Memories of Michael Mackintosh Foot by Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad (Written on Friday, 05 March 2010)

Memories of Michael Mackintosh Foot by Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
Written on Friday, 05 March 2010

I wrote this as soon as I got the news of the demise of Michael Foot in March 2010. He was a good friend of my late father, and was scheduled to preside over the release of my father’s memoirs.

I submitted this to Hindustan Times on Friday, 05 March 2010. After sitting on it for a week, they informed me that they would not be able to carry it since nobody remembered Michael Foot any more.

So I submitted this to Indian Express on Friday, 12 March 2010. Again, after sitting on it for a few days, they told me that they would be able to publish it since the events were of no interest to their readers.

So I am putting this on my blog. As far as I recall, the only tributes to Michael Foot published in the Indian press were by Kanwar Natwar Singh and John Elliott.


By Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
Written on Friday, 05 March 2010

Michael Mackintosh Foot was much reviled for strongly supporting the Emergency of Indira Gandhi. He was a close friend of hers, often warned her of threats to her life, and influenced several of her decisions. When Salvador Allende was assassinated in Santiago in 1973, Foot warned Indira Gandhi that she would be next: “The same forces which overthrew Allende are at work against you also”. Although it is not yet known if he was speaking from information obtained by Britain’s Intelligence Services or from socialist associates, this warning probably caused her regime to increase its surveillance of organizations associated with the CIA, notably Socialist International, which was funding George Fernandes, Bruno Kreisky, and Willy Brandt, among others.

Indira Gandhi was convinced that George Fernandes was going to blow her up in a bomb explosion in Varanasi in June 1975, which was one of the many reasons why she imposed the Emergency. As the Emergency was declared, George Fernandes grew a beard and donned a turban, disguised himself as a Sikh under the alias Khushwant Singh – the first Sikh name he could think of – and went into hiding in Odisha.

Michael Foot flew down to Delhi of his own accord to effect a rapprochement between Indira Gandhi and George Fernandes. The British Foreign Office tried its best to prevent Foot from doing so, claiming that his interference could lead to a breakdown in ties between Britain and India. Even though Foot was a close personal friend of the Nehru family for decades, he failed to convince her about Fernandes’s bona fides, and she reiterated that she had proof of Fernandes’s masterminding a bomb blast against her. She explained to Foot in detail the reasons why she was forced to impose the Emergency. Later, Bruno Kreisky, another mutual friend of both Indira Gandhi and George Fernandes, also tried to reconcile the two, but was snubbed by Mrs Gandhi.

But at his meeting, Foot also informed Indira Gandhi of the assassination plot brewing against Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. Mrs Gandhi replied that she had been aware of it for several months, and that both she and Rameshwar Nath Kao had been warning Mujib for over six months, but the latter refused to believe them at all, retorting: “I am the Bangabandhu and all my people adore me”. In fact, Kao had stationed a plane in Dhaka to fly out Mujib and his family, but Mujib just refused to believe that anyone would want to assassinate him.

It is also believed that Indira Gandhi discussed with Michael Foot her intention of ending the Emergency and calling for elections. Foot remarked that the British Foreign Office mandarins had told him that Indira Gandhi would never call another democratic election, “when I was certain that she would do exactly that even if her own hopes of winning were to be confounded”.

After her return to power in 1980, Foot had also cautioned Indira Gandhi about the rise of right wing Hindu groups: “the same fanatical religious groups responsible for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi are at work afresh”, and cautioned her not to plunge into crowds and to increase her security.

Foot also counseled her about the Khalistan crisis: “Giving into the demands of the Sikh extremists would achieve what neither Pakistan and insidious American policy nor Chinese pressure combined together have been able to achieve – the destruction of the inheritance your father has left you – a united India dedicated to the proposition that religious fanaticism is the most evil of all enemies”.

According to the IANS report of Foot’s death, “In 1997, when British foreign secretary Robin Cook annoyed India by offering British mediation over Kashmir, Foot stepped in with his own unpublicized mediation by speaking to prime ministers Inder Gujral and Tony Blair”. Indeed, Foot had visited Kashmir a few times during Indira Gandhi’s regime, against the advice of the British Foreign Office.

However, Foot had long provided perspectives to Indira Gandhi for her Kashmir policies, drawing on his friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru: “It was the unity of India, apart even more from the love of his own original homeland, which made Nehru risk defeats and humiliations for the sake of Kashmir”, reminding her that “ ‘The Unity of India’ was the title of the booklet which Nehru wrote at the height of the war-time crisis with Britain”.

Foot was probably as aware as Indira Gandhi was that she was risking her life by ordering Operation Bluestar, but he reminded her of the words her father had uttered to her during the Freedom Struggle: “Be brave, and all the rest follows. If you are brave, you will not fear, and will not do anything of which you are ashamed”.

A lot of insights into Indian political policies, especially under the Nehru dynasty, have been buried with Michael Foot. “My great ambition is to write a big book on India”, he said a few years ago. He could not realize his ambition, and so insights into Indian politics since the 1940s have been irretrievably lost.


Memories of Michael Mackintosh Foot by Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
Written on Friday, 05 March 2010