Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India

by Vinay Sitapati

  It was the worst political decision of Narasimha Rao’s career.

  The 1996 national elections were scheduled for May. The polling agency MARG predicted that the BJP would emerge as the number one party.83 The only hope the Congress had was to strike favourable pre-poll alliances.

  Rao swiftly grasped that one state was the key to his re-election. This was Tamil Nadu, India’s southern-most state with thirty-nine Lok Sabha seats. Since 1969, Tamil Nadu had been alternatively ruled by the two Dravidian parties: the AIADMK, run by the movie star Jayalalithaa; and the DMK, run by the scriptwriter Karunanidhi. Tamil voters had a reputation for siding completely with one party or the other. Narasimha Rao knew that whichever party he allied with would win him all thirty-nine seats—making him prime minister—or none at all.

  Both options presented risks. The AIADMK was running the state and was unpopular. The head of the party was the mercurial Jayalalithaa, loathed by Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa was also accused by her rivals of being involved in corruption scandals. That Rao was aware of these accusations is seen from a document found amidst his private papers, titled ‘Yearwise Credits in Bank Accounts of J.Jayalalithaa’. The document lists bank account holdings, as also the properties of Jayalalithaa’s supporters ‘Smt Sasikala’ and other senior AIADMK politicians.

  Aligning with the DMK presented its own complications. The historical legatee of the Dravidian movement had links with the LTTE. Going with the DMK would mean that Narasimha Rao was condoning the killers of Rajiv Gandhi.

  It is a measure of how conscious Rao was of not being seen to abandon Rajiv’s legacy that he decided to back Jayalalithaa. Even the faraway New York Times noticed that this was a bad idea, carrying the headline, ‘Political Pact With Ex-Film Star May Bring Down India’s Premier’.84 Rao, however, felt he had no choice, telling his partymen, ‘We are a hundred-year-old party. For short-term gains, we should not sacrifice our principles.’85 The local Congress protested. As Rao wrote in his diary, ‘At the marathon meeting of the CWC, the TN Congress leaders pleaded their case thoroughly and left nothing unargued. The leaders had always said the final decision of the High Command would be implemented—after everyone had his or her say, of course. I did not figure anywhere in that meeting but left them to thrash it out. And the CWC decision was categorical as final.’86

  For the May 1996 elections, Narasimha Rao contested from Behrampur, Orissa, and canvassed in Oriya. In the first two weeks of the campaign, he addressed fifty meetings and covered twelve states.87 While the BJP made hard-line Hindutva its main plank, Rao did not counter them by citing economic reforms. Instead, as we saw earlier, he campaigned on the stability his government had provided and the welfare schemes it had unleashed. Rao’s Congress was also bruised by rebellion in various states. To shore up support from those who remained in his Congress, Rao gave tickets to the wives and relatives of leaders.

  None of this worked. When the election results were announced on 10 May, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party with 161 seats. The Congress had collapsed to its worst-ever tally of 140 seats. The Congress and AIADMK had together won zero seats in Tamil Nadu. Narasimha Rao’s term as prime minister was over.

  Though the BJP was the single largest party, it was well short of a majority. N.K. Sharma says that BJP leaders contacted him, asking him to convince Narasimha Rao to support the BJP government. Sharma says that Rao considered the plan.88 But after five decades in the Congress, he could not stomach abandoning his cherished party. On 12 May 1996—while the President of India was still determining whom to invite to form the government—Congress president Rao sent him a copy of the CWC resolution ‘regarding the Committee’s unequivocal decision not to have anything to do with the BJP in the current process of formation of the central Government’.89

  Four days later, Atal Bihari Vajpayee took office as the eleventh prime minister of India. Narasimha Rao sat in the front row, in the same hall where he had been sworn in five years ago. Rao and Vajpayee, old friends, were similarly clad in white silk kurta and dhoti.90 The only difference was that the new prime minister’s shoulder cloth was orange, and on his forehead was a saffron tilak.

  The government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee lived for just thirteen days; the next three governments lasted barely a year each. Buffeted thus by two failed minority governments before and four after, Narasimha Rao’s mere survival for a full term is significant.

  More astonishing is the fact that Rao did more than just survive. He transformed India in those five years, from its economy and welfare schemes to, as we shall see, foreign policy and national security. All the while, he managed a restless party, annual state elections, a hostile Parliament and a largely apathetic public. There are few reformers in world history who achieved so much with so little.

  As if these chains were not enough, prime minister Rao had to deal with one more. This constraint was neither elected politician nor party member. Yet, she could have dismissed Rao with a single word. The story of how Narasimha Rao managed Sonia Gandhi is central to his transformation of India.

  11

  Managing Sonia

  Sonia Maino was born in Italy in 1946, the year Narasimha Rao was an earnest twenty-five-year-old fighting the Nizam. Her family was intensely Catholic; her father was a building contractor who had spent World War II fighting for Mussolini’s army. In 1964, Sonia travelled to the city of Cambridge in the United Kingdom to learn English. It was here that she met Rajiv Gandhi, a student at Cambridge University. They married in 1968, and Sonia Gandhi moved to New Delhi.

  Rajiv was an Indian Airlines pilot with no interest in the family profession. Sonia and Rajiv moved in anglicized circles in Delhi1—light years removed from the world of Narasimha Rao. Rajiv Gandhi joined politics only in 1981. Rao had by then spent close to four decades in active politics, had served as state legislator, chief minister, party general secretary, and was at the time foreign minister of India.

  Sonia Gandhi was afraid of politics. She had taken her bullet-riddled mother-in-law to hospital in 1984, and was worried that her husband and two children would suffer the same fate. She had begged Rajiv not to become prime minister. When he was killed in 1991, the crown was summarily placed on her head. She declined to wear it. When her party surprisingly won the 2004 national elections thirteen years later, Mrs Gandhi listened to her ‘inner voice’2—or son Rahul’s voice, depending on whom you believe3—and again refused to lead the world’s largest democracy. The evidence is clear. Sonia Gandhi never wanted to sit on the throne.

  She preferred, instead, to be the power behind it. Sonia Gandhi selected Manmohan Singh as prime minister in 2004 precisely because he lacked a power base. Manmohan Singh’s press secretary, Sanjaya Baru, writes that Manmohan confessed to him: ‘There cannot be two centres of power . . . I have to accept that the party president [Sonia Gandhi] is the centre of power.’4

  Sonia’s choice of Narasimha Rao as prime minister in 1991, on the advice of P.N. Haksar and Satish Sharma, was for much the same reason. As with Manmohan, Rao’s virtue was that he threatened no one—not her, not her coterie, not any of the party factions. This was also why Indira Gandhi had ‘nominated’ Narasimha Rao as Andhra Pradesh chief minister in 1971. That Rao had failed to grasp the paradox inherent in his selection: he was chosen because he was powerless, but implementing Indira’s will required him to be powerful.

  Prime minister Narasimha Rao now faced a similar conundrum with Sonia Gandhi. If he roared, she would remove him. If he whispered, he would lose his prime ministerial authority and achieve little. To manage Sonia, Rao needed to project weakness as well as strength.

  The prime minister’s first action to please Mrs Rajiv Gandhi was to link his reforms to her husband’s legacy. Most economic policies that Rao and Manmohan Singh pushed in the first months of their government had Rajiv’s name associated with it. They took care, however, not to let this rhetoric change the substance of their policies.

  On 22 August 1
991, Rao released the fifth volume of the collected speeches of Rajiv. The prime minister was all honey, implausibly crediting Rajiv with pushing for global disarmament and the ‘idea of a non-violent world’ for the first time since Mahatma Gandhi.5 At the same time (and as we shall explore in detail in a later chapter), Rao met with V.S. Arunachalam and Naresh Chandra—architects of India’s nuclear programme—and ordered them to continue with weaponization. A year later, the prime minister spoke on the release of the book Rajiv written by Sonia Gandhi. ‘I had occasion to see Soniaji with our late prime minister Rajivji,’ Rao said. ‘I sensed how unique and perfect their union was.’6

  Rao announced that Rajiv Gandhi would be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award. This was a curious honour for someone even Narasimha Rao privately considered a ‘praise addict’7 who was too inexperienced to run India. As we saw earlier, the government even donated 100 crore rupees to the newly formed Rajiv Gandhi Foundation,8 which was being run by Sonia Gandhi.9

  Rao complemented this public demonstration of respect for Rajiv with private discussions with his widow. Rao usually spoke on the phone with Sonia Gandhi twice a week. Once in a while, Sonia’s aide would make the prime minister of India wait on the line for a few minutes. Rao complained to his secretary P.V.R.K. Prasad, ‘I do not mind. It is the prime minister who minds.’10

  Every week or so, Rao would meet Sonia Gandhi in person. His secretary, R.K. Khandekar, would coordinate with Sonia’s secretary, Vincent George, and the prime minister would make the short journey to 10 Janpath. Narasimha Rao’s son Rajeshwara says, ‘Whether he talked to his own family, we don’t know. But every time, he used to talk to Rajiv Gandhi’s family.’11

  Mrs Gandhi does not appear to have spoken much during these conversations. She was withdrawn and aloof during her entire first year in mourning.12 Delegations visiting her were warned to avoid talking politics.13 In October 1991, Sonia Gandhi refused to contest the Amethi by-election, necessitated by the death of the sitting MP, Rajiv Gandhi. It was a signal to Rao’s detractors in the party that Mrs Gandhi was not planning to challenge the prime minister any time soon.14

  Sonia Gandhi’s one concern in those early months was the lives of her two children, Priyanka and Rahul. When she voiced her anxieties to Rao, he amended the law and extended SPG-level security—meant to protect the sitting prime minister—to former prime ministers and their family.15 Sonia and Priyanka, who lived in Delhi, now enjoyed the same protection as Rao did. The prime minister then turned his attention to the security of Rahul Gandhi, who was studying at Harvard in faraway United States.

  In his archives lies a letter written by the prime minister on 19 September 1991—three months after Rajiv’s funeral. The letter is addressed to George H.W. Bush, the President of the United States, and relates to the ‘security of Rahul Gandhi, the son of our late Prime Minister, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’.’ ‘I had ventured to do so,’ Rao wrote, ‘knowing the warmth of your friendship as also the affection that Mrs Bush and you had for Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and his family.’ He noted that the US authorities had ‘been most helpful in providing a certain level of security assistance to Rahul Gandhi . . . In normal circumstances these arrangements would have been deemed satisfactory.’ But Rao went on to write that Indian security agencies believed that Sikh extremists were plotting to kill Rahul. He then requested the US President for more security. ‘The minimum, I believe, would be the availability of one trained person with him, who has also the necessary intelligence backing of various agencies, and effective means of communication.’16

  This request for tighter American security for Rahul, enhanced protection for Sonia and Priyanka, regular visits to 10 Janpath, and ritualistic invocations of Rajiv’s legacy—all had the desired effect. A close of friend of Rao says that in early 1992, Mrs Gandhi trusted Rao enough to tell him, ‘People are asking me to come to politics. If I was your daughter, what would you advise?’

  ‘Since you are asking as my daughter, I would say don’t come.’

  In April 1992, Narasimha Rao presided over the Tirupati session of the Congress, the first non-Family prime minister to do so. With Sonia Gandhi still in mourning, Rao had a free hand. As recounted in the previous chapter, the Tirupati session marks the moment when Rao’s rivals within the Congress realized that he was more fox than mouse. They began taking their complaints about Rao directly to Sonia. Salman Khurshid, then a junior minister, remembers that ‘Rao was seen as an intruder into what was seen as an exclusive Nehru-Gandhi preserve. Sonia consciously opted out. The trouble was you can take a noble decision, but in the daily functioning there will be any number of people who will say that enough respect was not being paid to 10 Janpath.’17

  Rao knew that his adversaries were telling tales. His regular conversations with Sonia Gandhi, in person and on phone, were aimed at fighting those fires. The prime minister also went out of the way to address the few requests of the taciturn Sonia, on Rajiv’s legacy, on her family’s security—and on Bofors.

  When it came to the Bofors corruption scam, a senior Congressman says that even though Sonia believed in Rajiv’s innocence, she wanted the new government to lighten the taint on her dead husband. Just how keen the Narasimha Rao government was to oblige was revealed in the early months of 1992, when foreign minister Madhav Singh Solanki was found to have given a misleading letter to his counterpart in Switzerland asking him to scuttle the Bofors probe.18 It is improbable that Solanki was acting without the knowledge of his prime minister, who had every incentive to please Sonia Gandhi.

  For a year and a half, Rao’s relationship with Mrs Gandhi remained without incident. She refrained from interfering in politics; he obliged her few requests. All of this changed on 6 December 1992, when the Babri mosque was demolished. Sonia Gandhi issued a statement condemning the destruction.19 It was her first political act.

  Though Sonia’s statement did not blame the Rao government, the prime minister took note. He asked the intelligence bureau to keep tabs on 10 Janpath. On 18 December 1992, twelve days after the demolition, the IB replied, ‘The important visitors of Smt. Sonia Gandhi, since December 7, included Arjun Singh (Dec.7 & 14), Digvijay Singh, MP . . . (Dec. 7 & 8) . . . N.D. Tiwari . . . Madhavrao Scindia . . . and Ahmed Patel.’ The report went on to say, ‘During the course of the discussions with Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Arjun Singh, Digvijay Singh, A.K. Jogi, Salamutallah and Ahmed Patel . . . reportedly expressed their unhappiness with the handling of the situation, including by the prime minister . . .’

  Narasimha Rao realized he was facing a revolt within his party. As we saw in the previous chapter, Rao responded by turning crisis into an opportunity to consolidate his position. He rallied the non-BJP opposition behind him, reshuffled his Cabinet, and eased out critics. By July 1993, Rao had survived his third and final no-confidence motion in Parliament. The economy was doing well, and the prime minister felt he was finally in control. Rao’s greatest skill was that he could dispassionately analyse his faults and frailties, objectively assess the precariousness of his own position. But political success in 1993 clouded his judgement. It led him to the principal misstep in his relationship with Sonia Gandhi.

  Until 1993, Narasimha Rao met Sonia Gandhi almost once every week. Their conversations were brief, but they ensured that Rao could clear any doubts expressed to Sonia by disgruntled Congressmen. These meetings were, however, criticized by opposition parties. Why should a duly elected prime minister brief a private citizen, they asked.20 Rao had ignored the jibes during his first two years in office. Now, he appeared to listen. In mid-1993, he stopped visiting Mrs Gandhi in her house.

  For Rao to end his visits to 10 Janpath merely because he had gained temporal power seems uncharacteristic. He had spent his career bowing before Jawaharlal, then Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv. Unlike most other senior Congressmen, he had never once rebelled against the party’s first family. He had even accepted his own forced retirement with equanimity. But perhaps it is not in human nature to always play
second fiddle, especially when absolute power seems within grasp. Narasimha Rao always had little respect for Sonia’s political abilities, as his diary entries soon after Rajiv’s death in May 1991 reveal. Rao was opposed to Sonia Gandhi running the party and country. Finally in control by the middle of 1993, the prime minister was perhaps beginning to imagine the unimaginable. That he could severe the engine from the train and finally rid himself—and the party—of the Nehru-Gandhis.

  If this was the intention behind Rao’s decision to stop briefing Mrs Gandhi in her house, it had the opposite effect. Rao’s absence created a situation where his many detractors—Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, M.L. Fotedar, Sheila Dixit and Vincent George, among others—would incessantly complain to Sonia, while the prime minister lacked a forum to present his side of the story. Far from excluding Sonia Gandhi, it made her an alternative power centre. Kalyani Shankar says, ‘[Sonia’s] chamchas, the middlemen and touts, also wanted to be important. Unless someone depended on them, they couldn’t be reliable. As long as they [Sonia and Rao] were meeting regularly, the chamchas could not do much. Once they stopped [meeting], these middlemen created distance.’21

  Rao increased that distance by sidelining bureaucrats and politicians close to Rajiv. An aide remembers, ‘The prime minister was careful to follow rules, but he ensured [that] no bureaucrat close to Rajiv was given an extension.’ Mani Shankar Aiyar was Rajiv’s schoolmate and close friend in the Congress. Rao was polite to Aiyar but never gave him a job in government. As a senior bureaucrat remembers, ‘Anybody associated with Rajiv Gandhi, he saw to it that none of them got anything.’