George Fernandes


George Mathew Fernandes was an Indian politician, trade unionist, statesman, and journalist, who served as the Defence Minister of India from 1998 until 2004. A veteran socialist, he was a member of the Lok Sabha for over 30 years, starting from Bombay in 1967 till 2009 mostly representing constituencies from Bihar. He was the leader of the Samyukta Socialist Party and the Socialist Party, a key member of the Janata Party, the Janata Party and the Janata Dal, and, finally, the founder of the Samata Party. Holding several prominent ministerial portfolios during his career, including communication, industry, railways, and defence, he was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, in 2020.
A native of Mangalore, Fernandes was sent to Bangalore in 1946 to be trained as a priest. In 1949, he moved to Bombay, where he joined the socialist trade union movement. Becoming a trade union leader, Fernandes organised many strikes and bandhs in Bombay in the 1950s and 1960s while working with the Indian Railways. He defeated S K Patil of the Indian National Congress in the 1967 parliamentary elections from the Bombay South constituency. As president of the All India Railwaymen's Federation, he led the 1974 railways strike. Fernandes went underground during the Emergency era of 1975, while challenging Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for imposing a state of emergency, but in 1976 he was arrested and tried in the infamous Baroda dynamite case.
In 1977, after the Emergency had been lifted, Fernandes won the Muzaffarpur seat in Bihar in absentia. As industries minister, he revoked the licences for multinationals IBM and Coca-Cola to operate in India, due to investment violations. As railways minister from 1989 to 1990 he was the driving force behind the Konkan Railway project. As defence minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led second and third Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministries, he oversaw the outbreak of the Kargil War and the implementation of nuclear tests at Pokhran. Fernandes has been dogged by various controversies, including the Barak Missile scandal and the Tehelka affair. George Fernandes won nine Lok Sabha elections from 1967 to 2004. He died on 29 January 2019 at the age of 88.

Early life

George Fernandes was born on 3 June 1930 to John Joseph Fernandes and Alice Martha Fernandes, in Mangalore to a Mangalorean Catholic family. The eldest of six children, all sons, his siblings are Lawrence, Michael, Paul, Aloysius, and Richard. His mother was a great admirer of King George V, hence she named her first son George. His father was employed by the Peerless Finance group as an insurance executive, and headed their office of South India for several years. George was fondly called "Gerry" in close family circles. He attended his first few years of schooling at a government school near his house called "Board school", a municipal school and a church school.
He studied from fifth grade at the school attached to St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, where he completed his Secondary School Leaving Certificate.
In an interview with ETV, Fernandes described his decision to stop studies after matriculation despite his father wishing him to study and become a lawyer. His premise was that he did not want to become a lawyer and fight cases for his father who often evicted tenants from a patch of land that they owned on the outskirts of Mangalore. He was instead enrolled in a seminary for studies to become a priest. He went to St Peter's Seminary in Bangalore at the age of 16, to be trained as a Roman Catholic priest, studying philosophy for two and a half years from 1946 to 1948. At the age of 19, he left the seminary due to sheer frustration because he was appalled that the rectors ate better food and sat at higher tables than the seminarians. He later confessed that, "I was disillusioned, because there was a lot of difference between precept and practice where the Church was concerned."
Fernandes began work at the age of 19, organising exploited workers in the road transport industry and in the hotels and restaurants in Mangalore. For some time, he worked as an insurance agent and also tried wholesale businesses of shaving blades. His first guru was a Mangalorean activist and a freedom fighter Ammembala Balappa. Balappa identified and groomed a young Fernandes, who had taken refuge at places surrounding Nehru Maidan in Mangalore city, after being thrown out of the house. Initially, with Balappa's mentorship Fernandes gathered hotel workers and other menial labourers in the city. He was associated with Ram Manohar Lohia-led Praja Socialist Party in its Mangalore division. Fernandes and few other union workers led Mangalore's earliest labour strikes on behalf of the workers of Canara Public Conveyance in 1949. The strike was cracked down as the police resorted to lathi charge. After the strike, Fernandes came in contact with renowned Bombay-based Trade Union leader Placid D’Mello. Fernandes later left to Bombay in 1950 and faced tremendous hardships. Here again, he became a prodigy of D'Mello, who was handling the arduous Dock unions. After D'Mello's death in 1958, Fernandes succeeded in managing dock Unions and other major labour force unions in the city that included Taximen unions, textile mills and Mazdoor Unions.

Career

Brief history of participating in elections

He first contested Lok Sabha election in 1967 as a socialist, and defeated the Congress stalwart Sa Kaa Patil in Bombay in a famous upset, earning the sobriquet 'George the Giant-killer'. He contested from Muzaffarpur, Bihar in 1977 while still in jail as a Janata Party candidate, and won. He was made minister in the first non-Congress govt in India. In 1979, he resigned from : Janata Party, joined Charan Singh's breakaway Janata Party, and won again from Muzaffarpur in 1980. In 1984 he fought from Bangalore on Janata Party's ticket but lost to Jaffar Sharif of Congress. He lost a bye-poll from Banka in 1985 and again in 1986. In 1989 and 1991, he shifted back to Bihar and won both times from Muzaffarpur as Janata Dal candidate. In 1994, he left Janata Dal after differences with Lalu Yadav and formed Samata Party which allied with BJP.
In 1996 and 1998 elections, he won from Nalanda as Samata Party candidate. Samata Party merged with Janata Dal and he won again from Nalanda in 1999. In 2004 he won from Muzaffarpur. In 2009 he was denied ticket by his party, contested from Muzaffarpur as an independent and lost. Later he was elected to Rajya Sabha in 2009. In the 2010s he was afflicted for many years with Alzheimer's and died in January 2019.
  • Bombay : 1967
  • Muzaffarpur : 1977, 1980, 1989, 1991, 2004.
  • Bangalore : Lost in 1984
  • Banka : Lost bye-polls in 1985 and 1986.
  • Nalanda : 1996, 1998, 1999
  • Rajya Sabha : 2009

    Life in Mumbai

After leaving the seminary, Fernandes moved to Bombay in 1949 in search of a job. He went to the office of Socialist Party in Bombay and met Madhu Dandavate to ask him for staying there for some time but was not welcomed. His life was tough in Bombay, and he had to sleep on the streets, until he got a job as a proofreader for The Times of India newspaper. He relates to the beginning of his career by saying, "When I came to Bombay, I used to sleep on the benches of Chowpatty Sands. In the middle of the night policemen used to come and wake me up and ask me to move on." He came into contact with veteran union leader Placid D’Mello, and the socialist Rammanohar Lohia, who were the greatest influences on his life. Later, he joined the socialist trade union movement. He rose to prominence as a trade unionist and fought for the rights of labourers in small scale service industries such as hotels and restaurants. Emerging as a key figure in the Bombay labour movement in the early 1950s, Fernandes was a central figure in the unionisation of sections of Bombay labour in the 1950s.
In 1951, Fernandes joined Bombay Dock Worker's Union and worked to revive the publication of a newsletter The Dockman. When in August 1951, Placid D’Mello was arrested, he organised foot march of around two-hundred dock workers from Bombay to Poona to meet Chief Minister Morarji Desai for the release of D’Mello. As a labour organiser, he served many prison terms when his workforce engaged in fights with company goons. He served as a member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation from 1961 to 1968. He won in the civic election in 1961 and, until 1968, continuously raised the problems of the exploited workers in the representative body of the metropolis.
On his first day at Bombay Municipal Corporation, 10 April 1961, he requested that the proceedings to be conducted in Marathi instead of English language. On 4 April 1963, George was arrested along with Sardar Parsbag Singh and Janardhan Upadhyay under Defence of India act because of their demand to change the taxi fair structure. He was jailed at Nasik Central Jail. On 9 August 1963, Madhu Limaye along with other trade union leaders organised a big rally in Bombay for his release. On 13 December 1963, he was released from Nagpur Central Jail.
The moment that thrust Fernandes into the limelight was his decision to contest the 1967 general election. He was offered a party ticket for the Bombay South constituency by the Samyukta Socialist Party against the more wellknown S. K. Patil of the Indian National Congress in Bombay. Patil was a seasoned politician, with two decades of experience. Nevertheless, Fernandes won by garnering 48.5 per cent of the votes, thus earning his nickname, "George the Giantkiller". The shocking defeat ended Patil's political career.
Fernandes emerged as a key leader in the upsurge of strike actions in Bombay during the second half of the 1960s but, by the beginnings of the 1970s, the impetus of his leadership had largely disappeared. In 1969, he was chosen General Secretary of the Samyukta Socialist Party, and in 1973 became the chairman of the Socialist Party. After the 1970s, Fernandes failed to make major inroads in Bombay's growing private-sector industries.