Background
The son of a schoolteacher, Desai was born on February 29, 1896, in Bhadeli, a village in Gujarat, in western India. He was the oldest of eight children. His father was a school teacher.
The son of a schoolteacher, Desai was born on February 29, 1896, in Bhadeli, a village in Gujarat, in western India. He was the oldest of eight children. His father was a school teacher.
Desai underwent his primary schooling in Saurashtra The Kundla School, Savarkundla now called J. V. Modi school and later joined Bai Ava Bai High School, Valsad. After graduating from Wilson College, Mumbai, he joined the civil service in Gujarat. Desai resigned as deputy collector of Godhra in May 1930 after being found guilty of going soft on Hindus during the riots of 1927-28 there.
He joined the Bombay provincial civil service in 1918, leaving in 1930 to become active in Gandhi's civil disobedience movement. He joined the Indian National Congress and soon held important party posts. Several times he was jailed for his activities. In 1937 he was elected to the Bombay provincial assembly, and when the Congress formed a provincial cabinet he became a member. In 1939 all the Congress ministers quit their posts to protest Britain's unilateral decision to involve India in World War II. During the war Desai, with other party activists, spent time in jail for civil disobedience. After the war, in 1946, Desai was again elected to the Bombay assembly, and through the early years of independence he was state minister for home affairs and revenue. From 1952 to 1956 he was chief minister. During this period, marked by widespread language riots involving Gujarati and Marathi speakers in the state, Desai became nationally known as a strong leader and administrator. In 1956 Desai entered the national government as minister for commerce and industry. He was elected to parliament in 1957 and in 1958 was named finance minister. By 1961 he was regarded as a likely successor to Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister. Nehru, however, disapproved of Desai's authoritarian temperament and rightist economic and foreign policy views. In 1963 Desai and other leaders were made to quit their government posts to perform party tasks. In 1964, when Nehru died, Desai sought the prime ministership, but Congress leaders selected Lal Bahadur Shastri. In 1966, when Shastri too died, Desai lost another power contest, this time to Indira Gandhi. In 1967 Desai entered the Indira Gandhi cabinet, but soon he and most other older Congress leaders were in conflict with her. In 1969 Desai left the government. That November the party split, with Desai and other older leaders leading a minority into opposition. In 1975, when Gandhi, reacting to agitation against her, declared a state of emergency and jailed virtually all her political opponents, Desai was among the first detained. He remained confined until January 1977, when opposition leaders were freed to allow them to wage an electoral campaign. In July 1979 it fell apart, and Desai resigned as prime minister.
He was a political rightist.
Desai emerged as the leader of a coalition of several of the non-Communist opposition parties, the Janata (People's) Party, which won a landslide victory in the elections. Desai became prime minister, but his connections with the forces of militant Hinduism proved controversial, and in any case the Janata Party was held together solely by the desire to oust Indira Gandhi.
Moreover, Desai was known to be rigid on the sensitive language issue, strongly favoring Hindi as the official language of India.
National Congress
Morarji Desai married Gujraben in 1911, at the age of 15. He is survived by his son Kanti Desai.