George Fernandes

George Fernandes


When George Fernandes made several statements about kashmir militants getting free passage, Natwar Singh said: " Mr. Fernandes suffers from premature articulation".

Now, who is Natwar Singh.. We all have heard of the famous "Natwar Lal", but from where does Mr.Singh and Mr. Fernandes come in from??? And why the hell in the world am I writing about them... Well, I have an answer to the former question, but the latter would remain unanswered rest of my life...

He (Mr. Singh) was the minister of external affairs of India.. from 22 May 2004 – 6 November 2005... It is said that he was removed from his post as Minister in charge of External Affairs under a cloud of scandal and he became a minister without portfolio. I thought only models got portfolios.. but... Err....

Anyways... I want to write more about George ( I am addressing him as we was my "chaddi"hood yaar, .. I wish he was ,,,.)

This swashbuckling comprador of Indian politics, was sent to seminary near Mangalore to be trained as a priest...

He clashed with multinationals like IBM and Coca Cola and ordered them to leave Indian shores, implementing FERA, the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. This man carried a lot of guts with himself...

He was the driving force behind the Konkan Railway project, connecting coastal Karnataka with Mumbai, the first major development to Indian Railways since independence in 1947

He became the first Defence Minister in Independent India to visit the unforgiving, treacherous, icy heights of the 6,600m Siachen glacier, which holds the record of being "the world's highest battlefield" in Jammu and Kashmir. He subsequently visited the glacier 17 more times

At one time, he edited a weekly, "Pratipaksha", in Marathi and Hindi... In one of its issues he described Parliament as a brothel house..
George Fernandes (with 48.5% of the vote) had unseated the 'king.'( Maharashtra’s leading dada politician). That was how Fernandes got his nickname, George the Giantkiller.
He was a detective at its best... When emergency was declared, he went underground (as he opposed against the blatant misuse of power by Smt Gandhi)... Khushwant Singh was called upon by her for an off-the-record and strictly private meeting.. The day Khushwant got back to Bombay, he found a paper lying on his table saying:" How did your meeting with madam dictator go?"...

He has been to jails, his bones have been broken a lot of times... He was interrogated in various devilish ways.. As mentioned in one of the books by Khushwant Singh, police took him to jungle to give him an impression that they would shoot him and pass it off as having killed him in an encounter... He was taken to the Red Fort, abused with all the filthy words and then stripped naked... He was given a rough prickly blanket to sleep on.. That’s not all.. after many hours of grilling interrogation in a hot room, he was asked if he would like a chilled beer, lemonade, or ice cream, he said, “Yes, thank you..”.. but nothing came .. After keeping him hungry for 2 days, they would ask if he would like to have mughlai or Chinese.. When he expressed his wish, they forgot about the meal.


Aa far as I think.. He is the "Bhagat Singh" of today’s era..

As said by Khushwant Singh:" He may not be a pillar of administration, but he will always remain a force to reckon with " ,......