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Piloo Mody, a Parliamentarian Who Left a Mark With His Wit and Humour
This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ' The Early Parliamentarians ', exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building.
Piloo Mody was an architect, politician, one of the founding members of the Swatantra Party and a veteran parliamentarian. He was elected to the 4th and 5th Lok Sabhas and served in the Rajya Sabha from 1978 until his death in 1983. As a parliamentarian he left his imprint, complete with humour.
Born into an affluent Parsi family on November 14, 1926, Mody was one of the sons of Sir Homi Mody. He had two brothers, Kali Mody, a pioneer of credit card operations in India and Russi Mody, a former chairman of TISCO Limited.
Piloo studied at the Doon School, Dehradun. After that, he studied architecture at Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Bombay (now Mumbai), and completed his Bachelor of Architecture. To pursue his master's degree in architecture, Mody attended the University of California, Berkeley, US. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who went on to become prime minister of Pakistan in the 1970s, was his college roommate as well as a close friend. After completing his studies, he married Lavina (Vina) Colgan, a Swiss-born-American and his classmate at Berkeley, on January 3, 1953.
After his stint at Berkeley he returned to India. He worked for two years on the Chandigarh Capital Project with Le Corbusier. Another significant building that Mody designed in collaboration with Durga Bajpai is the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi. He also designed the Chennai headquarters of Engineering Construction Corporation, a former subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd. It won the Federation Internationale de la Precontrainte prize for excellence in pre-stressed concrete from India.
The couple set up an architecture firm, Mody and Colgan, in 1953 at Stadium House, Churchgate. Their first project was a residential apartment at Marine Lines for senior officials of TISCO. They also designed the front casing of one model of the Voltas Air conditioner.
Mody's other projects include residential project Olympus, three TELCO offices, the headquarters of Bharat Bijlee, Mukand Iron and Steel, Sandoz, Voltas and Diners Club and Business Service centres.
In political life, Mody was an advocate of liberalism and freedom. He was associated with the Swatantra Party as its founding member and was executive vice-president of the party.
As parliamentarian
In the 1967 general election, Mody was elected to the 4th Lok Sabha, representing the Godhra constituency in Gujarat. In 1971 he was re-elected and served in the 5th Lok Sabha until March 1977 but lost with a narrow margin in 1977. Mody merged his Swatantra Party with Charan Singh's Bhartiya Kranti Dal in 1974, which eventually merged with Janata Party in 1977. After an absence of a year from parliament, on April 10, 1978 Mody joined the Rajya Sabha and served there until his death in 1983.
Besides his professional pursuits, Mody was known for his constant use of wit and humour in his parliamentary speeches. Due to his conservative and pro-US views, Mody was often accused by the members of the ruling Congress party of being a 'Washington parrot'.
To counter that, once he came to the House wearing a placard reading, 'I am a CIA agent.' The chairman ordered him to remove it. He did so, remarking, 'I am no longer a CIA agent.'
Once, during a debate, J.C. Jain, a member of the ruling party, started needling Mody. He lost his temper and shouted at Jain, 'Stop barking.' Jain was up, yelling and pleading with the chair, 'Sir, he is calling me a dog. It is an unparliamentary language.'
Chairman Hidayatullah agreed and ordered, 'This will not go on record.' Not to be outdone, Mody corrected himself by saying, 'All right then, stop braying.' Jain did not know what the word implied, and it stayed on record.
Once, a minister, during a heated argument, said, 'I am not supposed to respond to every barking dog.' Then Mody rose to speak and said, 'Speaker, Sir, on the treasury benches, we have great people sitting, pillars of the government, pillars of democracy. And, we are dogs, and everyone knows how a dog treats a pillar.' The House burst out in laughter.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
When Giani Zail Singh, as Home Minister, was piloting a bill in the Rajya Sabha, Mody participated in the debate. While replying to the debate, Gianiji, referring to Mody's comments on the Bill, stated in Hindi, ' Piloo Mody to bade seasonal member hain.'
The whole House started laughing. Another minister, sitting next to Gianiji, whispered to him to say that the word is 'seasoned'.
Thereupon Gianiji again said, ' Mujhe to angrezi thodi aati hai. Inko to inki biwi ne angrezi padhai hai.' Mody thumped his desk and raised a point of order. The whole House was looking at Mody. The Deputy Chairman asked, 'What is your point of order?' Mody stated, 'Gianiji is grossly misinformed. My wife did not teach me English. I taught her English.' The whole House burst into laughter again. Mody's wife was Swiss.
Similarly, once, there was a debate in Parliament about the import of railway tracks and wagons for quick replacement. Indradeep Sinha, an opposition member, believed these should be manufactured locally instead of importing because it caused delays. Mody interrupted to say that the delay was caused not by importing it but by manufacturing it. Sinha replied to Mody, 'You are not the sole importing agent. There are so many others.' The Chairman corrected Sinha, 'No, he is not an importing agent. He is an exporting agent.' Mody added, 'I export ideas in a barren market.'
When Shyam Lal Yadav was elected as the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, members of various political parties in the House started extending their congratulations to him. Mody congratulated and warned the newly appointed Deputy Chairman, 'I beg to move a vote of congratulations to my friend, Shri Shyam Lal Yadav. I have no doubt in my mind that my good friend will continue to be as partisan as he was in the past. I want to assure my friend, neighbour, and colleague that I wish him very happy times in the Chair with the least amount of acrimony and warn him that if he does not behave when he returns to this Chair, I will sit on him.' The Deputy Chairman, when not presiding, sits next to the Leader of the Opposition.
Mody's sense of humour was not only in his speeches but in his writings too. He was known to address Indira Gandhi as IG in his letters and sign off as PM (Piloo Mody). He often told Indira Gandhi, 'I am the permanent PM; you are temporary.'
In 1975, at the time of the Emergency in India, Mody was arrested on the orders of the Indira Gandhi government, using the controversial powers granted by the MISA and was in Delhi's Tihar Jail and Rohtak Jail for 16 long months.
Apart from being a humorous parliamentarian and brilliant architect, Mody was a renowned author, having two books to his credit.
His first book, Zulfi, My Friend (1973), was penned on the life and times of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Mody's second book was Democracy Means BREAD AND FREEDOM (1979), which he wrote during his 16 months in jail. The book was an attempt to trace the genesis of democracy and search for the origins of the attitudes and institutions that sustain it.
Mody also served as editor of an English weekly, March of the Nation, published from Bombay, and wrote numerous articles for the national and international newspapers and magazines.
A few days before he died in his sleep, Piloo Mody, the irrepressibly buoyant MP who for over a decade brought to Indian politics a special flavour of wit, wacky humour and wisdom, told India Today that "The world revolves around an idea. Every problem has its solution, given a clean heart, good intention and determination." He also explained his plans to start a new political party. But he passed away on January 29, 1983. He was 57.
Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India's major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India's freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.
