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

by Vinay Sitapati

  Around 12 December, Naresh Chandra rushed to Delhi. Rao had given his consent at T-7 and the bomb was being lowered into the L-shaped hole by a division of the army that did not exist on paper. The division had been trained to constantly dig around the area so that when this day arrived, satellites would not pick up anything different. Even so, one member of the secret committee wonders (and this person insists on calling it mere speculation): was the digging around the L-shaped hole a little more than necessary?

  On the morning of 15 December 1995, the New York Times ran a sensational story. ‘In recent weeks, spy satellites have recorded scientific and technical activity at the Pok[h]ran test site in the Rajasthan desert.’27 The story quoted US government officials telling The Times that American intelligence experts suspected India was preparing for its first nuclear test since 1974.

  A few days after the leaked story, the American ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, sought a meeting with Rao’s principal secretary, Amar Nath Varma. Wisner walked into the PMO carrying photographs taken from American satellites.28 Varma told Wisner he had no idea what he was talking about. He asked Wisner if he could keep the photographs and show them to the scientists. Wisner quickly hugged the photographs. ‘These are part of my body,’ he is reported to have angrily said. ‘The only way you can take the photographs is if you take me along.’29

  On 19 December 1995—the day the nuclear tests had been originally scheduled—the Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee (who was not in the loop on the nuclear tests) was asked by Rao to make a statement of denial. The Americans were not satisfied. That same day, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, sent a message to New Delhi. He wanted to speak to the prime minister. Narasimha Rao asked his closest nuclear confidant to prep him on possible questions from Clinton.

  The call came in the morning to Rao’s office in the PMO, sometime around 21 December. ‘I want to tell you about progress in the CTBT negotiations,’ Clinton began. After speaking in generalities for a couple of minutes, Clinton moved sideways. ‘We are happy to note a clear statement by your foreign minister that the government of India is not testing.’ Rao replied as planned, ‘I saw the press clippings too. They are false.’ ‘But Mr Prime Minister,’ Clinton interjected, ‘what is this that our cameras have picked up?’ Rao replied, again as planned. ‘This is only a routine maintenance of facilities.’ Rao then added, slowly, so that Clinton could understand him through his Indian accent.

  ‘There is right now no plan to explode. But yes, we are ready. We have the capability.’

  The nuclear tests should have been conducted on 19 December. It is not known when Rao stopped it—at T-3 or T-1. But here the matter rested until a few days after the Clinton phone call.

  On 25 December 1995, a secret letter was delivered to Rao asking him to delay testing for four weeks, to keep the US at bay. It went on to suggest that by early February 1996, India should conduct two to three nuclear tests. The note ended by quoting K. Subrahmanyam: ‘India’s voice on nuclear disarmament is not heeded because it is like an elderly spinster espousing the virtues of chastity.’

  Narasimha Rao ordered the bomb to be removed from the L-shaped shaft. Yet—contrary to the public narrative—he was far from done.

  On 14 January 1996, Abdul Kalam wrote to Rao urging him to boycott the ongoing CTBT negotiations and test nuclear weapons as soon as possible. The note was prepared in consultation with other members of the secret nuclear committee. At 11 a.m. on 19 January 1996, Rao’s appointment diary shows that he met with his principal secretary, as well as his foreign, atomic energy and defence secretaries to ‘consider our stand on CTBT’.30 A month later, Rao asked the finance ministry to prepare yet another analysis of the economic effects of a nuclear test.

  In late March, Rao received a second call from Bill Clinton. The US President once again urged Rao to desist from testing. It is not known what exactly Clinton said. But the very fact of the call is more evidence that Rao was actively considering testing nuclear weapons in March 1996.

  National elections were scheduled for May 1996, and Rao spent the next two months campaigning. On 8 May at 9 p.m., Abdul Kalam was asked to immediately meet with the prime minister. Rao told him, ‘Kalam, be ready with the Department of Atomic Energy and your team for the N-test and I am going to Tirupati. You wait for my authorisation to go ahead with the test. DRDO-DAE teams must be ready for action.’31

  Two days later, the election results were announced. Kalam recalls that Rao ordered him not to test, since ‘the election result was quite different from what he anticipated’.32

  The BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee took over as prime minister on 16 May 1996. Narasimha Rao, Abdul Kalam and R. Chidambaram went to meet the new prime minister ‘so that’, in Kalam’s telling, ‘the smooth takeover of such a very important programme can take place’.33 Vajpayee’s revelations of 2004 make clear what was discussed. Immediately afterwards, Vajpayee ordered nuclear tests, but rescinded that order when it was clear that his government would not last. In 1998, back as prime minister for the second time, Vajpayee was able to finally ‘go ahead’ and explode.

  The evidence is overwhelming that Narasimha Rao gave the ‘T-30’ order to test nuclear weapons in late November 1995. Rao involved a large number of people in assessing the consequences, an unusual step for a man as secretive as he was. He knew that American satellites were hovering above Pokhran. They were nonetheless able to detect activity that indicated testing was imminent. US pressure followed, and Rao cancelled the tests.

  It is also clear that India did not have a hydrogen or thermonuclear device in December 1995. A member of the nuclear committee confirms, ‘[This] became ready only by around March 1996.’ Between April and May 96, Rao considered testing again. He backed off when he realized that he had lost the national elections.

  Given that this is what we know, what can we deduce about Rao’s intentions? Only three theories fit the known facts.

  The first is that Rao had decided to test nuclear weapons in December 1995. But the American satellites caught on, and under pressure from the US, Rao chose to postpone testing. This is the explanation favoured by nuclear expert George Perkovich in his book on India’s programme.34 This theory, however, does not explain why Rao decided to test again only a few months later. American pressure—and sanctions—would not have varied significantly between December 1995 and April 1996.

  The second theory is that Rao never intended to test in December 1995, and the Americans were mistaken. ‘The truth is that Rao never cleared the tests,’ the journalist Raj Chengappa says in his superbly sourced book on the nuclear programme.35 This, however, leaves unexplained why Rao gave the order all the way till ‘T-7’ in December 1995, and why he wanted to test again four months later. What game was Rao playing?

  A third, more sensational, theory attempts an answer. Rao knew he had only one chance to test before sanctions kicked in, i.e. he could not both test conventional atomic bombs in December 1995 as well as the hydrogen bomb separately in April 1996. As Shekhar Gupta—who has had unprecedented access to Rao as well as the nuclear team—speculates: ‘By late 1995, Rao’s scientists told him that they needed six more months. They could test some weapons but not others . . . thermonuclear etc. So Rao began a charade of taking preliminary steps to test, without intending to test then.’36 He then deliberately leaked the information on the tests—by telling many people about it, and ordering observable digging in Pokhran. When the Americans found out—as Rao wanted them to—he ordered the tests to end.

  In doing so, Rao made India’s nuclear capacity clear while CTBT negotiations were ongoing, and gave his scientists breathing space to develop the hydrogen bomb. By April 1996, hydrogen bomb ready, Rao genuinely wanted to test, but decided against it since he had lost the mandate of the people.

  For Rao to have gone ahead with this deception—only a whisker away from treason—there are three people he might have likely told: A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, R. Chidambaram and Nar
esh Chandra. Chidambaram and Chandra were both awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour, by later governments. Kalam was given the Bharat Ratna and made President of India. Did Narasimha Rao tell his successors something about these men that the public does not know?

  Regardless of which of these theories is true, they all point to the fact that far from dithering, Rao was actively involved in the nuclear programme—a trait he also exhibited on the economy, welfare schemes and foreign policy. The portrait that emerges is of a hands-on manager. As Arunachalam puts it, ‘I worked with five prime ministers. I would rate Rao very high. [He] was a rare politician who understood the importance of technology in building national policy.’37

  Rao’s magnanimity in letting Vajpayee revel in the glory of nuclear testing (including of the hydrogen bomb) is telling. As Abdul Kalam said, it ‘reveals the maturity and professional excellence of a patriotic statesman who believed that the nation is bigger than the political system’.38

  When India finally tested nuclear weapons in 1998, western sanctions followed. Yet—as Rao judged—it has not harmed India in the long term (its effects on India’s security is more contested)39. Subsequent prime ministers have also followed Rao in refusing to sign the CTBT and NPT.

  In 2005, US President George W. Bush decided to make an exception to the international non-proliferation regime. Under the Indo-US nuclear deal, India would separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, placing only its civilian facilities under international scrutiny. The US would help with India’s civilian nuclear energy. The deal made India the only country not part of the NPT framework that is still allowed to do nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.

  This deal would have been impossible had not India been both an acknowledged nuclear weapons state as well as an emerging economic power.

  The 1998 nuclear tests—sanctioned by Vajpayee with the help of Narasimha Rao—forced the West to concede that India would never cap its nuclear programme. They could, of course, have treated India as a renegade—as they have Iran, North Korea, and to some extent, Pakistan. But the economic power of post-1991 India—for which Rao gets the lion’s share of the credit—meant that the West could not afford to alienate India. This mix of economic might and an unbending nuclear programme is what has led to new status for India in the international system.

  Seen thus, Narasimha Rao is not just the ‘true father’ of the 1998 nuclear tests. He is also the crafter of a fresh vision for India in the world. This new self-image, at odds with Nehruvian idealism,40 emphasizes economic muscle alongside a conventional military and large nuclear programme. It is a vision not without its critics.41 But for better or for worse, it is likely to be the dominant way in which India sees itself in the years to come.

  15

  Lion, Fox, Mouse

  Narasimha Rao’s end was swift, the fall steep. He was encircled by legal cases almost immediately after he resigned as prime minister in May 1996. On 21 September, a judge summoned Rao as an accused in a corruption case filed by a London-based pickle maker, Lakhubhai Pathak.1 There was every chance that the former prime minister (who was still party president) would be arrested. There were predictable puns about pickles, and newspapers termed it “The beginning of the end for Rao’.2 He decided to resign as Congress president.

  His astrologer, N.K. Sharma, told him that once he stepped down, ‘all these people who are worshipping you, they will start kicking you’. Sharma says that Rao replied, ‘If tomorrow I am arrested, I don’t want the [newspaper] headline to read “Congress president goes to jail”.’3

  It took almost no time for the astrologer’s prediction to come true. When Rao organized a tea party for his Congressmen on 25 September 1996, soon after his resignation as party chief, it had to be cancelled because not a single invitee was willing to attend.4 Years later, unwell and ignored, Rao was visited by Congress leader Salman Khurshid and his wife. ‘You know, Salman,’ Rao said with a pause, ‘I am accused of not taking a decision . . . the only decision I took in a hurry was resigning as Congress president. Look what has happened.’5

  Apart from Lakhubhai Pathak’s allegations, Rao was accused of forgery in the St. Kitts case, of corruption by stockbroker Harshad Mehta, and of conspiring to bribe MPs from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) to vote in his favour in Parliament. He was eventually convicted in one of those cases—the JMM affair—before being acquitted by a higher court. His son Prabhakara was arrested in connection with allegations of irregularity concerning the purchase of urea, before investigating agencies found no evidence against Prabhakara and the charges were dropped. The legal bills mounted, and in urgent need of 23 lakh rupees to pay his lawyers, the former prime minister considered selling his house in Hyderabad.6

  Characteristically, Narasimha Rao turned even this court trauma into a learning experience, making detailed notes on the legal documents, originals of which are still mountain-stacked in his private archives. His lawyer, R.K. Anand, remembered, ‘Rao himself used to study law books. His knowledge was immense.’7Meanwhile, Congressmen had moved on, turning once again to the Nehru-Gandhis to rescue them from political irrelevance. When Sonia Gandhi took over the party in 1998, she was determined to erase Rao from the party pantheon. ‘That man is not a Congressman,’ Rahul Gandhi told a senior Congress leader, ‘because of him we have lost UP forever.’ Rao’s son Rajeshwara complains, ‘I have been waiting for a full decade for a meeting [with Sonia Gandhi]. She refuses.’8

  Sonia also brought back Congressmen who had left the party disgruntled—many of whom Rao had sidelined during his term as prime minister, some of whom he had even wronged. They now sought vengeance.

  Almost no one accompanied the ex-prime minister on his many court appearances. The few who did, like Congress Rajya Sabha MP Satchidananda Swamy, were punished by the party.9 ‘He was a sad man. Only a few Congressmen visited him,’ Swamy remembers. ‘Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and [M.S.] Bitta were some of the few.’10

  Exile was not new for Narasimha Rao. As we saw in this book, he had been banished by Indira Gandhi in 1973 and 1976, and again by Rajiv in 1991. During these breaks from politics, Rao had worked on The Other Half, a fictionalized memoir of his time in Andhra politics. Each re-entry into politics had temporarily halted the writing of the book. Now, free once again, Narasimha Rao finished the book and published it as The Insider, released in 1998 by his friend Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

  The book became famous for lurid descriptions of sex by an ageing former prime minister. But when first sketched in 1973, it was the silhouette of a thwarted career. Sentences were slow moving, the narrative meandered. And the disenchanted protagonist asked the same question that had confronted the Florentine courtier Niccolò Machiavelli four centuries earlier. How does one use power to do good, if gaining and wielding power requires one to do evil?

  In his spare time, Rao brushed up on his Spanish, the last of ten languages he had learnt to speak with fluency. He also took to playing the piano. It kept his fingers nimble and warded off arthritis, he explained to his visiting son-in-law.11 He began to read fiction once again. He would even write to authors he liked, commenting on their literary devices. Soon after the writer Arundhati Roy released The God of Small Things, Rao wrote her a letter. Her reply, in flowing black hand, is still preserved amidst Rao’s private papers. ‘I was touched by the fact that you wrote to me—but even more by the fact that you bothered to read the book before you wrote.’12

  National elections were held in May 2004. The incumbent BJP government campaigned on the basis of its economic successes, essentially a deepening of Narasimha Rao’s liberalization policies. The Congress, now headed by Sonia Gandhi, was expected to lose. Narasimha Rao’s help was not sought.

  Against expectations, the Congress emerged as the largest party. Sonia Gandhi declined the nation’s most powerful job, and appointed Rao’s finance minister Manmohan Singh as prime minister of India.

  Rao was hospitalized soon after. R
acked with ill-health, with disorders in his kidneys, heart and lungs, he was moved to a special ward of AIIMS hospital in New Delhi. His maid, Rosie—who had worked for him since 1977—assisted the hospital nurses. The only visitors were Manmohan Singh,13 Sanjaya Baru and Rao loyalist M.S. Bitta. That was about it, his doctor Srinath Reddy remembers. ‘Very few people came, except his family.’

  Shubhranshu Singh, a corporate executive, was visiting his ailing mother in the adjacent ward. ‘The lift door opened, and I saw Narasimha Rao. He looked like a scarecrow.’

  ‘I paid him a goodwill visit since I was around,’ Singh adds. ‘He was on the bed, in a lungi. He was all alone.’14

  In early November 2004, Rao left the hospital to pay his last respects to his beloved—and feared—principal secretary, Amar Nath Varma. They don’t make them like him any more, Rao said, wiping tears.15

  Some weeks later, on 24 November 2004, Rao was treated for a urinary infection. The strong medicines the doctors prescribed had side effects. Vani Devi, who was present, says of her father, ‘He was usually a sthithapragya’—the description in the Bhagvad Gita of one ‘undisturbed by distress, without desires’.16 But that November, Rao lost his temper—something his children had never seen him do. He decided to stop eating.

  ‘I don’t want to take anything,’ he announced. ‘What’s the point in living like this? Why do you people insist that this life should be prolonged?’

  For twenty-four hours, the patient sat on a chair by his hospital bed, refusing to eat or drink. As the news spread, the family received a phone call from Shivraj Patil. ‘Can we come and see him? Madam also wants to come.’17