Biographer Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy has written an old-fashioned biography, simple, replete with facts and details of the complex politics of the times when John Matthai served as India’s first railway minister of independent India, and then as the second finance minister after the resignation of R.K. Shanmukham Chetty in 1949. It was a short-lived tenure because he resigned in 1950 over differences with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru over the setting up of the Planning Commission. Dadabhoy avoids the trap of the anti-Nehru flavour by showing Matthai as the victim of Nehru’s high handedness. He handles the controversy fairly and straightforwardly. He shows that Matthai was not really opposed to the idea of Planning Commission as such though he was no socialist economist despite doing his doctoral thesis under Sidney Webb at the London School of Economics. Matthai helped in drafting what has come to be known as the Bombay Plan in 1946, which suggested that the government should take care of infrastructure and the aim was to double the income of Indians in 15 years. It was indeed a socialist goal coming from the capitalist pantheon of India at that time. He wrote to Nehru, “At a time when our main job is to repair a damaged ship what we want is not able naval architects but experienced, competent workmen.” (p. 229) Matthai thought it was unnecessary expenditure which could be avoided. But Nehru was keen about it. Matthai and Nehru did not change their positions. And in Dadabhoy’s telling of it, Matthai was not fond of Nehru as much as Nehru was fond of him and respected him. He did not want Matthai to resign, but Matthai stuck to his decision. Later, Padma Bhushan was offered to him, Matthai did not want to accept thinking that it was some titular title. Nehru wrote to him explaining the award, after which Matthai accepted it. And when Matthai was in hospital in Bombay in 1959, undergoing treatment for liver cancer, Nehru visited him. But Matthai never reciprocated Nehru’s friendliness. It is a strange equation between the two men. The interesting detail of the politics of the day is narrated by Dadabhoy with a raconteur’s fervour. Nehru wanted to Matthai to be the finance minister, but Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel backed Shanmukham Chetty. After Chetty’s resignation, Nehru turned to Matthai again, who was reluctant to accept it. Dadabhoy quotes Matthai saying, “The Prime Minister then turned to me as a last step and almost in despair. I tried hard to resist because I had already begun to feel tired of politics and was not too enamoured of taking up a new post and making a fresh start.” Nehru got C. Rajagopalachari to prevail upon Matthai, and Matthai has an interesting account of how he and his wife were invited by Rajagopalachari to meet him along with his wife, Achamma! Dadabhoy sums up the Nehru-Matthai tussle. After citing extensively from what Nehru wrote to Matthai, Dadabhoy writes, “It was clear that Nehru was trying to ensure that the break did not result in bad blood, But Matthai, set in his stirrups for war, was unrelenting and inflexible.” (p. 235) Honest John: A Life of John Matthai By Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy Penguin/Viking pp. 396; Price; Rs 999
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