by Sanjaya Baru
It was clear that Yechury was not happy with Karat’s decision. On reaching 7 RCR I conveyed Ram’s message and Yechury’s remarks to the PM. He was furious. He had been let down by the Left.
Before publicly responding to the Left’s rejection of the 123 Agreement, Dr Singh invited its leaders to a briefing and a discussion a couple of days later. All the details of the agreement were presented to them by officials from the DAE and PMO. Shortly after they left the meeting, the Left leaders addressed a press conference rejecting the agreement.
As Dr Singh watched Karat address the press on television, I was struck by the contemptuous manner in which the CPI(M) leader spoke, as he charged the government of giving up India’s ‘independent foreign policy’ and becoming an ally of an imperialist power.
‘It is this same “independent foreign policy” that they opposed when they attacked Panditji and Indiraji,’ Dr Singh said mockingly as he watched Karat fume and fulminate. When the press conference ended, he became glum and angry.
After several minutes of silence, he got up to go home for dinner, making one last comment, ‘The Left have always opposed the Congress on foreign policy when it suited them. They criticized Panditji, they criticized Indiraji, they attacked Narasimha Raoji. Whatever I did as finance minister, they criticized. They criticized non-alignment when it suited them, they supported it when it suited them. As long as I am prime minister, I will not allow these communists to dictate our foreign policy.’
A couple of days later, Dr Singh met Manini Chattegee of the Telegraph (Kolkata) in his room in Parliament. She had just taken charge as the Telegraph’s Delhi bureau chief and wanted to meet the PM. It was a courtesy call, not an interview, but it turned into one. The prime minister, still angry, was in a talkative mood and was willing to be candid while replying to her questions on the Left’s demand. As his remarks became more and more interesting and newsy, Manini realized she had a front-page story. She sought the PM’s permission to quote him and report his views. He looked at me. I told him that if he truly felt this way, he owed it to the nation to make his views known. This was an important issue on which his critics were freely offering their criticism. He should not remain silent, I said.
Dr Singh agreed to allow Manini to report what he said. He only insisted that since she had not recorded his remarks on tape she should clear the text of her report with me before its publication. Manini and I sat in an anteroom and shared our notes. She then went to her office, typed out her story and emailed it to me. It was an accurate report and I gave her the green signal.
Next morning, on Saturday 11 August, the Telegraph ran the headline ‘Anguished PM to Left: If You Want to Withdraw, So Be It’.
The report said, ‘Tired of the Left parties’ constant bark, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dared them to bite after their latest diatribe against the Indo-US nuclear deal.’ It quoted Dr Singh as saying, ‘I told them it is not possible to renegotiate the deal. It is an honourable deal, the Cabinet has approved it, we cannot go back on it. I told them to do whatever they want to do. If they want to withdraw support, so be it.’
The news report sent shock waves around Delhi. Narayanan and Nair called me to find out if the report was accurate. They were not aware of the PM’s meeting with Manini, which had taken place in Parliament House while they themselves were in South Block. It is also possible that neither was as aware of the PM’s anger and anguish as I had been. They reported that the Congress party’s leadership was unhappy with the interview and might want the PM to issue a denial. Since the PM’s statements were not taped, felt Narayanan, it should be possible to issue a denial. I was appalled by that line of argument, but kept silent. It occurred to me that they, along with Congress party functionaries, might have already decided to get the PM to issue a denial and to put the blame on me for what Manini had written. I realized that the prime minister might come under pressure from his party, and was not sure what he would do. I returned to my room, read through my own notes of what exactly the PM had said and waited for the summons.
Several journalists called to say that the Congress party was planning to deny the story, saying Dr Singh never issued any such ultimatum to the Left. One senior journalist called to tell me that Ahmed Patel had said to him, ‘How can Doctor Saheb issue any such ultimatum to the Left? He did not bring them into an alliance with us, so he cannot ask them to go.’
I waited the whole day for a call from Dr Singh. Would he regret having said what he said? Would he disclaim his remarks and ask me to issue a denial? The phone never rang through the weekend, but there was no official denial either. Meanwhile, Delhi’s political circles buzzed with speculation.
On Tuesday, 14 August, a day before Independence Day, Subbu told me, to my surprise, that Dr Singh had decided to drop all references to the 123 Agreement from his address to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The approved draft had a powerful paragraph taking credit for an achievement for which he had been hailed widely. It was dropped at the eleventh hour. Standing on the ramparts, the PM could have proudly claimed that he had done the nation proud. He had secured for India a new status as a nuclear power. But while he spoke at length about everything else the government had done during the year, his one great achievement that year found no mention at all.
As they walked down the stairs from the ramparts of the Red Fort, leaving the function, ministers, officials and diplomats were puzzled by this omission. Those who knew that I was Dr Singh’s speech-writer asked me why there was no reference to the 123 Agreement in the PM’s address. I had no answer.
While the diplomats had done India proud, negotiating a historic agreement, India’s politicians let the country down. The hypocrisy of the Left was exposed by the somersault Ram had to perform on the editorial pages of The Hindu. After proclaiming the 123 Agreement ‘sound and honourable’, he followed up with an editorial a few days later, toeing Karat’s line and advising the government to put the deal on hold. AndYechury, who had privately agreed that the PM had done what he had promised to, publicly criticized him.
The Left’s opposition evolved from being purely ideological into becoming a political ploy by Karat aimed at marginalizing all the pro-PM elements within his own party. Surjeet,Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb and Yechury were the moderates. Having upstaged Surjeet, Karat used the issue of opposition to the nuclear deal as a way of consolidating his own position within the CPM. The CPI was uncomfortable with Karat’s rigid opposition. CPI leaders D. Raja and S. Sudhakar Reddy knew me well, especially the latter, whom I had known from my student days in Hyderabad. He was a disciple of Mohit Sen. He came home to see me and let me know that the CPI was not happy with Karat’s rigid anti-deal line, but felt helpless. The CPI, he admitted, did not want to destabilize the government but was unable to get Karat to alter his line.
The BJP too was a divided house. Moderate leaders like Vajpayee and even younger ones like Arun Jaitley were not resolutely opposed to the deal. It was clear that just as Karat had used his opposition to the deal as a way of rallying his own party’s cadres behind him, L.K. Advani, too, chose to adopt a rigid stance to force his party to abandon the Vajpayee line and accept him as the new leader.
Divisions within the BJP came to the fore even at Dr Singh’s briefing of the party’s leaders on the 123 Agreement. Advani was not in Delhi, but the meeting, at 7 RCR, was attended by Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Brajesh Mishra. Sinha and Shourie asked the scientists, diplomats and PMO officials many searching questions, expressing their scepticism about what had been secured. Jaswant Singh, on the other hand, complimented the officers with his usual gravitas, saying, ‘Gentlemen, you have done the nation proud!’ Vajpayee remained silent.
At one point Brajesh Mishra walked around the table and handed over a piece of paper to Vajpayee. He looked at the paper, folded it and put it in his pocket. Dr Singh turned to Vajpayee and asked him if he wished to say anything. Vajpayee smiled and remained silent. Yashwant Sinha, Shourie a
nd Brajesh looked eagerly at Vajpayee, obviously hoping he would say something. He still did not oblige. The meeting ended. Everyone stood up and one by one walked out of the room through a door opening into a corridor. Vajpayee took his own time to stand up. Then, Dr Singh walked his predecessor out through an adjacent door with a shorter route close to where his car was parked. I was a step behind Dr Singh. Standing at the door of his car, Vajpayee gave Dr Singh a warm smile and the two shook hands. Vajpayee nodded his head and smiled, as if to suggest the PM had done a good job and he was satisfied.
‘I have only completed what you began,’ Dr Singh said, breaking the silence. Vajpayee smiled, nodded his head again, got into the car and drove away.
What followed, over the next few weeks, was a period of political suspense. It was not clear what would happen next, even though the government kept up the pretence of carrying on negotiations with the Left. Every now and then, rumours would circulate that Dr Singh was contemplating resignation. When a senior political journalist with a major national daily asked a senior Congress leader known to be close to Sonia how true these rumours were, the leader retorted, ‘Let him resign. We have so many others ready to become PM. Any one of them can do an equally good job.’
On 12 October 2007, both Sonia Gandhi and Dr Singh spoke at the Hindustan Times Summit. In response to pre-approved questions that Vir Sanghvi posed to Sonia, she said the survival of the government took precedence over the nuclear deal and while the Congress would continue to try and win over the Left it would do nothing to force the issue and risk a break with the Left.
Dr Singh watched her remarks live on television at 7 RCR. As soon as her session was over, the PM’s carcade left for Taj Palace Hotel where Dr Singh was scheduled as the second speaker.
In a pointed question, the newspaper’s editorial director, Vir Sanghvi, asked him, ‘You made a statement to a newspaper which was a bit out of sync with your persona and that started all the controversy. Do you think you overstepped a bit?’
Dr Singh responded with uncharacteristic firmness, ‘I don’t think I overstepped. I was responding to a public statement issued by the four Left parties and I don’t think I overstepped. I am quite conscious of my responsibilities and what I should say and what I should not say.’
However, fully aware of what Sonia had said before him, the PM parried questions on the nuclear deal, saying his government was not a ‘one-issue government’ and ‘one has to live with certain disappointments . . . If the deal does not come through, that is not the end of life.’
He returned home deeply disappointed. As I took leave of him he asked me, ‘Who are the wise men around whom I can turn to for advice?’
I said I knew only two wise men. One was my father, who happened to be in Delhi that day, and the other my guru, K. Subrahmanyam. He asked to see them both and met each of them separately. Both advised him to stand firm. He had done what he had done with full Cabinet approval. Backing off now under pressure from the communists would show India in a bad light. If the party was not prepared to back him, he should quit.
‘She has let me down,’ he said to both in the separate meetings he had with them, in a voice tinged more with sadness than anger.
The next day, Dr Singh flew on a state visit to Nigeria. As I settled down in my hotel room, my phone rang. Subbu was on the line. ‘PM wants to see you, can you come immediately to his room?’
I sensed a rare urgency in his tone and left my room as I was, without footwear, in shirtsleeves and trousers. When I entered the PM’s suite, I found Dr Singh seated in the middle, with Mrs Kaur on one side and Subbu on the other. Subbu got up and offered me his chair. Dr Singh looked grim.
‘What did you tell the US ambassador?’ Dr Singh asked.
I was surprised by the question and the tone. What did I tell the US ambassador? I could not recall talking to him. I asked what the context was.
‘I am told you made some remark to him on the nuclear deal. What did you say?’
It came back to me in a flash. Just as I was packing up to leave my office room in South Block the day before we left for Nigeria, I had a call from Ted Osius, a diplomat at the US embassy. He called to say that he had a copy of the PM’s speech at the Hindustan Times Summit but that copy did not contain the remarks that the PM had made on the fate of the nuclear deal. So where did he say what he was quoted in the press as saying?
I told the diplomat that those were extempore remarks made by the PM in response to questions posed by Vir Sanghvi and he would find the transcript on the PMO website. He then went on to say that the US ambassador David Mulford was keen on reading the PM’s statement to understand what exactly he had said. Could I explain to him the PM’s remarks?
I was in a hurry to wind up for the day and was not sure what else I could offer by way of explanation. Whatever the PM had said was out there. I had nothing more to add. The diplomat persisted, asking me what I thought the PM meant by what he said. I then offered an explanation. The PM was saying, ‘Que sera sera.’
As I recalled this, Dr Singh said, ‘Exactly. What is the meaning of que sera sera?’
I couldn’t help laughing out loudly. ‘Oh,’ I said to Dr Singh, ‘You mean someone reported to you that I may have spoken in some secret code?!’ I continued to laugh. Maybe those eavesdropping on my conversation could not decode the phrase for the PM. Mrs Kaur smiled. She knew what the words meant.
Que sera sera, I told Dr Singh, was Spanish for ‘whatever will be, will be’.
He had not seen Hitchcock’s movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Mrs Kaur, who had seen it, said, ‘Yes, I remember that movie and that song.’
Doris Day sang it, I pointed out. Yes, agreed Mrs Kaur, it was Doris Day. As I hummed the tune, Subbu was amused. Dr Singh was not. He heard me with a sombre expression.
What else could I say, I asked him. It is not just the US ambassador, the entire media and many in government have been asking the same question. What exactly did the PM mean when he said his was not a ‘one-issue government’ and that ‘one has to live with certain disappointments . . . If the deal does not come through, that is not the end of life.’
Was the deal dead? I did not know, I explained to him, so I felt the best answer to give the US diplomat was: ‘Que sera sera!’
Finally, Dr Singh smiled. He said he had a call from Pranab Mukherjee who told him that Mulford had called on him and sought an explanation of both Sonia’s and the PM’s statements at the Hindustan Times Summit and wanted to know if the government had decided to shelve the negotiations and the deal. Pranab tried to offer an explanation. Mulford then told him that when his colleague asked the PMO for an explanation, he was told ‘Que sera sera’. What did he think the PMO guy meant, Mulford asked Pranab.
Several days later, back in Delhi, I found myself seated at the banquet table in Rashtrapati Bhavan at a dinner in honour of the visiting President of Switzerland. The President’s banquets usually have a live band playing music. The tunes being played that evening are listed on a card and placed in front of every guest along with the menu card. As I glanced through the card, my eyes caught the name of the second number, which was yet to be played. It was Doris Day’s Que sera sera.
I circled the name of the tune on my card and passed it down the table to Dr Singh. He looked at the card and then looked at me. I pointed him in the direction of the band and made a gesture with my forefinger, as if it was a conductor’s wand. Dr Singh smiled. For the first time in his life, he was hearing that lovely tune from a fantastic Hitchcock movie.
It seemed that evening that as with so many other issues, he would take the fatalistic view that ‘whatever will be, will be’ on this signature initiative. At times I would be frustrated by this fatalism—even more so by some of his aides justifying it in the name of political survival. At other times I would step back and wonder if there was something to be learnt from his approach. On the nuclear deal, at least, he proved to be more a strategist than a fatalist. In the weeks that follow
ed he began to reveal the cards he had held so close to his chest. Slowly but surely, he began to make his moves, before finally using the threat of resignation to get Sonia on his side.
12
Singh Is King
‘It is very important for us to move forward to end this nuclear apartheid that the world has sought to impose on India.’
Manmohan Singh to IFS probationers
11 June 2008
After Sonia Gandhi’s rebuff at the Hindustan Times Summit in September 2007, Dr Singh went silent on the nuclear deal. The Congress party and the Left kept up a show of continuing to discuss the deal in a fifteen-member UPA-Left committee. Senior Congress ministers, including Pranab Mukherjee, Kapil Sibal and Prithviraj Chavan would sit with Karat,Yechury, A.B. Bardhan, D. Raja and others and come out of these meetings with inane statements about how the government was clarifying the doubts raised by the Left.
Even after six meetings during September-November 2007, Left spokespersons would continue to claim that they were only offering the government an ‘honourable exit route’ and that the Left did not want the deal ‘operationalized’ till the scheduled General Elections in 2009, and certainly not as long as George Bush remained US President.
Despite the Left’s rigid stance, the government managed to get the Left’s permission to proceed to the IAEA to negotiate an ‘India-specific safeguards agreement’, adding the proviso that the Left would have to approve of such an agreement before the government took the next step, which would be to sign on to the 123 Agreement, so that the US President could secure Congressional approval for the deal with India.
In his first public reference to the nuclear deal after the Hindustan Times Summit, Dr Singh told the AICC on 17 November 2007, referring to the problem of power shortage at home and the need to increase power generation capacity:
