Word: dalmia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After the war, a change came over Seth Dalmia. He devoted more and more time to public confession and philanthropic works. Most notable gift was to the Gandhi Memorial Fund, a gesture, he admitted publicly, that was made not from philanthropic impulse but because he expected it to help him with the government; he was being investigated at the moment for wartime tax evasion...
...while maintaining more sumptuously furnished houses than he could remember, and requiring one of his four wives to cook everything he ate and to massage him with oil every morning. For the Indian Who's Who he provided his own modest biography: "In spite of having monumental achievements, Dalmia views them with a sense of detachment, always realizing that he is not the doer of what he has done, but that in him God has fulfilled himself...
...Gold Idols. Despite his philanthropic precautions, Dalmia's wartime tax evasion cost him a reported $2,000,000 in settlement. The government suspected worse but could not readily prove it, because Indian financiers notoriously keep three sets of books-one for the tax inspectors, one for their partners, one for themselves. Two years ago, police descended on Dalmia's offices and houses and seized all the records they could find...
...took months to analyze them. Last week, on orders from Nehru himself, a squad of policemen swept up to Dalmia's white-pillared house in New Delhi. Dalmia, clutching two small gold idols, was carted off to jail while the house resounded to the piercing wails of his wives. The charge against one of the world's richest men: embezzlement of $4,200,000-worth of government bonds from his own Bharat Insurance Co., keystone of his empire...
...court, Dalmia confidently offered bail "in any quantity." But even he was staggered when the magistrate demanded $4,000,000 cash and $4,000,000 in sureties. Dalmia was released next day after putting up $3,000,000 himself, plus an other $1,000,000 in sureties offered by two relatives. As Dalmia went home, Premier Nehru held a press conference to discuss the progress of India's socialism. "The rich tend to fade out - a good thing," he remarked cheerily...