Forgotten Feroze Gandhi

While Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra continues to be in the public eye on account of alleged impropriety in a Haryana land transaction from which he reportedly profited, columnist Virendra Kapoor has contrasted Vadra with Nehru’s son-in-law Feroze Gandhi. Writing in the Afternoon Despatch and Courier issue of August 19, 2013, the pro-Bharatiya Janata Party journalist notes the internet had become "a powerful tool of political messaging," and one anonymous entry which has gone viral "refers to the late Feroze Jehangir Ghandi, the son of a Parsi liquor merchant from Allahabad whom Mahatma Gandhi renamed Feroze Gandhi after he married Indira," the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter.

As a member of the Lok Sabha, elected from Rae Bareli, Gandhi forced his father-in-law to set up a judicial probe under the Bombay High Court Chief Justice M. C. Chagla in the Mundhra scandal. "It was duly established that Haridas Mundhra had manipulated the Life Insurance Corporation to buy shares in his little known companies. Later, he exposed how Ram Kishan Dalmia had misused bank and insurance funds to acquire Bennet Coleman and Company…

"Though crores are spent to mark the birth and death anniversaries of every member of Nehru-Gandhi family, Feroze’s birth and death go unnoticed. Here is a suggestion. Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi party should adopt Feroze Gandhi as its guiding spirit and mark his coming birth anniversary on September 8 with a fitting tribute to his crusading zeal against corruption."