed with great affection, and returned it with respect. Later, when he had gone away to work overseas, Shah remembers him dropping by to pay his respects during a vacation back in Chorwad, arriving with ‘great gusto and a feeling of an old relationship’.

The guild-like support of his merchant caste helped Dhirubhai continue his education after finishing at his father’s old primary school. In 1945, he moved up to Junagadh and enrolled at the Bahadur Kanji High School. This shared with a university college a large yellow stucco edifice on the outskirts of the city that had been built in 1902 by the nawab of the time and named after him. Because of his family’s poverty, Dhirubhai was admitted as a free student. He found accommodation in a boarding house funded by the Modh Bania for children of their caste.

The Second World War had largely passed by Kathiawar, save for overflights by military transports and the occasional visit of the new army jeeps. The movement for Indian independence had not. On returning from South Africa, Gandhi had established his ashram in Ahmedabad, the main city of Gujarat, and carried out many of his agitations against British rule in the same region, including the famous ‘salt march’ to the sea to protest against the government monopoly of salt in 1930.

His activities were financed by Indian industrialists from the Hindu trading castes, foremost among them the Calcutta-based Marwari jute-miller G. D. Birla. His abstemious lifestyle was an extension of their own ideals, more familiar to them than the Anglicised manners of the Nehru family. But a real self-interest was also involved. The industrialists also saw in the Bania-born Gandhi a counterforce within the Indian National Congress-the main secular vehicle of the independence movement-to the socialist and communist ideas that had taken a strong grip on the thinking of educated Indians. Gandhi’s ideas of industrial devolution to the villages were intrinsically opposed to the proposals for state capitalism and central planning of investment then being promoted by the Left in India as elsewhere in the world.

In Junagadh, the ideas of Gandhi and Sardar Patel, the Hindu nationalist lieutenant of Nehru who was also a Gujarati, cast a strong influence. The Nawab, with his Indian Political Service Resident Mr Monteith at his side, was automatically put in defence of the status quo. His police force and its detective branch kept a close watch on the independence movement, and carried out many arrests of agitators throughout the 1940s.

At the Bahadur Kanji school, Dhirubhai was quickly infected by the independence mood.

Krishnakant Vakharia, later a leading lawyer in Ahmedabad, was two years ahead of Dhirubhai at the school and met him soon after his arrival in Junagadh. The two took part in a gathering of students to discuss the freedom movement. Vakharia recalls that all were inspired by the nationalist ideals of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and most of all the socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, then still in the Congress Party.

The Modh boarding house where Dhirubhai was staying became the headquarters of a new group to push these ideals, which they called the Junagadh Vidyarti Sangh (Junagadh Students’ League). The objective was to take part in the national independence movement and Gandhi’s swadeshi (self-reliant) economic programme, which involved boycotting imported factory made goods in favour of village craftwares such as homespun cotton (khadi). Activities were to include meetings to salute the proposed national flag of India-the saffron, white and green tricolour with the ox-wagon wheel in the middle, which was then the Congress flag-as well as motivation sessions and sports meetings for the other students.

Vakharia became the president of the Sangh, with Dhirubhai and another student called Praful Nanavati serving as secretaries. ‘We organised a lot of functions, like saluting the national flag, and took a lot of risks,’ said Vakharia. At one time we printed pamphlets with a photo of Gandhi, and with that we approached some leading citizens to be our sponsors-but no one agreed. In Junagadh at that time no one was allowed to even utter

“Jai Hind” or “Vande Mataram”, or sing national songs. Even wearing khadi made you a suspect in the eyes of the Nawab’s
CID
.’

In 1946, the students learned that Kaniala Munsi, a lawyer who was later a leading Congress Party politican and a minister in Nehru’s first government, would be visiting Junagadh. They decided to invite him to address their members in the compound of a boarding house for lain students. The Nawab’s police summoned Vakharia, Dhirubhai and Nanavati, and threatened the three with arrest, expulsion from school and trouble from their parents unless they gave an undertaking that no political speech would be given.

It is here that Dhirubhai shows a spark of his later genius at bringing apparently irreconcilable demands into an accommodation, if through a dubious intellectualism. “We had said that a literary figure would deliver a speech,’ said Vakharia. ‘Dhirubhai whispered that there was nothing wrong in giving this undertaking. “We are not going to give the speech. If there is any breach in the undertaking, it’s a problem between Munsi and the police.”’ Munsi came and delivered a rousing speech in favour of early independence.

As 1947 wore on and partition of British India along Hindu Muslim communal lines became more likely, the political position of the princely states came under great scrutiny. By August, when the transfer of British power was due, all the rulers came under pressure to accede to either India or Pakistan. In most of the more than 550 states, the decision was clearcut because of geographical position, the religion of the ruling family, and the predominant religion of the population.

Three difficult cases stood out after ‘freedom at midnight’ on 15 August. In Kashmir, contiguous with both India and Pakistan and with a Muslim majority, the Hindu ruler wavered. In the immensely wealthy and large central Indian state of Hyderabad, which had a Hindu majority, the Muslim Nizam had dreams of independence from both India and Pakistan. Then there was Junagadh, what the historian H. V Hodson called ‘the joker in the pack’.

Junagadh was close to the western side of Pakistan, and had a Muslim ruler. But its fragmented territory was interlocked with that of neighbouring Hindu-ruled states, and its people were mostly Hindu. Moreover, it contained the great Hindu pilgrimage sites of Somnath and Dwarka.

In 1946, the Nawab’s prime minister and closest adviser, the Diwan, had become sick and gone into prolonged convalescence. Stepping into his shoes in May 1947 as acting Diwan came Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a politician from Sindh active in the Muslim League of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan. (Bhutto himself was the father and grandfather of two later prime ministers of Pakistan, Zulfikir Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.)

Bhutto kept in close touch with Jinnah and had the Nawab obey his advice to ‘keep out under all circumstances until 15th August’. Then, on the day of the transfer of British power, the Government of Junagadh announced its accession to Pakistan. Hodson believes Jinnah never actually thought Junagadh would be allowed to join Pakistan. The objective of the exercise was to set uncomfortable precedents for Nehru in the more pressing contest for Kashmir and perhaps Hyderabad. If Nehru agreed to a plebiscite in Junagadh, which he eventually did, it would help Pakistan’s case for a popular vote in Muslim-majority Kashmir. If the Junagadh ruler’s decision was accepted, over the wishes of his people, the same could apply in Hyderabad. If the Indians simply marched into Junagadh, protests against a similar Pakistan!, use of force in Kashmir would be greatly weakened.

Nehru adopted the course of negotiation while throwing a military noose around Junagadh in the neighbouring Hindu-ruled states, which had all acceded to India. Two subordinate territories of Junagadh, the enclaves of Babariawad and Mangrol, were taken by Indian troops on 1 November 1947 without bloodshed.

Meanwhile, Indian nationalists began agitating within and without Junagadh for the overthrow of the Nawab. In Bombay on 25 September, they declared an Arazi Hakumat’ or Parallel Government under the presidency of Samaldas Gandhi, a relative of Gandhi who was editor of the newspaper Vande Mataram. From a temporary base in Rajkot, Gandhi kept in touch with supporters inside Junagadh by human couriers simply walking across the open frontiers of the isolated state. Other nationalist journalists, including the editors of the Gujarati newspaper lanmabhoomi in Bombay, called for volunteers to gather in Bhavnagar and other cities close to Junagadb for a non-violent invasion.

The students in the Junagadh Vidyarti Sangh threw their limited weight against the Nawab also. ‘We were too scared to carry out physical sabotage like attacking power stations,’ said Vakharia. ‘So our sabotage consisted of spreading false rumours to cause panic, and supplying information back to the provisional government. We used to send someone to Jetalsur or Jedpur in the Indian union to pass on the information.’

In Junagadh, as in many other parts of India, the partition steadily developed a murderous communal nature. Two Muslim communities, called the Sodhana and Vadhana, had taken a militant position in support of accession to Pakistan and mounted big processions through Junagadh, threatening Hindus with retribution if they opposed it. As it became clear that Pakistan was in no position to support the Nawab, Hindus turned on the Muslim minority and massacred whole communities in some outlying villages.

Food shortages developed, and the Nawab’s revenues dried up. As his administration lost its grip, the Nawab decided the game was up and made a hasty departure for Karachi, taking with him all the cash and negotiable assets of the treasury, his family and many of his dogs (though his consort, the Begum, forgot her youngest child in the royal nursery and had to turn back to collect the infant). On 8 November, after an earlier meeting of the State Council, Bhutto wrote to the Indian Government’s representative at Rajkot asking India to take over the state to avoid a complete administrative breakdown, pending a honourable settlement of the accession issues.

The Indian Army moved into Junagadh without incident on 9 November, and the communal tension quickly settled down. However, Vakharia recalls a small communal riot breaking out in Junagadh soon after independence, when some shoe shops belonging to Muslims at Panch Hatadi (Five Shops Area) were looted by Hindus. The students of the Junagadh Vidyarti Sangh went to the area to protect the Muslim shops, but their presence was misunderstood by the police.

One of the students was a fellow Modh Bania and boarding house companion of Dhirubhai named Krishna Kant Shah, who had been born in Kenya and sent back to Junagadh for his education. He was arrested by the police as one of the looters and taken to the lockup early in the evening. The leaders of the Sangh went to the police headquarters and met the police commissioner, named Lahiri, to argue Shah’s innocence.

‘Dhirubhai [who was then 16] showed a lot of courage in arguing with the police commissioner to defend Shah,’ Vakharia said. ‘The arguments went on for two or three hours, and all of us were threatened with arrest for obstruction of justice. But we were determined we would not go until our colleagues were released. Eventually they decided to let Shah go at midnight.’ It was a debt Dhirubbai was to collect from Shah in controversial circumstances more than 30 years later.

The people of Junagadh voted overwhelmingly to join India when a plebiscite was held in February 1948, though Pakistan never recognised it. Dhirubhai returned to his studies, and took his matriculation in 1949. Vakharia studied law and continued with his political activity, following Narayan out of the Congress Party into the new Socialist Party in 1948. On graduating in 1951 he moved to practise in Rajkot and then Ahrnedabad, and eventually came back into the Congress later in an active legal - political career.

With his family still extremely poor, Dhirubhai had no such option. On finishing high school, he had to look for work. At the age of 16, Dhirubhai was physically strong, and already possessed of the persuasiveness that was to mark his later business career.

It is tempting to look into the culture of the Modh Bania for an explanation of what his critics see as his ruthless business ethics and ‘shamelessness’. But many other entrepreneurs have also sprung from the same background in Kathiawar: most would shrink from the manipulation of the government that became part and parcel of the Ambani operation, even at the cost of less success.