विभूतिमूर्ति

Extract from Work in Progress

DR RAJENDRA PRASAD

Early childhood in Jeeradei

Jiradei is a small village – not very different from what it must have been more than a century and a half ago. Like any other village in India it is surrounded by open agricultural land dotted with trees, some of them very old with long shady branches. A thin winding metalled road leads north from the village to the railway station, about a kilometer away. The station was earlier named ‘Bhantapokhar’, but is now renamed ‘Jiradei’. It lies on the Chhapra-Gorakhpur broad gauge railway line; about 80 kms west of Chhapra. Siwan, now the district headquarters for Jiradei, comes just about 10 kms earlier on the same line, from where another line branches off towards Hathua. During the British days, Siwan was a subdivisional town under Saran district, but is now a new district in its own right. It takes about two hours from Chhapra by road to drive down to Jiradei. From the main road you take a cut south across the railway line to reach the village. Just as you enter the village, a full-size statue of Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the  Indian Republic, standing on a pedestal in a park, comes into view,

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Almost at the centre of the village Jiradei stands the large sprawling ancestral house of Dr Rajendra Prasad – lately renovated- with a canopied statue of Rajendra Babu erected in the front garden. The renovated building retains most of the original structure of the house that must have been raised during the period when Shri Chadhur Lals served as the Dewan of Hathua Raj. Chadhur Lal, a small zamindar in his own right, was the elder brother of Rajendra Babu’s grandfather Mishri Lal who died at an early age. The building has the typical structure of the house of a small zamindar family, with a quadrangular courtyard in the centre and spacious verandahs on all four sides, each side having several single-door rooms, one beside another.

It was in one of these rooms that Rajendra Babu was born on December 3, 1884. The room lies totally vacant today like most other rooms. The emptiness slowly envelopes you as you stand there musing about that great moment when a noble soul, a truly illustrious son – a ‘gem of the nation’ was born here….

Just a little away, on the outer verandah, lies a broad wooden chowki, near the entrance to the main hall. Stuck on the wall overhead is a marble tablet saying that it had served as the bed for Mahatma Gandhi when he stayed there for two days – from the evening of 16 to morning of 18 January, 1927.After the Gauhati Congress (December, 1926) Gandhi was on a tour of Bengal and south India propagating his three-point agenda of Khadi, eradication of untouchability and communal harmony

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Rajendra Babu’s  Autobiography begins with a short account of his ancestors, who are believed to have come and finally settled, seven or eight generations before, in this village, Jiradei. The family saga begins with Chaudhur Lal, the elder brother, who had one son, Jagdev Sahay. Misri Lal, the younger brother, also had only one son, Mahadev Sahay, who was just one and a half years old when Misri Lal died at an early age of 21 years. After the death of Misri Lal, it was Chaudhur Lal who brought up Jagdev Sahay, his own son, and Mahadev  Sahay, his nephew, with equal paternal affection and care. Chaudhur Lal had served as a well-respected Dewan of Hathua Estate for long and had wielded considerable prestiege and influence. This must have been around 1890. Chaudhur Lal was already in his seventies, and the affairs of the zamindari were being looked after by his son, Jagdev Sahay. Unfortunately, Jagdev  Sahay died of cholera at an early age. Later, Chaudhur Lal and his wife also died within a year or two. The entire burden of ‘the management of the estate now fell on the inexperienced shoulders of Mahadev Sahay. All this sad turn of fortune’s wheel happened when the education of of his two sons – Mahendra Prasad and Rajendra Prasad was at stake.

 This was around 1901, when Rajendra Prasad was studying for his entrance examination in Chhapra. But the story of Rajendra Babu’s early education begins at Jiradei several years before, around 1890, when he was only about five-six years of age. Mahadev Sahay was fond of wrestling and horser-riding, a trait which his two sons also inherited.

In an interesting episode, when both the brothers had gone in a barat (bridegroom’s marriage party), a customary horse-race between the bride’s and bridegroom’s parties took place. Being good horse-riders, the two brothers also took part in the race, which was usually held in the open fields of the countryside. New horses were usually provided on such occasions by the bride’s party. And the one which was brought for Rajendra Prasad was rather raw and ‘unbroken’, though quite swift and spirited. And soon it took its rider literally for a rough ride across the village fields and disappeared in no time like an arrow shot from a bow. Everyone, including the elder brother,  Mahendra Prasad, got worried, and several riders were sent out to scout for Rajendra Prasad, fearing the worst. The rascal had been known to have thrown off many a rider from its back in the past. After searching for the animal and the rider near and far, the scouting riders returned harried and crestfallen. Mahendra Prasad  now grew more and more anxious. He was an expert rider himself and imagined the worst that could have happened. All the gaiety and merriment of the occasion turned into dismal apprehension. Night had fallen, hours went by, and no one knew what to do. Just then, out in the distance, people saw a horse and its rider slowly emerging from the darkness. Rajendra Prasad had finally been able to tame the devil, without getting dislodged from his seat. He had only too wisely allowed the beast to tire itself out after galloping for miles around. Thereafter, it had no strength left but to meekly obey its rider.

The earlier chapters of the Autobiography recount several other amusing episodes, when he was still a small child, studying Urdu and Persian at home, under Maulvis, along with his two cousins.

The Maulvi lived in a room in the house adjoining ours. The maktab (school) was located in a verandah of his house. We would sit on a takhatposh (wooden cot) and the Maulvi on his own. The school began early in the morning….Our classes would seem interminable as after an hour and a break at noon we would start again and continue till an hour before sunset. After sunset we would begin again and study in the light of an oil lamp

In the evening session, we would feel sleepy but were afraid of dozing lest the Maulvi beat us. Jamuna Prasad, my elder cousin, was full of ruses to make the Maulvi let us go early. One ruse was to empty a packet of dust in the lamp on the pretext of adjusting the wick, unseen by the Maulvi. The dust would absorb the oil and the lamp would start flickering in a few seconds. The Maulvi would curse the maid-servant for the inadequate supply of oil and would break up the class.

One of his uncles, Baldev Prasad, ‘a man full of zest’, ‘ well-read in Persian’, ‘a fine soul, full of humour’, ‘clever in the use of the catapult’ was very fond of playing pranks. The first Maulvi Saheb who  had been appointed to ‘ initiate us into the alphabet’ was a special target for his hilarious jokes.

The Maulvi who was a queer man, given to making tall claims, afforded a good target for Uncle Baldev’s jokes….Though claiming proficiency in chess, not once did he defeat our uncle….One day when we went out for a walk, we saw a bull standing in the middle of the road. Someone said it was a rogue and attacked passers-by. When Uncle asked the Maulvi not to go near the bull, he declared his fearlessness and passed too near the bull with a contemptuous tilt of the head. The next moment, the bull lifted him on his horns and tossed him to the ground.

On another occasion Uncle Baldev induced the Maulvi to handle his gun. The Maulvi said he was a fine shot. To test his ability, Uncle called him out and we all followed them.Uncle pointed out a vulture on a tree at some distance and asked the Maulvi to prove his skill. The latter raised the heavy gun, an old-fashioned muzzle-loader, with a little difficulty and fired. He, of course, missed the vulture, butthe recoil of the gun threw him back and he fell flat on the ground with a thud. He had to be carried off the field.

The Maulvi Saheb left only after six months, and the second Maulvi took his place, who was ‘a serious-minded man and a good teacher… [and] taught us for two years’. With him, his pupils ‘completed the Karima, Mamkima, Khushahal Simiya, Dastur-ul-Simiya, Gulistan, Bostan, etc’.

There is an other interesting episode regarding Rajendra Babu’s marriage. Child marriage was quite in the family tradition. So was dowry. Pomp and grandeur, caparisoned elephants and horses, silver-plated palanquins, large number of servants and relatives in the huge marriage parties – these were the hallmarks of marriages in these zamindar families. We get a very entertaining account of Rajendra Prasad’s marriage in the Autobiography. It took place when he was only twelve or thirteen, studying in the Zila School at Chhapra in the seventh standard.

…my father decided to make the marriage a grand affair. He spent generously on ornaments. Other expenditures were equally lavish….The marriage was to be held in Dalan-Chhapra in Ballia district, 40 miles from Zeradei. This meant two day’s journey….The bridegroom’s palki was a funny affair. Made of silver, it was a very heavy burden for the bearers. Open at the top, it had a canopy to protect the rider from the hot June sun. The wind blew up the canopy, turning it into a sort of balloon….What with the sun and the hot winds, riding in a palki was no fun.

By evening, the marriage party reached and ‘encamped in a village on the bank of the Sarju’. The next day, ‘We reached the bride’s place at eleven in the night’.

The bride’s party were getting nervous because of the delay in our arrival….But their spirits revived when they saw the ornaments, dresses, sweets and other presents, which we had brought for the bride. Whether they felt happy to see the bridegroom too, I do not know!

And there is still more of comedy to come. 

As I said, when our party arrived at the journey’s end, it was late in the night and I had fallen asleep in the palki. The pre-nuptial ceremonies had to be gone through and it was quite a job for my people to wake up the boy bridegroom…The wedding took place the same night….Details of the ceremonies I do not recollect. When a child, I used to join my sister in the game of doll’s marriages. To me my own marriage was not much different….All that I knew was that someone would come into my house as my wife just as my brother’s wife had come.

Child marriages, however, seemed to have their own social rationalization. According to the parents, such marriages saved their children, particularly girls, very substantially from promiscuous lapses. And though the marriages were performed rather too early, the brides were not to be sent to the bridegroom’s homes till both partners were supposedly ready for consummation. It was some kind of a rough and ready solution to the problem of pre-marital promiscuity. Gandhi, in his Autobiography, however, strongly disapproves of the woodenheaded practice.“It is my painful duty”, he writes, “ to have to record here my marriage at the age of thirteen….I can see no moral argument in support of such a preposterously early marriage”

With Rajendra Prasad, however, things happened rather differently. After his marriage was performed, the marriage party had returned without the bride. The  bride  was to come only a year later after a ceremony known as Duragaman. And even after her coming, strict codes were observed in determining the time when the ‘first meeting’ could take place. A very strict purdah system was observed customarily in the family. He remembers how his brother’s wife, when she had first come, ‘She had a room to herself and she never came even into the verandah’.

When my sister-in-law wanted to go for her bath, everyone was cleared out of the courtyard….For added protection, two maid-servants would carry bedsheets as curtains on either side when at last she walked to the bath….When my wife came to Zeradei, she had to act likewise,…. Whenever I came to Zeradei during holidays, I used to sleep in a room outside.In the middle of the night, my mother would send a maid-servant to wake me up and she would take me to my wife’s room .Before morning while all others were yet asleep I would have to be back in my own bed outside….

© Dr BSM Murty

 Some more extracts from my biography of  Dr Rajendra Prasad may be read on this blog in earlier postings. The book is shortly to be published.