Word: desai
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...scene? Last week Indians got a strong hint on how Nehru himself proposes to answer the question. To replace hapless T. T. Krishnamachari, forced out of office by a scandal over government misuse of insurance funds (TIME, March 3), Nehru chose as his Finance Minister 62-year-old Morarji Desai, who was Minister of Commerce and Industry...
...Desai is a paradoxical figure whom most Westerners-and not a few Indians-find hard to understand. An outwardly placid man, Desai devoutly copies all the personal habits of Mahatma Gandhi. He is a vegetarian, fasts 36 hours every week, generally drinks nothing but water-although at a party, to get into the spirit of things, he will sometimes take coconut milk. His views on sexual continence are so rigid that he once boasted that he had not had relations with his wife for 20 years. Almost alone among India's leading politicians, he has never traveled abroad. Chief...
Penholders & Prohibition. For all his other-worldly air, Morarji Desai has been described by fellow Indians as "a lotus with a steel stem." The son of a struggling schoolteacher, he was well started on a brilliant civil-service career under the British when he resigned his job to join Gandhi's independence movement in 1930. Of the 17 years between his resignation and India's independence, Desai spent more than six in British prisons. With independence, he emerged as Congress Party strongman in Bombay State, won a reputation as a hard-boiled politician who never forgot an injury...
...years ago, when the Gujarati community of Ahmedabad rioted against Nehru's plan to submerge them in a huge, new state dominated by the Marathas, Desai-a Gujarati himself-first tried to shame the rioters into submission by staging a public fast in the Gandhian tradition. When that failed, Desai ordered the police into action. They opened fire on the mobs, injuring at least 100 people...
Jawaharlal Nehru, who finds himself out of patience with many of his countrymen's cherished practices, considers fasting "an incomprehensible thing." But he kept a discreet silence last week through his friend Desai's ordeal...