Reminiscences on his Birth Day

The announcement on the loud speakers on that day informed that Shri Dhebar, President of the Indian National Congress, would address a public meeting in the evening in the ground of the Grain Market of the city. I got quite excited to have a glimpse of a leader who was the chief of the party of Gandhi and Nehru - the Party that had won freedom for the country. At the big public rally, I - then a child of 13 - was, however, impressed much more by the oratory in Punjabi and personality of a Sardar, immaculately dressed in the black Sherwani and churidars - and a well adorned white turban distinguishing him apart among the many crowding at the stage. He was soon holding the mike to introduce the frail looking Gandhian, announcing his full name - Uchharangray Navalshankar Dhebar Ji - and made a moving speech eulogizing the sacrifices of the Congress Party in the struggle for freedom. The name of this person, in his youthful early forties, was Giani Zail Singh, who was then Vice President of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee. I came to know that he had himself been imprisoned and tortured in the notorious Princely state of Faridkot. It was confirmed in the later years that he was a faithful friend of the freedom fighters in my town, Ahmedgarh, including my school teacher Giani Sucha Singh ‘Dardi’ and other popular patriots in the area like Sardar Ganda Singh Kup Kalan, S / Shri Babu Ram Sood, Amar Nath Jain, Ram Sarup, Hukam Chand etc –all Advocates and Praja Mandalites (activists against native rulers) - in the neighboring state of Nawab of Malerkotla.
After serving for one year as a lecturer in English in the DAV College, Jalandhar, I was selected for Punjab Govt. Service and served in Govt. College, Bathinda from Sept. 1967 to June 1969. My soul mate friend, Prof Sat Prakash Garg, was quite intimate with many political animals of the area including the several working closely with Giani Ji. I remember meeting one Zora Singh Brar. There were tons of stories floating about his deep concerns for the marginalized masses of the formerly PEPSU area under the oppressive feudal lords; his being a rare amalgam of being a devout Sikh and a truly secular nationalist; his abundant humanity and humility as a politician and above all his fabled generosity towards old friends of the era of freedom struggle, not to speak of his magnetic charm to win new friends.

Giani Zail Singh, on the right, after release from the
Raja of Faridkot's prison, with his elder brother and father.
Raja of Faridkot's prison, with his elder brother and father.
The memories, anecdotes, jokes, gossips - good, bad and ugly - of the colourfully simple life of Giani Zail Singh (May 5, 1916 - December 25, 1994), continue ‘Google-searching’ in the ocean of my consciousness - some one who never knew him personally. The well wishers of Giani Ji - and also those not well disposed towards him - it is some satisfaction that the book, in the first person, titled, 'Memoirs of Giani Zail Singh, The Seventh President of India' compiled by S. Manohar Singh Batra, who in the words of Giani Ji, "is a highly competent official, a retired Deputy Director General of All India Radio … my Officer on Special Duty since early 1986", was published in 1997. The 50 chapters of the book, Pages 317, Har Anand Publications make an engrossing reading for all those interested in a turbulent period of India’s recent history. The politicians of Punjab have preferred not to pen their memoirs. Giani Ji too willed the book to be published after his death. The Indian politicians, perhaps, are extra cautious to keep all options open till the last breath - the political truth could be conveniently modified according to the attendant and evolving individual ambitions. Giani Ji could muster limited belated courage, of putting on record - in words of English - his thoughts and perceptions on some of the fiercest political battles of complex national challenges in which he was caught- some time firing political salvos, sometime in the cross fire.
Born in a humble home of a peasant - carpenter family in the most backward part of Malwa region of Punjab and brought up under conditions of acute physical hardships and missing formal education, Giani Ji had indeed continued confounding his admirers and detractors by his consummate political skills in the ever turbulent political waters of not only Punjab but also at the Byzantine Delhi Durbar. As a popular mass leader, he reflected the quintessential ethos and aura of the sufferings and sacrifices during the freedom struggle of India. He had few peers as a forceful and mesmerizing orator in Punjabi and Hindustani. He had an elephantine memory of old comrades and even faceless congress workers in the country and believed in helping them without their asking for the favor.
The admirers of Giani Ji ruefully remember how his caste conscious opponents in his home state of Punjab derisively called him ‘Gulli Gharh’ - the wood worker. Punjab has been waiting since long the change in the caste of the chair of Chief Minister. The quintessential son of the soil and ever a hard realist and nationalist to the core, Giani Ji wisely chose to be cremated in Delhi, in the vicinity of memorials of the Father of the Nation and the First Family of the country. How the nation will plan to remember him in 2016 - the year of the centenary of his birth - will is quite instructive to watch.