JIWATRAM BHAGWANDAS KRIPLANI
(11NOVEMBER 1888-19 MARCH 1982)
KRISHNA BALLABH SAHAY
(31 DECEMBER 1898-3 JUNE 1974)
After he took over as the Revenue Minister in
the Sri Krishna Sinha’s Ministry in 1946, Zamindari Abolition became the top
priority of Krishna Ballabh Sahay. This alarmed his adversaries who began
conspiring against him. K. B. Sahay was aware of the developments but he was
steady in his resolve. Raja Kamakhya Narayan Singh of Ramgarh and Sir Kameshwar
Singh, Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga was the chief architect of the ploy against
K. B. Sahay. Raja Kamakhya Narayan Singh got a few Congressmen to write to the
central leadership forwarding therewith a bunch of 22 complaints against K. B.
Sahay. Among the local Congressmen were ex District Congress Chief Ram Narayan
Singh, Mohammad Saleh and President of Hazaribagh District Mahila Khadi Kendra
Saraswati Devi. These Congressmen belonged to the ‘Old Guards’ who believed
that the younger crop of leaders like K. B. Sahay has steered the independence
movement in a direction that was totally different from what they had been
practising over the years. In fact, after the advent of Mahatma Gandhi,
Congress as a party had moved ahead from the phase of laidback ‘drawing-room
discussion’ to the phase of constructive changes by involving the common man to
the cause of the freedom struggle. Leaders like K. B. Sahay were quite successful
in making Congress a potent force in the countryside by dint of his hard labour
and organizational capabilities and therefore the ‘old guards’ feared getting
completely overshadowed by him. Though he was brought up in Hazaribagh, they
considered K. B. Sahay an outsider as Hazaribagh was not his birth-place. Hence
they targeted K. B. Sahay with a horde of allegations, some of which were
trivial and without any substance. In their complaint, these Congressmen
alleged that K. B. Sahay had stopped Dr Rajendra Prasad from visiting the Khadi
Kendra run by Saraswati Devi, that K. B. Sahay supplements the income of fellow
Congress workers by sharing his salary as Revenue Minister with them ( K. B.
Sahay had kept Dr Rajendra Prasad informed of this), that K. B. Sahay was close
to many industrialists, that as Minister of Forests, K. B. Sahay had imposed a
restriction on free access to forest property, that noted advocate Bajrang
Sahay was hired by the Bihar Government at the instance of K.B. Sahay to help him
draft the Zamindari Abolition Bill, and so on and so forth. In their concluding
remarks, these Congressmen called for disciplinary action against K. B.
Sahay.
This complaint letter was received by J. B.
Kriplani, who had just taken over from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as the President
of All India Congress Committee. Kriplani promptly forwarded this letter to K.
B. Sahay seeking his comments on the issues raised.
In his reply dated 2nd July 1946, K. B. Sahay gave a point-wise reply to each of these allegations. He informed Kriplani that ‘Dr Rajendra Prasad is well aware of her (Smt. Saraswati Devi) once having made allegations against me and of my having pressed then for an enquiry into the allegations and a reference may be made to him (Dr Rajendra Prasad) as to why the allegations were not enquired into.’ K. B. Sahay further added that he ‘introduced the Forest Act …as an attempt to preserve the forests. I am sure that intelligent sections of people do appreciate my effort to preserve the forests of Chhotanagpur and posterity will do so in future. With regard to the nativity issue, K. B. Sahay considered the charge to be frivolous but nevertheless clarified that ‘though born in Patna I was brought up in Hazaribagh from my childhood and have been working in the district of Hazaribagh for the last 27 years. It is true that I am now a Minister but what prospect was there before me when I courted imprisonment in 1930, 1932, 1933, and 1934 or even in 1940 and 1942 from Hazaribagh district?
K. B. Sahay further clarified that ‘I appointed Babu Bajrang Sahay as Government pleader during 1937 Ministry. But the appointment was not made against Rule, which does not require a minimum practice of ten years. He was appointed to draft Zamindari Abolition Bill with the full consent of the Ministers in a meeting.’
With regard to the
charge of providing financial support to poor Congress workers, K. B. Sahay
informed that ‘Before I became Minister I used to raise subscriptions for
these workers which were regularly entered in the District Congress Committee
accounts and after I became a Minister I have been paying Rs 300/- per month
from my salary for the maintenance of some of the workers. I don’t think I have
sinned in this respect. ….Babu Ram Narayan Singh’s allegation besides being
unjust to me is cruel to the workers who on a small allowance of Rs 50/- or so
continue to toil for Congress. I often get money from the capitalists to pay
some Congress workers or help some organization…. and all such fund is
deposited in the public account of the District Congress Committee.’
K. B. Sahay concluded his reply in the following
words ‘I am sorry I have troubled you with this long letter. I could not
help it because every specific charge had to be answered. But I welcome the
demand of Babu Ram Narayan Singh that the allegations ought to be enquired
into. I would suggest that you might depute a member of the All India Congress
Working Committee to look into these allegations. The condition of the enquiry
must however be that if these allegations are found to be false and malicious
Babu Ram Narayan Singh must be turned out of the Congress having tried to lower
the prestige of a Congressman who is at present a Minister. It goes without
saying that if I am found guilty of moral turpitude I shall not hesitate for
two minutes to walk out of Congress and the Ministry. I am sending a copy of
this letter to Dr Rajendra Prasad and Mahatma Gandhi. I am also returning the
papers containing the allegations’.
This terse reply from K. B. Sahay had the
desired impact on J. B. Kriplani, who did not further pursue the matter. He had
got a taste of the mettle K. B. Sahay was made of. The reply gives an insight
into the manner K. B. Sahay raised Congress from the scratch in Chhotanagpur
and made it a potent political force in Chhotanagpur. He was quite candid in
accepting that he received donations for furthering the cause of Congress and
for helping poor fellow Congress worker. He could do so because his conscience
was clear. He kept a detailed account of every donation received and also of
every penny spent out of the District Congress Fund. There are scores of
correspondences between K. B. Sahay and Dr Rajendra Prasad where he sought Dr
Prasad’s permission to draw money from the District Congress Fund for any
political purpose. Such conscientiousness is a rarity in present-day
leadership.
No comments:
Post a Comment