Ahmedabad blues

The city of Ahmedabad in which I live — and have continued to do so even when I had office establishments in Delhi, Rome and New York — is fascinating. It has all the historic advantages of having evolved through centuries of trade within the region, within the country and the world.

Last month, the city hosted a foreigner who anticipated India’s technology dreams — and lost two of its cultural giants. On March 21 and 22, a soft-spoken American was here. Richard Celeste was the architect of the Indo-US Technology Agreement — out of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was able to carve out the nuclear agreement, which is still the basis of a forward looking relationship in technology, higher education, research and economic development between India and the US. We are one of the few countries with which the Americans have such an agreement.

I knew the strength of American technology. Countries such as Japan, France and Germany are important.

But the Americans are way out there in pursuit of knowledge in its purest form, which, we now know from experience, is the substantive building block in the present phase of economic development.

In spite of criticism in Parliament, I initialled the technology agreement with the US. It was to be signed by Madeleine Albright during her visit to India, but President Clinton finally signed the agreement.

Former Ambassador Richard Celeste’s observations on Gandhiji’s Ahmedabad make me proud. His wife Jacqueline is now working to provide clean water to Indian villages.

Meanwhile, the passing away of Chunni Kaka — the late Chunni Vaidya — and Narayanbhai Desai marked the end of an era. They were two great sons of the city. The Sabarmati kept flowing, albeit now with Narmada waters.

In 1987, Chunni Kaka called on me in the now much derided Planning Commission and protested that a dam on the Sipu, a tributary of the Sabarmati, had taken away the livelihood of hundreds of farmers.

The bureaucracy in the Planning Commission and in the water resources ministry was unrelenting but I knew the strength of these lean and wiry Gandhians and went to the fields with him, north of Ahmedabad.

The experts promised solutions which never work completely, but he became a friend and helped in the Sardar Sarovar relief work.

After the burning of the compartments at Godhra, and in the subsequent carnage, he and Narayanbhai called some 70 friends to Kochrab Ashram.

Back from Delhi, I was asked to be one of them, since “we have to do something”. We were to walk to Sabarmati Ashram. My son was there, along with many others. The old men had managed to cut across age, religion, class and gender barriers.

Ahmedabad was still burning and we walked quietly, lips sealed, carrying posters asking for peace. Chunni Kaka and Narayanbhai led, but from the back.

I think it was in the mid-sixties of the last century that Parisians wrote of the importance of those who lead from the back.

The crowd of 70 in its eight kilometre walk became a procession of thousands, and at Sabarmati Ashram, in a peace meeting, an appeal was made.

I think former Gujarat Vidyapith Vice-Chancellor Sudarshan Iyengar drafted it, but it carried the signatures of Chunni Kaka and myself. The wiry Gandhian had struck again in the land of Gandhi.

The writer is the chancellor of the Central University of Gujaratand a former Union minister

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