Morarji Ranchhodji Desai, India’s fourth Prime Minister, headed India’s first non-congressive government from 1977 to 1979. The son of a schoolteacher from the village of Bhadehi, now in the Bulsar district of Gujarat, Desai, was imprisoned three times during the Indian freedom struggle. He died on April 10, 1995, aged 99, in a Mumbai hospital.
Here are a few lesser-known facts about the faithful Gandhian:
1. Desai had been a loyal congressman for most of his five-decade long political career, but in 1969 joined the dissenters against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s rule. He had become a member of the All India Congress Committee in 1931.
2. He has held many government posts, beginning with the Prime Ministership of Bombay State in 1952, then as India’s Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in 1956 and as Minister of Finance in 1958. Later, in 1967, he joined the Cabinet of Indira Gandhi as Deputy Prime Minister.
3. After Indira declared a state of emergency in 1975, Desai was arrested and detained; he was released in January 1977.
4. After becoming prime minister of a Janata party government on March 24, 1977, he promised to end poverty and ban alcohol within 10 years. But he had to resign and his government fell into office after 28 months as an insurgency against him in the Janata party.
5. In a 1978 interview for an American TV network, he attributed his longevity to drinking his own urine. He became celibate at the age of 32.
6. He was a vegetarian by birth and conviction.
7. For Desai, truth was an article of faith, and he always stood by his conviction and once said, “One should act in life according to the truth and one’s faith.”
8. He was on an indefinite hunger strike to support the Nav Nirman movement of Gujarat in 1974 by students and middle class people against the economic crisis and corruption in public life. His fast ended in success.
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