The Life and Times of George Fernandes

Title: The Life and Times of George Fernandes
Author: Rahul Ramagundam
Publisher: Allen Lane, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780670092888
Pages: 533

When a lean, bespectacled trade union leader named George Mathew Isadore Fernandes followed Atal Behari Vajpayee to take the oath of office as the defence minister of India in the BJP-led government in 1998, it was the most incongruous moment for a lot of people who believed that steadfastness to an ideal is the hallmark of a politician. A firebrand organiser of workers who was in the forefront of several militant labour strikes found himself cloistered in a supposedly right-wing outfit. What caused this ‘revolutionary’ shift in his political stand? This question was a burning issue then and is still relevant today when the question of choosing the lesser evil props up in the political domain. This book gathers a comprehensive picture of India over the 80 years when George Fernandes played out his legacy. It is also interwoven with the history of the socialist movement which collapsed to irrelevance from a very promising start. The author claims that this book is the first study that goes into the microscopic details of George Fernandes' complex life and times. It was the shackled photo of him during the Emergency that prompted the author to write a book on him. Rahul Ramagundam is a professor of history at a Delhi-based university. His books are political in nature.

George Fernandes was born in 1930 at Mangalore to Konkani parents. He had a traditional religious upbringing and was enrolled in a seminary at Bengaluru to become a priest. However, the rebel in him was always alert to injustice and he had a tough time with the administrators of the seminary. He left it soon and became attracted to socialist ideals. He went to Mumbai in search of employment as most youths were doing at that time. There he was caught up in the trade union movement and rose quickly in its ranks due to his fiery speeches and bubbly enthusiasm. Aggression, commitment and dedication were the staples on which he built one success after another in the labour union movement. In 1958, he announced a 'Bombay Bandh' for a day which brought the bustling city to a standstill, which was the first of its kind in history and was called in solidarity with striking workers at the Padmini Automobiles. In his work extending to two decades, he organised port and dock workers, municipal employees, hotel and restaurant workers. While at the forefront of striking workers, it can't be denied that he was desirous of accepting positions of power. Fernandes was elected to the Bombay city corporation for the first time in 1961. On the first day when the house commenced, he protested, asking to conduct the proceedings in Marathi. He didn't obey the chair and was forcefully evicted. He was made prominent on the national scene by organising a strike by the railwaymen that eventually failed and initiated his downfall among workers. But it did some lasting changes in the movement also. Ramagundam observes that trade unionism drifted away from the pioneering adventurism by the 1980s. They had become service agencies of political parties and turned organised-labour-centric in outlook. They moved far away from the predicament of unorganised workers. As an example, he notes that the organised workers demanded uniforms made of fashionable terry cloth, without thinking about its impact on the handloom sector, which provided livelihood to millions in the unorganised sector. Their leadership went to lawyers who knew labour laws well with no comprehensive or integrated view of the society.

This book gives as much emphasis in bringing out the politician in Fernandes as in introducing the labour activist. He was really interested in politics and in assuming positions of power. He became the union minister for very important portfolios in 1977 (Desai), 1989 (V.P. Singh) and 1999, 2004 (Vajpayee) cabinets. Even when he was an MP, he listened to tales of injustice from the general populace and acted upon them. His combative instinct, spontaneous repartee, ready wit and confidence made him stand out. He was seen as one who took up cases of injustice whenever and wherever they occurred. He was on the mailing list of all civil rights activists. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1967, but miserably lost in 1971 in the same constituency of Bombay South. In this election, he opposed the alliance with Jan Sangh. Also, this was the year when Indira's pro-left policies such as bank nationalization and rescission of privy purses had gained much traction among voters. He opposed the Emergency and planned subversive activities to destabilize the Indira regime. He was arrested and put in jail in shackles. He contested elections from jail, was elected and appointed as a cabinet minister. However, in a short span of three years since arriving triumphantly from Tihar jail, Fernandes found himself ‘dented, deserted and diminished’. His long years in the wilderness had begun. He was a source of great strength in troubleshooting the inter-party rivalries in Vajpayee ministry though he brought in a devastating scandal in the Tehelka episode. The author estimates that Fernandes did not have much electoral strength, but carried political weight. He was successful in bargaining for a position of advantage within the BJP-led NDA on the basis of his sheer stature. He extracted the price for his support and got it.

George Fernandes was not a stranger to jail. He was incarcerated in the trade union days as well as during the Emergencies. He was jailed in 1963 for eight months when Nehru imposed Emergency in the wake of Chinese invasion. He had invoked this draconian measure after the war was over. Police beat him up in 1970 when he led a demonstration of Adivasis in Delhi, though he was an MP then. He suffered a traumatic head injury and this might have contributed to the development of Alzheimer's Disease in his old age, which robbed him of memories. He was again captured in 1976 after living underground for many months during Indira's Emergency. He was caught in connection with the Baroda dynamite case. The motivation for writing this book is claimed to be a photo of Fernandes being taken to court in shackles after this capture. Several chapters describe his underground activities and resistance measures. He strangely had trusting liaison with several women who not always returned the trust. He was tortured in prison and two of his brothers who had no political background were also arrested and tortured. 

The most audacious episode in Fernandes' life is, expectedly, the railway strike he engineered in 1974. After the oil shock, inflation was very high and all categories of workers were suffering badly. The railwaymen demanded larger bonus and pay and became restive. Looking back with hindsight, it seems that it was not prudent to challenge the government which itself was reeling under so much international headwinds. Fernandes was militant and stepped up the rhetoric and issued open threats. He thundered that a 7-days' strike of railwaymen will cause every thermal power station to close down; A 10-days' strike would close down every steel plant that would take a year to restart; and finally, a 15-day strike would make India starve. The government prevaricated in negotiations before the strike. A meeting was cancelled at the last minute when a deputy minister's father died and he had to go to his village in Kashmir for the last rites and no alternate negotiator was arranged. Fernandes was arrested a week prior to the strike. The public opposed the strike as the railwaymen were the best organized lot in the country and enjoyed far better pay and privileges than the great majority of the population. The government did not cave in, as it was prepared to suffer the consequences and teach the striking workers a harsh lesson. The workers gave in and unconditionally withdrew the strike after 20 days. The effects of this fiasco was long-lasting. It undid the working class movement in India for a long time. The miserable failure of the strike undermined Fernandes' position in the labour movement. A week after the strike was called off, and workers were beginning to feel the pinch of the government's punitive measures, their wives surrounded Fernandes and tore his clothes, demanding restoration of wages to keep them going. AIRF, his own union of railwaymen, ejected him from its presidency. The workers shouted slogans against him. A decade later, when he became railway minister in the V.P. Singh cabinet he tried to get even by derecognising the union, but they fought back and the attempt was foiled keeping the rancour permanent.

The book is written in a fine style and nice selection of words and phrases. Ramagundam's command over the language is very impressive. Even though the book is rather big, the lilting narrative carries the readers pleasantly through the ups and downs of the protagonist's career. He had an unhappy married life and the strife is clearly visible through page after page. He once said that the day he got married was the last day he ever smiled. His powerful language is sampled in the text, and his repartee to Indira Gandhi is truly famous: "All dictators are congenital liars, but you madam, excel them all". While glimpsing on the early life of Fernandes in Mangalore, the author is particularly harsh on the Christian clergy and their faith as practised in the western coast of India and its undue preference for conversion.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star