Morarji Desai’s birthday falls on the 28 February (actually, the 29th as he was born in a leap year). This year marks his 125th birth anniversary. He was born in 1896. In his long and outstanding career in public life he had many firsts to his credit.

He was the first non-Congress Prime Minister as leader of the Janata Party, the first Prime Minister of India to feature in the Guinness Book of World Records (as the oldest person at the age of 81 to assume office as Prime Minister), the only Finance Minister to present the budget on his birthday, the first Indian to receive Pakistan’s highest award – the Nishan-e-Pakistan – and much else.

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He had a long run as Chief Minister of the erstwhile Bombay State, Commerce Minister, Finance Minister on two occasions and also as Deputy Prime Minister. However, when the Congress split in 1969, he joined the opposition and was detained for the entire period of the emergency.

On assumption of office as Prime Minister after the nightmarish 19 months of the emergency in 1977, Morarji set forth to establish the rule of law and fortify the democratic spirit of the constitution by enacting the 44th Amendment which made the imposition of a similar emergency virtually impossible.

Morarji was a political leader who never considered himself to be in the popularity race and thus was blunt in expressing his views without inhibition. He expressed his disapproval of the annexation of Sikkim, declared unilaterally that under no circumstances would India go in for nuclear weapons and opposed the creation of linguistic states against the party line. He also pursued the prohibition policy relentlessly in Bombay State and later which gave him sometimes an image of a martinet. Sometimes he could make remarks to the press which would land him in controversy. In an interview to “Time” magazine on assuming office he made a comment while talking of women Prime Ministers, and said “when a woman becomes devilish she beats all records, no man can equal her.” This caused much disquiet among women leading to the unbending Morarji tendering an apology!

In his years in parliament he was known as a votary of parliamentary debate and never hesitated to concede the floor to the opposition. The late Madhu Limaye recalled that when Morarji was in the Congress he used to come to the rescue of Limaye, an opposition member, who was barracked by Congressmen. “Meet logic and argument, with logic and argument not with shouting” he chided them.

Desai was also a great believer in interaction with the fourth estate, and held regular press conferences, in fact his first engagement as Prime Minister was a press conference where he made it clear that no question would be taken amiss no matter how personal it was. He kept up the regular schedule of the monthly press conference throughout his tenure in office.The journalist Mark Tully once asked him about his practicing auto urine therapy to which he replied that Tully could see from his state of health in his early eighties that it obviously did him some good!

Morarji believed in secularism in word and deed. The vocalist Bade Ghulam Ali Khan who had migrated to Pakistan wanted to return as he found the country inhospitable. Desai immediately allotted him an apartment in Mumbai.

Desai was also known for his administrative skills. As his Media Advisor Sharda Prasad wrote “He was a first-rate administrator; one of the best in free India.”

Morarji Desai the Gandhian will live in the minds of his countrymen with greater reverence as time goes by.

The writer is the author of the book Morarji Desai: A Profile in Courage