The Rediff Special/Nani
Palkhivala
Are we masters
of our fate? On the
subject of destiny,
everyone of us
forms his own
beliefs on the
basis of his own
experiences. All that I propose
to do is
to tell you
a few incidents
in my own life. I
request you to keep
an open mind
and decide, without bias
or prejudice, the right
conclusions. It is erroneous
to think that a nation
or an individual
who believes in
fate is necessarily backward.
The Germans have
begun to believe
in growing numbers in
the occult and
the supernatural. French Radio
gives the day's
horoscope along with the
daily weather forecast,
and France is
home to ten
thousand taxpaying
clairvoyants. Astrology has
claimed reinstatement at the Sorbonne after having
been banished in
1666 under the
influen ce of Descartes. Some of
the greatest men
have believed that
certain events in
their lives were preordained and
that certain individuals
had the rare
gift or precognition. An example
is that of
Dr S Radhakrishnan, a
professor of philosophy,
who later becam e President
of India. If
you read the
life of Dr
Radhakrishnan by his
son Gopal, you will
come across the
following passage on
page 143: 'Sometime during
these years when
Radhakrishnan was spending
the summers in Europe,
he met Cheiro,
the bestknown palmi st
of his day.
Cheiro studied
Radhakrishnan's palms and
forecast that he
would reach the
top, be the
head of a State,
but would before
his death, lose
his mind. Both
these prophecies seemed at
the time so
wildly off the
mark that they
became a family
joke. ' The above passage
bears eloquent testimony
to two facts the
gift of precognition
by rare individuals.-preordination and One
of the most
famous incidents is
that of Winston
Churchill who had
a lucky escape from
a bomb attack
in a car.
On that day
he ha ppened to
choose to sit on
the far side
from his usual
place. Lady Churchill
asked him why,
'I do not know',
he replied. The
he said, 'Of
course I know.
Something said to
me 'Stop' before I
reached the car
door which was
held open for
me. It then
seemed to me that
I was told
I should open
the door on
the other side
and get in
and sit there.' Needless
to add, Churchill
escaped unhurt. On the subject
of destiny, let
me state what
I believe:
First, I believe
that the basic
pattern of an
individual's or a
natio determined. Secondly,
very few individuals
have the gift
of clairvoyance to
foresee what is predetermined. Thirdly, guidance
is sometimes vouchsafed
to receptive human
beings by means for
which there is
no scientific explanation. Fourthly, I do
believe in the
existence of free
will but that
again is within
pre ordained parameters. To
my mind, the
simplest analogy to the case
we are talking about
is that of
a dog on a long
leash -move about as far as
the leash pe the
dog has the
freedom to rmits, but
not beyond. I come
now to the
experiences in my
life on which
I have based
the four beliefs.I am
alive today only
because of a
virus that infected
me more than
40 years ago. I
was engaged to
argue a Special
Leave Petition which
was to be
heard in the Supreme Court
on May 9,
1953. Chandrakant Mehta,
a partner of
Gagrat & Company, was
the instructing attorney.
We booked our
return tickets from Delhi
to Bombay by
the night flight
on the same
day. On May
6, I developed
a very bad cold
with fever and had
to return the
brief. The next day
I agreed to
change my mind
and do the
case since it
meant a lot to
a poor and
deserving litigant. But
on May 8
my temperature rose
higher and I had no option
but to return
the brief once
again. C K
Daphtary, the solic itorgeneral, who
lived in Delhi
was gracious enough
to agree to
step into my
place. Since I did
not go to
Delhi, Chandrakant Mehta,
who disliked flying
by night, went to
the airline office
and changed his
own return ticket
to the morning flight on May 10. The
plane, which left
Delhi on the
late evening of
May 9 with a
full passenger load,
crashed. There were
no survivors. At certain
turning points in
my life, when
I would have
made wrong decisions with my
limited intelligence, I
have felt as
if my will
was perceptibly bent by some
Higher Power which
saved me from
myself. In 1968, Govinda
Menon was the
law minister in
the Congress government.
He pressed me to
accept the office
of the attorneygeneral of
India. After a
great deal of hesitation
I agreed. When I
was in Delhi
I conveyed my
acceptance to him, and
he told me
that the announcement
would be made
the next day.
That night I went
to bed and
looked forward to my usual
quota of deep
slumber.
But suddenly and
inexplicably, I became
wide awake at
three o'cl clear conviction
that I should
reverse my decision
before it was
too late. Early in
the morning I
profusely apologised to
the law minister
for changing my mind.
In the years
immediately following, it
was my privilege
to argue on behalf
of the citizen, under
the same Congress
government and against
the government, the major
cases which have
shaped and moulded
the constitutional law of
India -Fundamental Rights (1972Bank
Nationalisation (1969), Privy
Purse (1970), 73) and
the Minerva Mills
cas e (1980), among others.
Thus, the most
momentous decision of
my life was
made by a
Force other than myself. One
morning in 1976
I invited Thacker,
who had a
gift for seeing
into the future, for
a quiet chat
at my residence.
He said to
me, 'I see
you occupy ing a beautiful,
spacious mansion in
Rome.' He continued,
'You will stay
there for about two
years though you
will have a
number of opportunities
to come back to
India.' I put
the incident out
of my mind. In
1977, when the
Janata government came
to power, I received
a communication from Atal
Bihari Vajpayee offering
me the assignment
of ambassador of India
in Washington. When
I went to
Washington, the words
of Thacker came back
to my mind.
Thacker had made
one mistake -referred to
Rome when actuall he
had y it was in Washington
that I occupied
the beautiful, spacious mansion.
I did stay
there for almost
two years during
which period I had
the opportunity of
coming back to
India a few
times. The most incredible
experience of clairvoyance
or precognition in m
y life
was connected with Indira
Gandhi's case which
culminated in the
declaration of the Emergency. The Allahabad
high court had,
in June 1975,
decided that the
election of Indira Gandhi
to Parliament should
be set aside.
That meant that
she would cease
t o be a member
of the Lok
Sabha with a
potential risk to
her prime ministership. Indira Gandhi
filed an appeal
in the Supreme
Court and her
application for interim relief
was argued by
me on June
23, 1975. Justice Krishna
Iyer heard the
application and pass ed
the order of
interim relief on the
next day. The
interim order was
that, pending the
hearing and final disposal of
the appeal Indira
Gandhi could continue
to sit in
the Lok Sabha
and participate in the
proceedings of that
House like any
other member, an d
could also continue to be the
prime minister of
India.
The only restriction
on her was
that she was
not given the
right to vote.
The judge mentioned that
this did not
involve any hardship
because Parliament was not in session
at that time
and that I coul
d renew
the application for
the right to vote
when Parliament reassembled. On the plane
which I boarded
to return to
Bombay, next to
me was seated
an elderly, simple man
dressed in khadi, what had
happened that day i
carrying a khadi cloth bag.
He asked me n
the prime minister's
case and I
told him briefly what
the judge had
decided. He mentioned
the name of
a clairvoyant in Bangalore
who had made
some predictions which
he thought were
rather curious. "When I
left the ashram
in May 1975 the
clairvoyant told me that
the prime minister would
lose the case
which she was
fighting in the
Allahabad high court and
yet, after losing
the case, she
would become the
most powerful woman in the world.' I
came home, wondering
what the future
would bring. In
less than 36 ho
urs the Emergency was
declared, the invaluable
fundamental rights of
the people were suspended,
and the prime
minister virtually acquired
all the powers
of the leader of
a totalitarian State.
That was the
black morning of
June 26, 1975. I
need hardly menti on
that all the
predictions were accurately
fulfilled -assumption of supremacy
which made Indira
Gandhi the most
powerful woman in the world, the
cessation of that
supremacy in March
1977. It would be
preposterous to try
to give any the explanation for
the episodes I have
related truthfully except
on the hypothesis
of preordination and
precognition. When you read Dr
Raynor Johnson's Capra's The Tao
of Physics The Imprisoned
Splendour and Fritjof you understand
why Sri Aurobindo
and Rabind ranath Tagore were
convinced that India
is destined to
be the teacher of
all lands. Saints
never contradict one
another and mystics
have never been known
to disagree. Eastern culture
and Western culture
share the same
heritage of spiritual experience. More and
more men have
begun to realise
that we are
the Peeping Toms at
the keyhole of
eternity. I should
like to echo
the wish with which
Arthur Koestler ends
the Roots of Coincidence stuffing out of the
keyhole, which blocks
even our l that
we would take
the imited view.
This is an excerpt from
the second Anuvrat
Trust Endowment lecture
delivered by Mr Palkhivala
at the Indira
Gandhi National Open
University.
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