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 influence 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 became 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 best-known palmist 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 -- preordination and the gift of precognition by rare individuals.

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 happened 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 nation's life is pre-determined.

Secondly, very few individuals have the gift of clairvoyance to foresee what is predetermined.

Thirdly, guidance is sometimes vouch-safed 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 -- the dog has the freedom to move about as far as the leash permits, 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 solicitor-general, 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 attorney-general 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'clock with the 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 -- Bank Nationalisation (1969), Privy Purse (1970), Fundamental Rights (1972-73) and the Minerva Mills case (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 occupying 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 -- he had referred to Rome when actually 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 my 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 to 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 passed 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, and 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 could 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, carrying a khadi cloth bag. He asked me what had happened that day in 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 hours 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 mention that all the predictions were accurately fulfilled -- the 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 explanation for the episodes I have related truthfully except on the hypothesis of preordination and precognition.

When you read Dr Raynor Johnson's The Imprisoned Splendour and Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics you understand why Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath 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 that we would take the stuffing out of the keyhole, which blocks even our limited view.

This is an excerpt from the second Anuvrat Trust Endowment lecture delivered by Mr Palkhivala at the Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Tell us what you think of this feature