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

by Vinay Sitapati

  As dissent within the party increased through 1994, Rao’s rivals flocked to Sonia Gandhi. Arjun Singh wrote her letter after letter.22 Sonia was led to believe that Rao was deliberately going slow on the investigation into her husband’s death. She suspected he was subtly removing her family from its central position in the Congress. By 1995, she was ready to speak out.

  In May 1995, Narasimha Rao sent for K. Natwar Singh. The PM was a worried man. Sonia Gandhi had been sending him heated letters on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Apart from the criminal probe headed by a special investigation team, the Verma and Jain judicial commissions had been set up to investigate the lapses that led to the killing. Sonia felt these efforts were inadequate. Rao had tried to meet Sonia Gandhi to convince her otherwise. He even suggested installing a special RAX phone at 10 Janpath so he could speak to her on a secure line. After initially agreeing, Mrs Gandhi turned down the idea. “It was like a slap on my face,” Rao told K. Natwar Singh.23

  ‘I can take on Sonia Gandhi. But I do not want to do so. Some of her advisers have been filling her ears against me. I don’t take them seriously. Sonia’s case is different. Her attitude towards me is affecting my health.’24

  When Natwar told Rao that Sonia thought the investigation into Rajiv’s assassination was being delayed, Rao snapped. Natwar remembers Rao saying that ‘he had sent P. Chidambaram to her with the necessary papers. He had also sent Home Minister S.B. Chavan to brief her . . . he said he himself had gone with the necessary files and explained to Mrs Gandhi the legal difficulties in hastening the trial. According to him, she had listened and said nothing.’25

  That Rao took Sonia Gandhi’s charge seriously is proved by a note that the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation sent Narasimha Rao on 22 May 1995. The note is titled, ‘Comparative study of the assassination of Smt. Indira Gandhi and Shri Rajiv Gandhi’. It points out that despite Rajiv’s assassination being much harder to solve, progress on the case, in terms of chargesheets filed and suspects arrested, was far better.

  Sonia Gandhi remained unconvinced. On 20 August 1995, she gave a speech in Amethi, her dead husband’s constituency. ‘You can understand my anguish,’ she told the assembled crowd of 10,000. ‘My husband has been dead for four years and three months, but the inquiry into his assassination is moving at such a slow pace.’26 She tellingly added that a ‘vacuum’ in leadership had developed since her husband’s death.27 It was her first political rally, and the crowd responded with cries of ‘Remove Rao, bring in Sonia.’28

  Was there any truth to the accusations against Rao? Satish Sharma dismisses the charges. ‘The Jain commission and Verma commission were well implemented,’ he says. ‘[Her advisors] were poisoning Sonia’s mind against Rao.’29 One of the senior-most policemen at the time—who is also close to Sonia—says that the charges are ‘ridiculous’. ‘It was all done by Arjun Singh. I think the entire discord between him and Sonia was because of Arjun Singh. He is the chief villain.’

  Meanwhile, the Congress formally split, with N.D. Tiwari, Arjun Singh, K. Natwar Singh and Sheila Dixit forming a new party. ‘The Congress Tiwari faction was Sonia’s creation,’ a Rao supporter alleges. ‘She wanted the rest of Congress to migrate there, and then kick out Rao.’ In her book on female Indian politicians, Kalyani Shankar says that Sheila Dixit put it slightly differently. ‘Those days Sonia used to keep very quiet. She was a wonderful listener. She understood everything but spoke very little. I can’t say she was the one who had given the signal to break away. She never said anything to me, but these people claimed they had her blessings. I had no reason to believe that I should check the facts.’30 K. Natwar Singh agrees with Sheila Dixit. ‘Sonia never gave any express support.’31

  Rumours swirled that Sonia Gandhi had asked Narasimha Rao for his resignation. Around this time, there was an iftar party in Delhi’s Hyderabad House. Rao’s astrologer N.K. Sharma was invited. Sonia walked in and stood quietly in a corner, unwilling to engage with anyone. Sharma says he walked up to her and asked, ‘Do you want Rao’s resignation.’ ‘No, no, who asked you?’ Mrs Gandhi replied, ‘Please continue supporting Mr Narasimha Rao.’32

  When Sharma reported back to the prime minister, he was not believed. Rao was paranoid that Sonia Gandhi was plotting a coup. Subramanian Swamy claims that Rao began collecting material on Sonia, especially her citizenship documents.33 There is no way to confirm this, and Rao’s private papers contain no evidence to support this assertion. What they do contain is a booklet published on 21 May 1995 by one Brahm Dutt Tiwari. The booklet is titled Vatican-Teresa-Sonia’ and argues that Sonia is part of a Catholic conspiracy to destroy India.

  At around the same time, Rao was provided a curious note by the intelligence bureau. It provided a list of twenty-one aspirants who wanted to become ministers, as well as the names of nine party leaders. Next to the names are details of the person’s ‘state’, ‘caste’, ‘age’, ‘loyalty’, and ‘comments’. Under the heading ‘loyalty’, there are two categories, ‘pro-High Command’ [i.e. pro-Rao] and ‘pro-10 Janpath’ [i.e. pro-Sonia].

  For example, next to ‘M.S. Aiyar’, it is written: ‘tamil nadu, brahmin, 52, pro-10 janpath, was critical of handling of the Ayodhya Issue by the PM. Took care of party interests in JPC on Bank scam.’ Next to ‘Pawan Bansal’, it is written, ‘chandigarh, bania, 47, pro-high command, enjoys good reputation for character and integrity.’ Next to ‘Smt. Margaret Alva’, it is written, ‘Karnataka, christian, 53, pro-high command, political lightweight. Could be dropped if adjusted suitably in the organisation other-wise christians of Karnataka may react adversely.’

  The note ends with a list of leaders to be considered for ‘appointment to organisational posts’. Topping the list is ‘Sharad Pawar’, who is ‘Maharashtra, maratha, 54, doubtful, a good organiser and influential leader. Does not enjoy good reputation for integrity. Could prove useful.’

  Rao had used the IB before to further economic reforms. He was now using it to keep tabs on support for Sonia Gandhi within the party. By late 1995, Rao had become wary of Sonia, very wary.

  Around this time, Gopalkrishna Gandhi was heading the Nehru Centre in London. One evening, he was told that Narasimha Rao wanted him to serve as high commissioner to South Africa—an unusual honour for an IAS officer. Gopalkrishna Gandhi—the man whom Rao had called just hours after Rajiv died in 1991—was the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari. He represented a lineage that was even more central to the freedom struggle than that of the Nehru-Gandhis.

  ‘I do not think that the political significance of that was lost on Narasimha Rao,’ Gopalkrishna Gandhi recalls. ‘This was the first time a member of the family with a political heritage which is very different from the Nehru-Gandhi family was being honoured.’34 Years later, in 2004, when Gandhi was appointed governor of West Bengal, an ailing Rao sent a message of delight through the loyal Khandekar: ‘I think he had some political ambitions for me. It is possible that he was trying to wean off the Congress from the Nehru-Gandhi family.’35

  Despite his private misgivings about Sonia, Narasimha Rao was careful to maintain a public façade of respect. They met at least four times at public functions in the last months of 1995. Each time, Rao greeted Mrs Gandhi with the appearance of regard. On 23 November, he even drove to 10 Janpath—breaking a tradition he had ended two years ago—for a twenty-minute meeting.36 Though the visit was ostensibly to invite Sonia to his granddaughter’s wedding, it was actually to neutralize disgruntled Congressmen such as ‘Sharad Pawar, K. Karunakaran, Rajesh Pilot, Ahmed Patel, Balram Jakhar’ who ‘want[ed] to rope in Sonia Gandhi to force Rao to step down from party presidentship’.37 On 9 December 1995, Rao sent a letter to Mrs Gandhi on her birthday, wishing her ‘success in all your endeavours to fulfil Rajivji’s dreams’. She replied two days later, on a simple thick white paper. A perfunctory sentence of thanks.

  The national elections were scheduled for May 1996. As we saw in the last chapter, Narasimha Rao rea
lized the importance of winning Tamil Nadu. Electoral logic dictated that the Congress tie up with the popular DMK, which was expected to sweep the state. But, in Prabhakara Rao’s words, ‘A case was being built up [by his enemies in the Congress] that Rao was trying to support the people who killed Rajiv Gandhi.’38 It is a sign of how sensitive Rao was to this charge that he sided with the unpopular AIADMK instead of the DMK. ‘He would have come back to power in 1996,’ P.V.R.K. Prasad says, ‘but he chose to follow his principles. It cost him.’39

  In his five years as prime minister, Rao had kowtowed to Sonia Gandhi, yet never altered government policy to please her. Even when their relationship deteriorated after 1993, prime minister Rao discarded Rajiv’s associates and contemplated sidelining Sonia, but he did not publicly challenge her. He had imagined a Congress without the Nehru-Gandhi family, but had never fully acted on his imagination. Unlike chief minister Rao’s misreading of Indira in the 1970s, prime minister Rao had simultaneously played both lion and mouse with Sonia.

  Rao was less successful in managing his post-prime ministerial relationship with her. When Rao presided over his party’s worst-ever (at the time) result in the 1996 national election, his partymen began to look back towards the Nehru-Gandhis to rescue them. When Sonia Gandhi became Congress president in 1998, Rao’s enemies also returned. Narasimha Rao was not given a ticket to contest the 1999 elections. As he lay ill in his house on 9 Motilal Nehru Marg, few Congressmen came visiting, terrified of what ‘Madam’ would say.

  Worried that Rao’s legacy would compete with her family’s within the party pantheon, Rao was not cremated in Delhi, his body not allowed to enter the Congress headquarters. Egged on by Sonia’s advisors, Rao was even erased from official Congress history. The party version of the history of economic reforms does not mention the name of the man who did it.40

  Sonia Gandhi’s relationship with Rao was therefore complex. She suspected that Rao had made attempts—however feeble—to fashion a Congress without the Nehru-Gandhis. This view was intensified by those around her, who deserve much blame for ruining Rao’s relationship with Sonia Gandhi. For all her anger towards him, however, Sonia Gandhi was too apolitical in those early years after her husband’s death to interfere with the policies of his government. It was only after Rao’s premiership that she began dismantling his legacy.

  While maintaining the veneer of civility, Mrs Gandhi made it known that Rao was persona non grata, Latin for ‘unwelcome person’. The party to which Rao devoted six decades of his life heard the message loud and clear. He remained unwelcome since.

  12

  The Fall of Babri Masjid

  6 December 1992. Narasimha Rao woke up at 7 a.m., later than usual since it was a Sunday. He read the day’s newspapers. The Times of India reported that more than ‘2.25 lakh VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad] volunteers are poised to’ perform prayers right next to the Babri Masjid. The article quoted the VHP spokesman promise that ‘volunteers would not violate the court orders’.1

  The prime minister then spent thirty minutes walking on a specially installed treadmill. His personal physician, K. Srinath Reddy, arrived soon after. They chatted in Telugu and English, while Reddy took samples of Rao’s blood and urine.2

  Since it was a Sunday, Reddy, a cardiologist at AIIMS hospital, spent the rest of the day at home with his family. At around noon, he switched on the television. Channels showed calm in Ayodhya—the three domes of Babri Masjid visible. At 12.20 p.m., Reddy saw live on television, the assault on the first dome by thousands of Hindu activists. By 1.55 p.m., the first dome had collapsed. Reddy watched, numb. His father, K.V. Raghunatha Reddy, was an inveterate socialist, and this had rubbed off on the son. Reddy remembers, ‘It was the worst day for Indian secularism.’

  Almost immediately after, Reddy thought to himself, ‘The prime minister is a heart patient. How will he be feeling?’ A bypass surgery in 1990 had nearly caused Rao to retire from politics.

  Reddy rushed to the prime minister’s office. Rao was standing when he entered, a gaggle of officials and politicians around him. They were all staring at the television. The third dome of the mosque had just fallen. ‘Why have you come now?’ Rao angrily asked Reddy. But the doctor insisted that his patient be examined. Rao moved to a small anteroom. ‘His mind was elsewhere,’ Reddy remembers, ‘but he was an obedient patient.’

  Srinath Reddy checked the prime minister’s pulse and blood pressure. ‘As I expected, his heart was racing away . . . pulse was very fast . . . BP had risen. His face was glowering red, he was agitated.’ Dr Reddy gave Rao an extra dose of beta blocker, and left only when the PM had visibly calmed.

  Twenty-three years later, Reddy recalls Rao’s physical state: ‘I am fairly convinced as a doctor that his personal reaction to the demolition was one of honest agitation. It is not that of a person who would have planned it or been complicit in it.’

  ‘The body does not lie.’

  The Babri mosque was built in 1528 by a courtier of the Mughal emperor Babur, who named it after his overlord. It was located in the north Indian town of Ayodhya, revered in Hindu tradition as the city where the god Ram was born.3 The three-domed mosque was housed in an inner compound, while the outer compound contained smaller buildings, including two Hindu structures of worship.4 Since at least the nineteenth century, there are records of religious violence around the mosque—which local Hindu groups claimed was built atop the remains of a temple commemorating the birthplace of Ram.5

  In 1885, the dispute entered the courts, with a local Hindu priest demanding that a temple be built in the outer courtyard, adjacent to the Babri mosque. The colonial administration dismissed the suit, worried that a temple built so close to the mosque would threaten the peace.6 In 1949, soon after Indian Independence, idols were surreptitiously installed inside the mosque by Hindus.7 Afraid of sparking a riot, the Congress-run administration did not remove the idols,8 and a local judge permitted Hindu pilgrims to enter the compound and pray. The judge, however, banned pilgrims from approaching the idols, which could be worshipped only through locked gates.9 Here the matter rested for forty years.

  Ayodhya is located in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state. With the highest number of Lok Sabha seats, the path to power in Delhi traditionally passed through this state. The Congress party had dominated UP (and north India more generally) through a rainbow coalition of upper-caste Hindus, Muslims and Dalits. By the 1980s, however, these groups were looking elsewhere. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Janata Dal was attracting the state’s 18 per cent Muslims, while the recently formed Bharatiya Janata Party was wooing upper- and backward-caste Hindus. The BJP campaigned on Hindu victimhood from centuries of Muslim domination. For them, no symbol captured this better than Babri Masjid. In 1984, the VHP, working with the BJP, began a movement to demolish the mosque and build a temple in its place.10 The mosque was now a symbol of India’s commitment to constitutional pluralism.

  The Congress under prime minister Rajiv Gandhi could have responded by harking back to secular principle. It did not. As we saw in an earlier chapter, Rajiv catered to both Muslim and Hindu extremism in a bid to protect his electoral majority. He overturned the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court; he also banned Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Rajiv simultaneously sought to out-Hindu the VHP by ensuring that Babri Masjid was ‘unlocked’ for Hindu prayer in 1986. Three years later, he allowed a symbolic foundation ceremony for a temple right next to the Babri mosque.11

  Rajiv’s competitive communalism did not bring his party electoral dividends. The Congress lost power in UP in 1989, with the state’s Muslims voting for Mulayam Singh Yadav. In the national elections held at the same time, Rajiv was dethroned, and the BJP’s tally jumped from two seats to eighty-five. Sensing the wind behind his back, the BJP’s L.K. Advani launched a new political campaign. He rode through north India on a van decked like a chariot, whipping up support for a Ram temple at Ayodhya. It polarized Hindus and Muslims as never before.

 
; In October 1990, Hindu activists attempted to take over the mosque. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had come to power with Muslim votes, ordered the police to open fire. As per the Constitution, the police and Central forces reported directly to the chief minister. They followed his orders. Sixteen activists died, and the mosque remained standing. Determined to protect the Babri Masjid at any cost, Mulayam swore, ‘Yahan parinda bhi par nahin maar sakta.’ (‘Even a bird cannot flutter its wings here.’)12

  As Mulayam would later admit, the firing may have protected the mosque, but it cost him Hindu votes.13 State elections were held in Uttar Pradesh a year later. The BJP campaigned on two issues: the demolition of the Babri mosque (and the ‘martyrdom’ of the Hindu activists) and the wooing of backward-caste Hindus. It swept the elections, easily winning more than half the seats.14 Kalyan Singh became the new chief minister. Singh was a backward-caste leader who was involved in the Ayodhya agitation. The BJP also did well in the national elections held at the same time. The new prime minister, says Ramu Damodaran, ‘knew and respected the fact that the BJP had risen so quickly. He could not ignore them.’15

  Narasimha Rao’s own solution to the Babri dispute was straightforward: both religious groups should negotiate and build a temple near the mosque, while leaving the mosque intact. If no agreement could be reached, the decision of the courts would be final.16 While Muslim groups seemed agreeable to this eventuality, the BJP and its allies did not think this was a matter for the courts, and wanted the temple built atop the destroyed mosque, not near it.

  The BJP’s victory in the UP state elections was especially vexing for Narasimha Rao. The Indian Constitution lists some powers that are exclusively the province of the state, one of them being ‘law and order’. This meant that the police protecting the Babri mosque were constitutionally required to report to the UP chief minister only, not the prime minister. Even Central troops sent to the state would have to report to the state government. The Constitution provided only one exception to this. Article 356 dealt with ‘provisions in case of failure of constitutional machinery in State’. It permitted the prime minister to dismiss a state government and impose ‘President’s rule’ if ‘a situation has arisen in which the government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with . . . this Constitution.’17 This had been used many times before,18 but by 1992, Article 356 was being criticised by non-Congress parties as a tool through which the Congress perpetuated its dominance over the states.