Coming from a middle class family of a small village in Aligarh district, he struggled
his whole life, first to get a strong foothold in the mainstream of national politics
then to maintain it. At a time when brilliant students aspired for the civil services
or judiciary, C.B. Gupta, after taking a degree in Law, chose to defend the heroes
of the famous Kakori dacoity case.
Born on July 14, 1902, he got involved in the freedom struggle as early as at the
age of 17, when he went to Sitapur for high school examinations and took part in
anti-Rowlett Bill demonstrations there. He attended a big public meeting on April
6 with some friends among them Jang Bahadur Rana, who delivered a very fiery speech
and later became the Editor of The Tribune and The Times of India. As a new entrant
in the Congress, Gupta was under the influence of revolutionaries, but once Gandhi
become the center point of national movement, Gupta shifted his loyalties to him.
At the age of 27 he was elected President of Lucknow city Congress. It was the time
when Congress was passing from older to younger hands. Pt Nehru was elected Congress
President at the Lahore session, where Congress declared that complete independence
was its aim. No doubt the book gives a detailed view of the freedom struggle as
well as the politics of the Congress, but this view is from the perspective of an
active player of the political game.
Gupta is, perhaps, right in his assessment that if Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan’s party
had not boycotted the 1946 elections, not only the election results in North West
Frontier Province, but the history of the whole sub-continent would have been different.
However, while narrating the incidents of power struggle within the Congress in
general and in U.P. in particular, he comes across as a power hungry politician.
One can only feel sorry that a person of his stature should only see ills in the
personalities of leaders like Pt Nehru, Gobind Ballabh Pant, Lal Bahadur Shastri,
Guljari Lal Nanda, Mrs Indira Gandhi, K.D. Malviya, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Chaudhary
Charan Singh, Kamalapati Tripathi, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna and N.D. Tiwari. This
list of his so-called foes may be much longer, but his list of friends is pretty
short. One fact, that even his opponents would agree (though many of them are not
alive today), is that he was one of the cleverest and also most controversial politicians.
His resentment against Pt Nehru’s superiority complex is understandable, but to
declare every one close to him as his chamcha does not seem justifiable. He had
made very harsh comments about Nehru family and its involvement in the functioning
of National Herald. He also claims to be the only one who rightly smelled the plot
behind the so-called Kamraj plan. Though the book can be useful to the students
of politics and those who are interested in knowing the nitty-gritty of the in-fighting
in the power hungry, post-independence Congress, in real terms it is a political
autobiography at its best, as former Prime Minister Chander Shekher has indicated
in the Foreword. In the given circumstances one can easily understand the kind of
tough labour a working journalist Satyendra R. Shukla had to go through to pen down
this autobiography on the basis of his conversations with the late Chandra Bhanu
Gupta some 25 years ago.
Above article is taken from The Tribune's 07/12/2003 edition titled
An autobiography
mired in politics - Raj Kumar Singh. From
C.B. Gupta's Autobiography:
My Triumphs and Tragedies as told to Satyendra R. Shukla. Umakant
Mishra, Lucknow. Pages 460. Rs. 495.