Sensational Scandals for Small Talk

By Mrinalini Ranjan 5 July 2008 474 views One Comment

1. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, had an affair with Edwina Mountbatten (the wife of India’s first Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten). Apparently, this affair gave him an upper hand in the process of partition.

2. Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai practiced urinotherapy i.e. he drank a pint of his urine daily. He was in excellent health until his death at the age of 99. (Anybody convinced enough to follow in his footsteps?)

3. The US and India didn’t really have cordial relations till approximately 1991. Here’s a fun fact to prove just how frosty the relationship really was: Nixon and Kissinger generally referred to Indira Gandhi as “The Bitch”

4. Indira Gandhi was married to a man called Firoze Khan in London and converted to Islam before marriage. When they returned to India, both took on the surname Gandhi – which was taken from Feroze’s mother’s maiden name (Ghandy). The name was chosen for obvious reasons: its appeal to the masses of India.

5. Indira Gandhi bore two sons: Sanjiv and Rajiv Gandhi. Sanjiv Gandhi’s father, however, was not Feroze Khan. Sanjiv was the product of an affair between Indira Gandhi and Mohd. Younis. He later changed his name to Sanjay after being arrested by the London police for attempted car theft!

6. Yet another Gandhi Scandal: Sanjay’s marriage with the Sikh girl Menaka (now a BJP politcal activist, animal rights activist and environmentalist) took place quite surprisingly in Mohammad Younis’s house in New Delhi. Sanjay was apparently “notorious in getting unwed young women pregnant”. Menaka too was rendered pregnant by Sanjay. It was then that her father, a Colonel in the army, threatened Sanjay with dire consequences if he did not marry his daughter.