The-Polyester-Prince

One of the students was a fellow Modh Bania and boarding house companion ofDhirubhai named Krishna Kant Shah, who had been born in Kenya and sent back toJunagadh for his education. He was arrested by the police as one of the looters andtaken to the lockup early in the evening. The leaders of the Sangh went to the policeheadquarters and met the police commissioner, named Lahiri, to argue Shah’sinnocence.‘Dhirubhai [who was then 16] showed a lot of courage in arguing with the policecom-missioner to defend Shah,’ Vakharia said. The arguments went on for two orthree hours, and all of us were threatened with arrest for obstruction of justice. Butwe were determined we would not go until our colleagues were released. Eventuallythey decided to let Shah go at midnight. It was a debt Dhirubhai was to collect fromShah in controversial circumstances more than 30 years later.The people of Junagadh voted overwhelmingly to join India when a plebiscite washeld in February 1948, though Pakistan never recognised it. Dhirubhai returned tohis studies, and took his matriculation in 1949. Vakharia studied law and continuedwith his political activity, following Narayan out of the Congress Party into the newSocialist Party in 1948. On graduating in 1951 he moved to practise in Rajkot andthen Ahmedabad and eventually came back into the Congress later in an activelegal- political career.With his family still extremely poor, Dhirubhai had no such option. On finishing highschool, he had to look for work. At the age of 16, Dhirubhai was physically strong,and already possessed of the persuasiveness that was to mark his later businesscareer.It is tempting to look into the culture of the Modh Bania for an explanation of whathis critics see as his ruthless business ethics and ‘shamelessness’. But many otherentrepreneurs have also sprung from the same background in Kathiawar: mostwould shrink from the manipulation of the government that became part and parcelof the Ambani operation, even at the cost of less success.The answer lies probably in the deep poverty that his family endured as the cost of isfather’s devotion to a teaching career. While he also learned that life is a web ofrelationships and obligations, Dhirubhai was fired with an ambition never to becomedependent on anyone or to stay long in somebody else’s service.