For some students, the exams are not yet over. While for others, the new academic session has begun. Whatever may be the case, it is that time of the year when humour is what everyone wants. So, here we have compiled some very famous and hilarious incidences from the life of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The late PM is highly regarded for his wit.
In 1936, his plane landed at Marmagao for fuel. A small crowd gathered at the airport and a girl presented him with a rolled sheet of paper on which something was written. A Portuguese officer, seeing this, leaped forward in an effort to take the paper away from him and said, “You can’t read it.”
“I can certainly read it. I am a literate person,” Nehru promptly replied.
During one Parliament debate, while speaking about India, Nehru said, “India is predominantly an agricultural country, but we don’t grow food to feed our people. Some say we are an industrial country, but where is the development of industries? What shall we say?”
To this, a member from opposition responded, “Dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka na ghat ka” (A washerman’s dog neither belongs to his house nor his washing place).
And Nehru was quick to reply, “The honourable member has good experience of himself.”
A journalist named P.D. Tandon once told the PM that his speeches were repetitive in nature and thus would bore the pressmen. Nehru, a master of repartee, said, “”I do not tire of seeing you everyday at all our meetings. Do I?”
In pre-independence India, our freedom fighters were regularly arrested by the British government. 1932 was no different. On the New Year day, the then government arrested Kamala Nehru, Pt Nehru’s wife. But rather than getting angry or distressed, Nehru described as a ‘pleasant New Year gift.’
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