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

by Vinay Sitapati

  When India began to liberalize in 1991, the US and Europe were expected to provide the much-needed capital for industrialization. Rao’s ‘Look East’ policy led countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Korea to provide money, cars, and expertise to the Indian economy. As of 2015, Singapore was the top destination for foreign direct investment entering India.53

  It was not just this capital that Rao found in East Asia; it was also an alternative economic model. East Asian growth had been based not on free-market policies, but on what the Princeton political scientist Atul Kohli calls ‘state-directed capitalism’, i.e. the government assisting big business houses to achieve growth.54 Rao—who had been a fervent believer in the redemptive power of the state for much of his career—was instinctively attracted to this aspect of the model.

  He was less attracted to another facet. On a visit to Indonesia, Rao sent his secretary, P.V.R.K. Prasad, to have a vegetarian lunch with Mohan Lal Mittal, father of steel baron Lakshmi Mittal. Mittal told Prasad, ‘In these countries, we have an understanding with the political boss, and everything falls in line. In India, just because the PM is saying something, does not mean the rest will agree.’ When Prasad relayed this gripe back to the prime minister, Rao shrugged. ‘This is the price of democracy.’55

  Of all the foreign policy hurdles that Rao faced, the tallest was unquestionably Pakistan. This was not unique to his premiership. As he said to Parliament a few months after he became prime minister, ‘Every time there is a change either in Pakistan or India, there is a sense of euphoria created, some new hopes are aroused. But subsequently these hopes are dashed to the ground. My own experience during the last three months has been more or less the same.’56

  Rao’s solution was to keep the conversation flowing while never taking Pakistan at its word. As Ramu Damodaran says, ‘On Pakistan, Rao felt that one-on-one talks were critical. He always persisted. Despite his deep cynicism that anything can happen.’57 Narasimha Rao met his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, six times in his first two years in office. He even met the Pakistani President and conversed in chaste Urdu.58 Little was achieved, but the finest Urdu speaker in all of the Nizam’s Hyderabad was probably the better of the two.

  One such set of seemingly pointless conversations almost led to a breakthrough. Siachen is the world’s highest, most inhospitable battlefield—a freezing glacier along the Line of Control. It has little military value. But so low is the trust between these two countries, that between 1984 and 2014, 2700 Indian and Pakistani troops died trying to secure the glacier. India pays the heavier cost, around a million dollars a day. One former military officer estimates that this amount could have been used instead to provide clean water and electricity to half the country.59

  Between 2 and 6 November 1992, the sixth round of talks on the Siachen Glacier was held in New Delhi. The Indian side was led by N.N. Vohra, the defence secretary, who would eventually become governor of Jammu and Kashmir. In the draft agreement, Pakistan agreed to India’s demand to mark the existing positions—in India’s favour—before recording demilitarization. In N.N. Vohra’s words, ‘We had finalised the text of an agreement . . . by around 10 pm on the last day . . . . Signing was set for 10 am [the next day].’60

  Through the negotiations, Narasimha Rao’s office on Raisina Hill was crowded with olive-green military uniforms and dark lounge suits. When the room cleared for a break, Rao remained seated on his desk, pondering alone. When his joint secretary, the diplomat Prabhakar Menon, entered to get a file cleared, Rao looked up and said, ‘This is serious. Tell them to be absolutely sure.’61

  Rao decided to walk away. He was aware that concessions to Pakistan could be exploited by the opposition BJP. Rao’s gut also told him that ‘Pakistan were pulling a fast one.’62 N.N. Vohra remembers, ‘. . . later that night, instructions were given to me not to go ahead the next day . . .’63

  There have been many attempts since to reach a deal on Siachen, but with no success. India continues to bleed money and personnel. In 1999, Pakistan did to another part of Kashmir what Rao was afraid they would do to Siachen. Pakistani troops took control of the uninhabited Kargil mountains on the Indian side of the Line of Control. India had to go to war to wrest back the territory. Rao’s instinct—that the Pakistanis could not be trusted to keep their side of any bargain—turned out to be true.

  Matters with Pakistan flared up again two years later. Pakistan had exploited popular resentment against the rigged Kashmir state elections of 1987 to fuel unrest, mainly by training militants and sending them across the border. The increase in terrorist violence—and the ensuing human rights abuses by the Indian Army—gave Pakistan the excuse to corner India in various international fora. In the spring of 1994, Pakistan sponsored a resolution on Kashmir at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Had the resolution gone in Pakistan’s favour, political parties would have pilloried Rao for presiding over India’s international disgrace.

  Rao decided to send a heavyweight delegation to Geneva: his minister of state for external affairs, Salman Khurshid; and the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee. ‘It was Rao’s decision to send Atal Bihari Vajpayee,’ Salman Khurshid says. He speculates that Rao might have asked Bhuvanesh Chaturvedi—who was close to Vajpayee—to convey the message. ‘And to his credit, Vajpayee agreed.’64

  Just before the vote in March 1994, the Indian foreign secretary, Krishnan Srinivasan, estimated that seven countries would side with India and four with Pakistan, with the rest abstaining. Srinivasan remembers that ‘Narasimha Rao became very shaky.’ ‘Was there some other way out?’ he asked. Running a minority government, Rao was terrified that a loss in Geneva would result in his loss in Delhi. When Srinivasan assured him that the numbers were on the Indian side, ‘he looked dubious, but mercifully allowed matters to take their own course’.65

  Srinivasan’s estimate turned out to be accurate. Afraid that they would lose, Pakistan took back its resolution. India Today magazine put on its cover a jubilant Atal Bihari Vajpayee hugging Salman Khurshid.66 When the Muslim Congressman and Hindu BJP-wallah returned to Delhi airport, they were greeted by a cheering crowd.

  At the end of that very month, March 1994, a summit of the G-15 developing countries was held in Hyderabad House—the Nizam’s Delhi palace which had since become the state guest house of the prime minister. More than a dozen heads of state and foreign ministers shared ideas about the ways of the world. It was boring, even by the standards of these summits. Two Indian journalists were invited for the post-summit banquet. They were Sanjaya Baru, now with the Times of India, and the Hindustan Times’s Kalyani Shankar. Rao had also invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his friend and political rival, to express gratitude for Geneva.

  After the day-long session, just before the banquet, the guests were shepherded into a long anteroom for a glass of sherbet and kokum juice—since the prim Indians had decided not to serve alcohol. Sanjaya Baru, formally dressed, entered this anteroom and surveyed the scene.67 At one end of the room, Rao and other world leaders sat drinking kokum juice.

  At the other, journalists and officials formed a congregation. Baru moved towards this group, only to see Kalyani Shankar in animated conversation with Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He joined the two of them, but his eyes continued to scan the room. He noticed the prime minister of India staring at them.

  The prime minister then got up, and made his way towards them. He walked towards Vajpayee, still in animated discussion with Kalyani Shankar, and put his arm on Vajpayee’s shoulder. ‘Kya ho raha hai?’ Rao asked in a mock-gruff manner. (‘What is happening?’)

  Vajpayee replied, to ensuing laughter, ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

  Two months after, in May 1994, Narasimha Rao journeyed to the United States. He had first travelled to the U.S. in 1974—also his first trip abroad—to visit his daughter Saraswathi. As we saw in an early chapter on his years in exile, that trip had exposed the Andhra socialist to the virtues of American capitalism.

  At the time
, India and the United States were on opposite sides of the Cold War divide. India was close to the Soviet Union, while Pakistan had gravitated to the United States. By the 1980s, however, Indian foreign policy was taking baby steps towards the US.68 Now, as prime minister, Narasimha Rao was determined to leap forward. In anticipation of his visit, the New York Times gushingly described Rao as the ‘Deng Xiaoping of India’.69

  Krishnan Srinivasan remembers that Rao ‘was unsure of himself, [and] perhaps felt inadequate to handle President Clinton’.70 Srinivasan describes the core conundrum for Rao: ‘[He] had to steer a deft course between nationalist aspirations in the security field and the need to keep the USA in friendly and positive play.’71

  Narasimha Rao flew to Washington, D.C., on board Air India One. He took along the AIIMS cardiologist Srinath Reddy. Reddy remembers watching Rao prepare on the plane. ‘He was like a nervous student when he went to US. He would write and rewrite and correct his speeches in the plane. He was eager to impress. The cool aplomb that he had was missing. This was different from even other foreign visits.’72

  Rao was scheduled for a fifteen-minute meeting with US President Bill Clinton. He read the official briefs, and deeming them inadequate, scribbled his own notes in red ink.73 Rao was worried that Clinton, with a famously low attention span, was not a good listener.

  There are varying versions of the actual meeting. Krishnan Srinivasan was ‘reliably told’ that Rao played the didactic intellectual, giving Clinton a windy and boring philosophical monologue.74 There is some evidence for this. Clinton was strangely quiet after the talks. Photographs taken immediately after, show both looking pensive. Rao’s son Rajeshwara, however, has an upbeat interpretation. ‘When he went to meet Bill Clinton, [the] appointment was given only for fifteen minutes. But he came out in one and half hours. [Clinton] became fan of father.’75

  Narasimha Rao was keen to meet CEOs of top American companies. He asked the Indian embassy in Washington to fix appointments. But the embassy, used to four decades of shunning capitalists, did not have the contacts. Rao turned to a man with even more connections in the US than his own diplomats. The tantrik Chandraswami had a network of American devotees, from CEOs to senators. Rao’s secretary—and conduit to the corporate world—P.V.R.K. Prasad remembers Chandraswami putting up an impressive performance in arranging meetings.76 Rao was able to sell India one-on-one to a host of corporates.

  As a young man, Rao had dreamt of an academic career at Oxford. During his earlier visits to the US, he would vicariously live that dream, touring universities and debating with the academics Ralph Buultjens at New York University and Velcheru Narayana Rao at Wisconsin. Now visiting as prime minister, Rao spoke at Harvard University. He asked America to move beyond the Berlin Wall. ‘The days of celebrating the demise of a system are over . . . But Cold War attitudes persist.’77 He also laid out his economic vision. ‘We have now assigned a large portion of infrastructure investment to private enterprise on a global scale, while the government takes on the bulk of the responsibility for investment in human resources, as also for rural development in general.’78

  Rao returned home to a cool reception. The media complained that Rao had come back with nothing concrete. They had missed the point of the trip: to introduce predictable routine into a historically fraught relationship. His focus on trade made it clear that Rao expected a long-term relationship, as did the symbolism of inviting Bill Clinton to be the chief guest for the next Republic Day parade in Delhi. While that President declined, another US President finally agreed, in 2015, to sit for hours in pouring rain as camels and cannons were paraded on Rajpath. It is a measure of how far the relationship has come.

  Two months after his trip to the United States, Rao travelled West again, this time to Russia. The diplomats who organized the trip insist the timing was coincidental. It was surely propitious, then, that the great balancer was visiting Moscow so soon after Washington, D.C.

  At the top of his agenda was defence. By late 1991, chaos in the former Soviet Union made spare parts and product support for the Indian Army hard to come by.79 So seriously did Narasimha Rao take this that he appointed Ronen Sen, a relatively junior diplomat, as ambassador to Russia.80

  Sen had served before in Moscow at a lower rank. He had a background in defence, had worked in the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and had been involved in the early stages of India’s nuclear programme. Sen was also close to Rao. He had kept him company in April 1991 when Rajiv Gandhi had denied Rao a Lok Sabha ticket. Rao and Ronen Sen would engage in long discussions on Russian writers—the romantic poet Alexander Pushkin being a Rao favourite. Sen also placed an undiplomatic emphasis on action and delivery, making him the ideal man to ‘fix’ India’s problems with the Russians. By the time Rao visited Moscow in 1994, India’s supply chain was oiled, and Rao was able to sign new agreements. The former head of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Dr V.S. Arunachalam, accompanied him to Moscow. Arunachalam remembers the prime minister asking him, ‘How does the MIG 29 [plane] versus Mirage 2000 work?’81

  Even as Rao emphasized defence ties, he was sending a deeper message. He told his officials, ‘Never forget what the Indo-Soviet relationship was like, and how much we gained from it. We should never be ungrateful. You don’t forget friends when they are less powerful or less influential or anything like that. You have to stand by them.’82

  Rao’s balancing act extended not just between the US and Russia, but also within the old Soviet Union. He was quick to accord diplomatic recognition to the new countries of Eastern Europe. As of 2015, India is one of the few countries with vibrant links to the United States, Russia, as well as Eastern Europe.

  Rao’s realistic assessment of shifting power was evident in his outreach to the US, Israel and East Asia. The border agreement with China showed a prime minister who had learnt—perhaps from his own domestic weakness—to set aside unresolvable conflicts and focus on common interests. This pragmatism was also visible in Rao’s simultaneous suspicion of Pakistani intentions while keeping the conversation flowing.

  Indian foreign policy since Rao has continued to move away from Nehruvian idealism to a more ‘realist’ and ‘pragmatic’ pursuit of national self-interest. India increasingly sees itself as a rising power that must shape its external environment rather than a non-aligned country seeking mere strategic autonomy within the international system.83 These realist ideas were first visible in the 1980s. But—like with the economy—it was Rao who translated them into actual policy.

  Rao did not advertise these policies as anything new. As a politically weak prime minister, he strategically—shall we say, pragmatically—defended them as mere extensions of Nehruvian idealism.84 In retirement, Rao met the strategic affairs expert C. Raja Mohan on several occasions. Raja Mohan was at the time writing a book on the ‘realpolitik’ shift in Indian foreign relations since the 1990s. ‘How are you saying all this?’ Rao asked him.85 He did not want his foreign policy to be seen as a break from the past.

  There is a sense in which he was right. Rao ensured that in making new friends, India did not abandon old ones. ‘What was important to Rao was to demonstrate continuity,’ Salman Haidar says. ‘Of course it was conscious.’86

  Rao also strived for bipartisanship. He reached out to the BJP’s L.K. Advani before his visit to Iran, and sent Vajpayee to battle Pakistan in Geneva. The usually reticent prime minister also took care to brief Parliament on his foreign visits. This statesmanship has contributed to the political consensus on international relations since his tenure. As Raja Mohan says, ‘After Rao, every possible ideological combination has held power in Delhi. Yet there has been broad continuity in foreign policy.’87

  Narasimha Rao knew more about international relations than many diplomats, certainly more than most Indian politicians. In his archives is correspondence with various scholars abroad. Prime among them was Ralph Buultjens, from New York University. In an undated handwritten letter, Buultjens wrote,
‘I enclose a review of Brzezinski’s new book—The Grand Chessboard . . . I am sending the book itself to Kalyani [Shankar], who will give it to you.’88

  This independent knowledge of international affairs taught Narasimha Rao to parlay on equal terms with his diplomats—his note exchange with the former ambassador to China about Li Peng being just one example. If Rao’s success with the economy (something he knew nothing about before becoming prime minister) can be attributed to raw instinct, his success on foreign policy was due to cultivated expertise.

  Rao’s foreign travels were notable for the cultivation of both businessmen and Indologists. In that sense, he was a pioneer in economic as well as cultural diplomacy. At times, though, he misread his audience. ‘Rao was a bit unpredictable,’ Krishnan Srinivasan says. ‘He could give long lectures to foreigners, with a historical or philosophical basis. Sometimes they were not appreciated.’89

  The country that Rao inherited had a foreign policy nearing a crisis. India emerged from the Rao years with new global alliances as well as economic muscle. The one remaining hurdle to improved status in the world was India’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. With the end of the Soviet Union, there was renewed pressure on India to cap its nuclear programme. In need of western support for his economic reforms, Rao could not disregard this pressure. Nor would national security compulsions allow him to abandon nuclear weapons. How Narasimha Rao navigated these contradictions is central to India’s place in the world today.

  14

  Going Nuclear

  Two days after Narasimha Rao’s body was cremated in 2004, an emotional Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid his old friend a startling tribute. Rao was ‘true father’ of India’s nuclear programme. Vajpayee said that, in May 1996, a few days after he had succeeded Rao as prime minister, ‘Rao told me that the bomb was ready. I only exploded it.’1