The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh

by Sanjaya Baru

  I have often said that borders cannot be redrawn but we can work towards making them irrelevant—towards making them just lines on a map. People on both sides of the LoC should be able to move more freely and trade with one another. I also envisage a situation where the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir can, with the active encouragement of the governments of India and Pakistan, work out cooperative, consultative mechanisms so as to maximize the gains of cooperation in solving problems of social and economic development of the region.

  This was the clearest exposition of the Manmohan-Musharraf formula ever made by Dr Singh himself. The statement was heard around the world. By the time the two leaders met again, in Havana in September 2006, on the sidelines of the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, the bilateral engagement process had survived more terror attacks, the most recent one being in Mumbai in July 2006.

  Arriving in Havana on the afternoon of 14 September 2006, both Pulok and I stepped out of the hotel in search of Cuban cigars. After walking through several narrow lanes we discovered the Havana black market for Cohibas. The price a foreigner has to pay for a cigar in a government shop in Havana was no different from what duty-free shops in Europe charge. But in the back alleys of Havana one could get the genuine stuff for a tenth of that price. We could have asked the Indian ambassador to get us a box of cigars but we chose to be adventurous. Laden with our loot of low-cost Cohibas we went to El Floridita, Ernest Hemingway’s favourite bar, for mojitos. After imbibing several rounds with Indian journalists who had accompanied the PM to Cuba, Pulok and I returned to our hotel.

  As I entered the lobby, an SPG officer informed me that the PM wanted to see me. I rushed to my room, brushed my teeth, dabbed some cologne and went to his suite. He was seated there with Narayanan and Shivshankar Menon.

  Dr Singh showed me a draft joint statement that he and Musharraf would issue the next day after their meeting. Shivshankar had drafted the statement along with his counterparts in the Pakistan foreign office and had brought it from Islamabad to the PM for his approval. I read through the text. The draft proposed a bilateral ‘anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations’.

  ‘What do you think will be the reaction at home to this idea?’ Dr Singh asked me. It seemed to me that the three had already discussed this at length and there was a difference of opinion between Narayanan and Shivshankar. Narayanan looked serious and glum, always a bad sign. Shivshankar, smooth and seasoned diplomat that he was, revealed no emotion. Clearly this was his draft and Narayanan had reservations about it. I knew I had been summoned to take sides and tilt the balance in the direction the PM wanted.

  The BJP would criticize it, I told him, but the Congress party and the Left would back him. He needed their support to be able to move forward on other fronts. Senior Congress leaders remained divided on Dr Singh’s policy towards Pakistan, but he seemed to still have Sonia’s support. There was, however, no doubt that the Left Front fully backed his peace initiatives. Earning occasional praise from the Left was politically useful, especially since they were so critical of his policy towards the US. I assured Dr Singh that we would be able to manage the political fallout. He seemed satisfied with my intervention. He turned to Menon and instructed him to go ahead and finalize the joint statement with his Pakistani counterparts. Narayanan was by now looking very unhappy.

  As we all walked out of the room Narayanan grabbed my hand firmly and said, ‘You have stabbed me in the back!’

  ‘Not true,’ I said calmly and with a smile, not wanting to appear intimidated. ‘I disagreed with you in your presence. You can of course accuse me of stabbing you in the front.’ The mojito was still working.

  Dr Singh met Musharraf at a villa that had been made available by the Cubans for this summit meeting. Musharraf, like so many other heads of government, usually appeared more relaxed and socially at ease than Dr Singh. In Havana, however, both seemed at ease and struck up a conversation between themselves while members of both delegations stood and watched. Suddenly, as if it was preplanned, the two walked together into an adjacent room and the SPG closed the door. Pakistan’s foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri and Narayanan looked at each other in bewilderment. It was obvious that they had been kept out. While Narayanan remained standing where he was, Kasuri walked briskly to the door of the adjacent room. The SPG guard told him that he had been instructed not to let anyone in.

  The two delegations then sat down for tea and biscuits. Indian and Pakistani officials get along famously in such settings. There are always many subjects to talk about. Cricket, Bollywood, the latest fancy restaurant in Lahore or Delhi that serves the best kebabs or biryani, the welfare of common friends and their children. For almost an hour Dr Singh and Musharraf were closeted in that room, while the two delegations socialized. Narayanan’s discomfiture was palpable but Kasuri, who knew who the boss was, had regained his poise and now seemed utterly indifferent.

  The idea of a joint terror mechanism came in for considerable criticism, especially from the BJP. I had to devote considerable time to ensuring that the media backed the PM, especially because several retired diplomats and members of India’s intelligence and security agencies issued a statement criticizing the PM. Quiet conversations with a few editors and hinting to them that this was the beginning of a more substantial movement forward with Pakistan helped.

  The joint statement had gone further than any until then in setting out the agenda for bilateral talks and agreements. Importantly, it called for an ‘early solution of the Siachen issue’ and for an agreement between ‘experts’ ‘on coordinates for a joint survey of Sir Creek and adjoining area, without prejudice to each other’s position on the issue’. It said, ‘The Survey should commence in November 2006. The experts should start discussions on the maritime boundary.’ Sir Creek is a disputed strip of water in the Rann of Kutch.

  The two sides also agreed to ‘facilitate implementation of agreements and understandings already reached’ on confidence-building measures relating to the LoC between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, ‘including bus services, crossing points and truck service’.

  On 20 December, Dr Singh went back to Amritsar to address yet another public meeting. He spoke again in Punjabi and explained at length how he had been trying to improve relations with Pakistan because the ‘destinies of the two nations are linked’. He did not want India to be weighed down by the past but think of its future and move forward. He then made bold to talk of ‘his’ vision, a rare personalization of policy by the reticent Dr Singh.

  I too have a vision regarding India and Pakistan. I earnestly hope that the relations between our two countries become so friendly and that we generate such an atmosphere of trust between each other that the two nations would be able to agree on a Treaty of Peace, Security and Friendship . . . I am sure that we can overcome all hurdles in our path and realize such a Treaty. This will become the instrument for realizing our collective destiny and the basis for enduring peace and prosperity in the region.

  After Indira Gandhi met Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Shimla in 1972, this was the first time an Indian prime minister had taken the step of offering a treaty of peace, friendship and security to Pakistan. Events, however, overtook the two leaders. Musharraf found himself embroiled in domestic political trouble. His problems with Pakistan’s judiciary threw that country into turmoil by the first quarter of 2007. Musharraf’s regime became weaker, making Dr Singh cautious. By mid-2007, the bilateral process he had initiated came to a grinding halt as Musharraf’s political stock went down.

  In September 2007, Dr Singh chose not to go to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. India waited to see what would happen to President Musharraf before reviving the dialogue process, while keeping in touch with Benazir Bhutto, who had indicated her support for the Manmohan-Musharraf formula. By the end of 2007, Benazir Bhutto had been killed by an assassin’s bullet. The news of Benazir’s assassination reached Dr Singh at
the Raj Bhavan in Goa. He was crestfallen. Benazir was privy to his consultations with Musharraf and he was confident she would back their effort and extend the required popular support to their plans. He spent the entire evening watching television reportage on the assassination.

  By the end of 2008, Musharraf’s rule had ended and a new regime was elected to office. The Manmohan-Musharraf formula went out of play and has been waiting since then to be resurrected. Over the years Dr Singh has repeatedly articulated his vision of a subcontinent of peace. When he welcomed Musharraf at a banquet in his honour in April 2005, it was with an eloquent dinner speech delivered with rare emotion:

  We cannot rewrite the past, but we can build a more secure future. A future that generates people’s trust and confidence in the political leadership in South Asia. We must find practical ways and means to resolve all outstanding issues between us in a reasonable, pragmatic manner, cognizant of the ground realities. Our people and our common destiny urge us to make an earnest attempt to find a lasting solution to all issues.

  In a globalizing and increasingly integrated world, borders have lost meaning for much of the world. The journey of peace must be based on a step-by-step approach, but the road must be travelled. As an ancient saying goes, a road is made by walking.

  Dr Singh was convinced that destiny was on India’s side and India’s rise as the world’s largest democracy and an economic power would only be slowed down by an unsettled neighbourhood. The subcontinent had to rise together, he felt. He wanted India’s rise to be viewed as a win-win game rather than a zero-sum game by its neighbours. He felt they too should benefit from it, recognizing that they might be able to slow India down with their tactics, but would never be able to stop India’s resurgence.

  That is why he persisted with his efforts against all odds and sought to pick up the threads with Musharraf’s successors, President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, in the face of the gravest of provocations India had faced—the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.

  After his impressive victory in the 2009 elections Dr Singh assumed he had the political space to take forward his dialogue with Pakistan and wrap up the deal he was on the verge of striking with Musharraf with the general’s democratically elected successors. After all, he had got Benazir’s support before her death, and now her husband was President. His meeting with Zardari in June 2009, on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, was a non-starter, since this was the first meeting with a Pakistani leader after the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai. He was, however, better prepared for his dialogue a month later with Prime Minister Gilani at Sharm el-Sheikh, on the sidelines of a summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement.

  I met Dr Singh two days before he was due to fly to Sharm el-Sheikh. After we discussed my plans to return to India from Singapore, where I was then living, he asked me what I thought he should say to Prime Minister Gilani. I felt he ought not to have started his second term with a focus on Pakistan. Let the Zardari-Gilani team settle down I suggested, feeling he should focus on the economy at least for the first six months. The global economy was still in choppy waters. While the G-20 initiatives had calmed the markets and restored some stability, the outlook was still negative. I felt he should use his impressive victory to push for reforms at home while bringing the fiscal deficit down. But he seemed keen on taking the dialogue with Pakistan forward. With the nuclear deal done, normalizing relations with Pakistan remained his second major policy preoccupation. Speculation about a change of leadership midway through the second term, with Rahul taking charge, may have also lent some urgency to this agenda. Who knew how long he would remain PM.

  In the event, that keenness seemed to have been responsible for his agreeing to refer to Baluchistan, in an apparent concession to Pakistan, in the joint statement he hurriedly issued with Gilani. The Congress party quickly rubbished the controversial statement, even though Dr Singh defended it twice in Parliament during the course of the month. Despite criticism from his own party, he never gave up hope of using the Thimphu SAARC Summit, in April 2010, to impart momentum to the dialogue process. Within months he was enveloped by political problems at home and never recovered from them to be able to return to the historic agenda he had so eagerly set for himself and so passionately pursued. He could not even manage to visit his birthplace at Gah.

  Not completing the process he began will surely remain his greatest regret. However, whenever the two countries do find a lasting solution to their disputes, I have little doubt it will be along the lines that Dr Singh had envisioned with Musharraf.

  11

  Ending Nuclear Apartheid

  ‘I am aware of the risks that I do incur. Mr T.T. Krishnamachari once told me that there are tigers on the prowl on the streets of Delhi. I am aware of the risks, but for India’s sake, I am willing to take those risks.’

  Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha

  17 August 2006

  In January 2004, it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had initiated a new round of dialogue with President Musharraf, aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute, but it fell to Dr Singh to take that initiative forward. In the same month, Vajpayee also initiated a new strategic dialogue with the United States, dubbed the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership, aimed at ending what many in India believed was a nuclear ‘apartheid’ that discriminated against India. That process too was destined to be taken forward by Dr Singh.

  After the Pokhran nuclear test of 1974, and for refusing to sign the NPT, India had been subjected to US restrictions on the export of ‘dual-use’ and ‘high’ technology, that is technology that could be used for both civilian and military, and strategic purposes. India’s grouse was that China managed to become a nuclear power under the terms of the NPT only because it tested before the treaty was signed while India missed the bus by a few years. The NPT thus, from the Indian perspective, divided the world into nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and India, along with Israel, North Korea and Pakistan, was a ‘have-not’.

  The 1998 ‘Shakti tests’ at Pokhran had invited a fresh round of sanctions. By 2004, India had managed to secure a whittling down of the post-1998 sanctions, but the post-1974 restrictions (which prohibited US nuclear trade with India) were still in place. Removing these restrictions required amendments to US law.

  President George Bush was the first US President to recognize, publicly at least, that this was unfair discrimination against India. He appreciated the fact that it was incongruous for the US to be doing more business in high-technology areas with communist China than democratic India. China managed to avert restrictions because it was an NPT signatory as a ‘weapons power’.

  As the world entered the twenty-first century, several factors encouraged the US to seek closer relations with India. First, India’s own improved economic performance and the opening up of the economy to foreign capital and trade in the 1990s. Second, India’s proven capability in the new information and knowledge economy as demonstrated in its ability to help the US manage the Y2K problem, also known as the Millennium Bug. Third, growing US concern about the rise of China and Islamic radicalism, and the US view that India could be a partner in tackling these challenges because India too was concerned about these developments. Finally, the favourable impression made in the US by the Indian American community, which had emerged as a prosperous, vocal and cooperative interest group capable of influencing US lawmakers.

  All this was reflected in Condoleezza Rice’s influential essay on ‘Promoting the National Interest’ (Foreign Affairs, January-February 2000) in which she urged the US to ‘pay closer attention to India’s role in the regional balance’ in Asia, ‘de-hyphenating’ India from Pakistan (the US tendency to couple the two countries had long infuriated India) and, instead, thinking of ‘India as an element in China’s calculation’. India, suggested Condoleezza, who was already an influential adviser to President Bush and was to later become his national sec
urity adviser and secretary of state, ‘is not a great power yet, but it has the potential to emerge as one’. The US, she suggested, must help India so emerge.

  It was against this backdrop that the first Bush administration launched the NSSP, to enable cooperation in civilian nuclear activities, civilian space programmes and high-technology trade. While India had addressed US nuclear proliferation concerns, the US had addressed some export-control issues, easing trade in dual-use technologies required by India’s space programme and civil nuclear programme. But enough progress had not been made by the time the government changed in New Delhi.

  Dr Singh decided to pursue this dialogue. In his very first address to the nation on 24 June 2004 he specifically said that he would ‘welcome the expansion of cooperation between the two governments to include new and mutually beneficial areas, particularly high technology’. High technology was the euphemism for nuclear technology, but also referred to space, defence and advanced computer technology. These words reflected a conversation that had already been initiated by Mani Dixit on the NSSP with the Bush administration during the visit to New Delhi of Ken Juster, the US co-chair of the US—India High Technology Cooperation Group, and Richard Armitage, then US assistant secretary of defence. Dixit instructed S. Jaishankar, who took charge as the joint secretary dealing with the US, to end the impasse on the NSSP and bring the process to fruition. Jaishankar travelled to Washington DC and between him and India’s ambassador, Ronen Sen, they were able to get an agreement on the NSSP by mid-September. This paved the way for the official announcement of a Bush-PM meeting later that month in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.