Firoze Jehangir Gandhi was born on 12 September 1912 and had died on 8 September 1960. He was the husband of Indira Priyadarshini Nehru and the reason Indira and her progeny got the Gandhi surname.
It is not the first time either. The Twitter handles of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, Nehru’s descendants who owe a lot of their political relevance and power to the Gandhi surname, have shown no acknowledgement of their grandfather’s memory. It is as if the family that ruled India for decades, almost does not want to even remember the man.
The official Twitter handle of the Congress was busy deriding the Modi government with their usual rants about the economy, communal tensions and such yesterday. Today, on 9th September, they have remembered to honour the late Verghese Kurian on his death anniversary and Paramveer Chakra Captain Vikram Batra on his birth anniversary, but there has been no mention of Feroze Gandhi, who was an active Congress leader who had participated in the Quit India movement, been a Congress Lok Sabha MP after independence and was the publisher of Congress mouthpiece National Herald too.
Feroze Gandhi was regarded by many as the original anti-corruption crusader who had raised his voice against corruption happening under the Nehru government. He was one of the first leaders to speak against the financial misappropriations of the Dalmia-Jain group and LIC.
However, Rahul Gandhi, usually very active on Twitter when he is not enjoying a holiday somewhere abroad, made no mention of his grandfather on his death anniversary either.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra shared a poem slamming the Modi government yesterday. She lamented about the economy but did not acknowledge her own grandfather’s death anniversary.
It would have been understandable had the Congress scions been reclusive and preferred to keep their family events private. But Rahul and Priyanka are very vocal about their grandmother Indira, they mention her often and share messages on how she inspired them and encouraged them. But their grandfather Feroze, unfortunately, finds no mention in their messages, speeches or tweets.
Feroze Gandhi’s ashes were interred in the Parsi cemetery in Prayagraj after his cremation in 1960. A memorial plaque commemorates Feroze’s tombstone in a corner of the Parsi cemetery at Stanley Road in Prayagraj-Lucknow highway. The Cemetery lies in a neglected state and is hardly ever visited by anyone in the Gandhi family.
As per reports, Rahul had visited the tombstone only once in the last decade, in 2011. Before that, he had visited once in 2008. Priyanka had been there once in 2009. Their mother Sonia Gandhi had been there back in 2001.