Death Spares No One
Al-Risala (English), November 1988, p. 23
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
Death Spares No One
1988 11 November 23-24 Death Spares No One (517) When a man is at the very zenith of his progress, death stops him short, as if it were negating the very efforts which had carried him towards success.
Mr. J.A. Deo, an I.A.S. officer who was formerly Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Defence, entered the Indian Administrative Service, the most prestigious of the country’s service, after acquitting himself well in his studies, both in India and abroad. Born in Simla in 1923, he would have expected to retire in 1981 when he was at the peak of his career. But barely a year after his promotion to the post of Secretary Defence, he expired on April 10, 1980, at the comparatively young age of 57. He was cremated at Nigam Bodh Ghat, with the three Chiefs of Staff of the Indian armed forces in attendance to pay him homage. How ironic that the senior most officers of India’s land, sea and air forces, invested as they are with full powers to inflict a crushing defeat upon any enemy who dares assail this country with its 60 crore population, were helpless when it came to saving Sri Deo from the jaws of death.
Another even more prominent figure who was snatched away by death, while he was still in his prime, was Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of the former Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. In the 1980 elections of the central parliament and state assemblies, their party had had an extraordinary success, and it was widely accepted at that time that Sanjay Gandhi would eventually succeed his mother as Prime Minister. But, on the very brink of assuming this high office, when he was still just 33, he met his end in the most sudden and drastic of ways. On the morning of June 23, 1980, he had wanted to have a joy ride in a new two seater American aircraft, and taking a Captain Saxena along with him, he took off from Safdarjung airport in New Delhi. The aircraft was only a short distance from the runway when, due to a sudden engine failure, it went out of control and crashed. Both Sanjay Gandhi and his unfortunate passenger, Captain Saxena, were killed instantaneously, and when their bodies were recovered from the debris, they were found to be in a severely mutilated condition.
Just one day before this fatal accident, when Sanjay Gandhi had been travelling in a car along with Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, Mr. Jag Mohan, he had exuded confidence when he said, “There is no need to worry, be it a car or an aeroplane, nothing can go wrong while I am at the wheel”. He did not know that the events of the following morning would stifle that feeling of confidence forever. The Times of India of June 24, 1980, observed, in the context of the brightness of his prospects, “What an irony that he should die so soon.”
When a man is at the very zenith of his progress, death stops him short, as if it were negating the very efforts which had carried him towards success.
