Two marriages "made in hell" threw up a riveting discussion at the opulent Baithak hall on day one of JLF. The private lives were that of a man who made Pakistan in 1947 and a woman who broke Pakistan in 1971.
While
Muhammed Ali Jinnah had scandalised high society a century ago by marrying a Parsi heiress 24 years his junior,
Indira Gandhi had tied the knot with a Parsi man as something of a personal statement against her father. Both these political figures came off as refreshingly human in this afternoon session, moderated expertly by diplomat T C A Raghavan, which saw writers
Sagarika Ghose and
Sheela Reddy introduce the subjects of their recent biographies through a set of cinematic vignettes.
Jinnah was 40 and a rising star in the Indian nationalist movement when he fell for
the pretty, vivacious 16-yearold Ruttie Petit, the daughter of his friend, Parsi baronet Sir
Dinshaw Petit who was against the match. When she turned 18, they married and were ostracised by Bombay's beau monde. Apparently, 16-year-old Ruttie had asked Jinnah: "Why don't we get married?" To which the suave, unbending lawyer had replied: "That seems like a good proposition." "Not many married for love then but some did. Communities were not borders at the time," said Reddy, who wrote 'Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India' using never-before-seen personal letters of Ruttie and her close friends as well as accounts left by contemporaries.
Indira Gandhi, on the other hand, had grown up torn between being her tough father's protege and simple mother's protector, revealed Ghose, whose book on the former PM was prompted by the need to probe the seductive personality of a woman driven by ruthless pursuit of power.
"Our founding fathers were tough dads," said Ghose, adding that
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had huge expectations of Indira.
Sagarika Ghose (left), TCA Raghavan and Sheela Reddy.
