‘If you don’t have an ideology or a programme to match, you will have to resort to hype before polls’

• I am talking about the past five years. You have been out of power.

It’s not a question of five years or 25. I am one of the most content persons you can imagine. It’s time for younger people to take over.

• Let’s be realistic. For six years… your party has not been friendly.

I don’t hold anything against my party.

• It’s only now that they have put your picture in the manifesto.

It doesn’t matter. Do you know that in my five-year term, my photograph never appeared in any of the public places, like the railway platforms, airports and VIP lounges?

• I’ve heard people in your party say that’s because they thought your name, your picture and your personality was a liability in the poll.

That doesn’t matter. There was no election in 1992 and in 1993. If they had stopped putting it in 1995, I could understand. The point is some people look at these things very carefully, meticulously. I had no such interest.

• Given your experience… and you are by no means too old for politics…

What is old for politics, if not 84?

• Given the tradition in India, people in their 80s are still wanting to become prime minister. And you have wisdom and you are alert.

The point is if Morarji Desai became prime minister after 80, I don’t have to.

• You don’t have to be prime minister. But you can be Bhishma Pitamah, you can be Kautilya. Your party should use your experience.

I am very happy that I have got lots of time to write, which will be destroyed… See certain aspects of personal experience are priceless. You just cannot think of how to evaluate them. And if you go by newspapers, the less said the better.

• Why do you say that?

Because there’s always the danger of distortion. Take the Emergency. Whatever was done was condemned wrongly. Do you think the Emergency was full of mistakes and nothing else? I have to correct that. Because I have lived through that.

• Even Sonia Gandhi has called the Emergency a mistake.

That’s okay, that’s okay.

• She said Mrs Gandhi realised it as well. That is straight from the dining table.

Well what I am going to tell you is straight from her… From Indira Gandhi.

• Does the party’s top leadership consult you now or ask you for your opinion?

I have no reason to believe that I am not being consulted some way or the other. There may be other methodologies. Suppose I tell you something, then how do I know that you have not been sent by someone who wants to consult me?

• You have spent now more than six years out of power.

Eight.

• Eight years out of power and a lot of it has been spent fighting corruption cases some of which, I have said this before, are quite silly. Do you handle this philosophically? Does this make you bitter?

What is the way of handling it? If you tell me something different from what I have done, which I ought to have done and have not done then I am prepared to listen.

• Today you are 84, but when the cases started you were not 84. The cases have taken eight years of your political life.

That’s okay, doesn’t matter. In any case, what do you do? If there is a case, there is a case. There is no point in going into it and brooding.

• But there are those who say, I say it with journalistic simplicity, that your party hung you out to dry. If you have your case, you handle it and we are moving back to the dynasty now.

On the very first day, I resigned. I can give you witnesses. I told them this is my case. This should not have any effect on the party. I don’t want to leave any shadow on the party.

• Certainly you would say that in a legal system like India’s, cases like this could have been settled one way or the other much earlier. Why rob somebody, and somebody innocent in this case, of eight years of political life?

Well, you are pleading my case and I have not appointed you. These are all part of life. You have snakes, you have ladders. You cannot have lives only with ladders and when you get a ladder you don’t think that so many other circumstances brought you the ladder. No, it’s not like that. You have to take it.

• So you don’t think that these eight years were the lost years of your life?

No, I don’t think they are lost. If they are lost in one area, (they are) gained in another. For a person with several interests, more or less all of which have been on hold… in favour of just one field, don’t you think it’s a great relief? I am not bragging. I am being very…

• Philosophical.

No, not being philosophical. I am being realistic. You see, in our time we didn’t have a career like politics… I started with a student movement. Now how do you expect a student movement to blossom into a political movement?

• There are those who say, and you have critics in your own party as well, that the cases you had to endure were also a kind of price for hawala. Or things you did to some of your own partymen.

I don’t think so, because all this is disinformation. Historically, factually all this is wrong. But of course you have to be ready for allegations that are baseless. Because only you know that they are baseless, the whole world doesn’t. They go by what actually happens.

• Would you say that the hawala cases were ultimately also as baseless as cases against you?

They were as baseless as they were found by the courts. That’s all. If you really go into the nitty gritty, I don’t know. I am getting into a field which perhaps doesn’t allow me to explain things in full.

There are two fields. One is legal, one is political. There is much in common but they are not identical. Tactics are not identical, conclusions are not identical, logic is not identical. Therefore, for a perspective you will have to know both the fields and also distinguish where the politically correct decision can become legally incorrect.

• But you were not playing politics in the hawala cases?

Oh no.

• There are those in your party who think it was one way of sidelining many likely challengers.

Who, who, who?

• All the hawala victims say so.

Who?

• All the hawala victims say so.

Including Mr Advani?

• Yes, certainly.

Hah.

• Certainly, he thinks you were victimising him.

You are making me too big for my shoes. I came just for five years in a fortuitous way and I don’t think I developed within these five years all these crooked characteristics.

• But people say you were angry with Mr Advani over Ayodhya.

I was not angry with anyone. There is no need for any good politician, good administrator to be angry. You may be angry with a thief but he doesn’t care two hoots for what you think. He will do his job… and you have to do your job. That’s all.

• But let me also add that Mr Advani at one point paid you a great compliment. He said you were the best prime minister since Lal Bahadur Shastri.

I’m grateful to him, and I am sure it was a comment pregnant with some meaning. Of course people have said something to the contrary several times.

• But between Shastri and you was also Indira Gandhi, whom I believe you admire the most.

Well, I believe in Indira Gandhi because she was the actual harbinger of change… I believe in Pandit Nehru because he showed how to change. He didn’t have time to change it himself.

• But what made Mrs Gandhi so special?

Because she was a fighter. Just as we have been fighters. Those who faced bullets from the Nizam (of Hyderabad) as students would appreciate Indira Gandhi… Not that kind of struggle where you go to jail and have all the comforts and come back, no.

• Are you referring to people who went to jail during the Emergency?

No, not at all. The point is methodology differs from struggle to struggle. Gandhi gave us something which the world had never thought of. (But) while doing that we are all not Gandhis. So the Gandhi methodology could have been done in the wrong way by some people.

• I believe you have said that it’s difficult for India to imagine a leader like Mrs Indira Gandhi for a long time.

That’s right. You only had to see people running after her, ‘Amma, Amma, Amma, Amma.’ I have also shown in my book why in spite of calling her ‘Amma’, in Andhra Pradesh they did something after her assassination which brought the score of the Congress down to seven out of 42. See, motivations are different.

• People change. The other person who’s always been very effusive in praising you is Mr Vajpayee. I think he’s called you guru and then guru ghantal. How?

Actually, we have remained lifelong friends… In the same breath we say that we will remain lifelong political adversaries.

• Well that’s the beauty of our politics. So what qualities do you see in him that you like?

Well, I think the greatest contribution which India needed at that moment was to save the country from a sort of a situation where you have an election every year… To be able to unite those who could not be united otherwise.

• Keeping a coalition of 25 parties together.

It needs a very high degree of persuasiveness. But all this has nothing to do with results. If you don’t have an ideology, if you don’t have a programme to match, the result will be that you have to resort to hype before the elections.

• Which is what they are doing?

Well, you know that.

• I believe the great contribution Mr Vajpayee has made to Indian politics and to Indian history is that he’s convinced people that coalition governments can work in India. And he’s persuaded the Congress to accept the mantra of coalitions. Do you give him credit for that?

Credit or discredit has to go to the circumstances rather than individuals. Tomorrow, there can be another combination and another alliance and so on.

• But there are other people who could not run coalitions. Deve Gowda, Gujral…

But that was not because of the coalition. It was not the coalition that failed. It was because the carpet was removed from under his feet.

• So I would say it was because of the Congress.

Nothing to do with his performance. Nothing to do with Mr Gujral’s performance. That should be a very important footnote.

• Sir, would you say those were errors of the Congress?

No, no, no. Don’t ask me for value judgments.

• I am asking you for political judgment.

Every incident is triggered by certain circumstances. If the same circumstances recur, the same decision is likely to recur. In some cases, it may not. That depends on the insight of the person who’s handling it.

• I believe you are fond of tennis.

Yes, I am.

• I believe you have a collection of Wimbledon tapes.

Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open, all opens.

• Who were your favourites?

There can’t be one favourite. They have their best time, peak… and then they decline. I was a great fan of Pete Sampras. But then where is he now?

• I believe in the old days… Manuel Santana, you were very fond of him.

I have been watching tennis since (Bill) Tilden… Quite surprisingly, Tilden and Roche had come to India.

• Do you still watch those tapes?

Sometimes yes.

• Santana? I believe you learnt eight languages and then taught yourself Spanish.

I know a little Spanish. But languages are like something that leaves you the moment you don’t take care of it. Like a very demanding wife.

• So what made you such a keen learner of languages?

Just. I think it’s a kind of flair. That’s all… One of my friends told me that out of all foreign languages, Spanish is easy and emotionally it’s closer to India…

• More than Italian?

No, I don’t know Italian… But when I read Spanish poetry, Spanish novels and so on, I did find Spanish is closer to India. In the first place, pronunciation is something which is common to both. You write what you pronounce, you pronounce what you write. Whereas in the case of French and English, once Stalin said: ‘What kind of a language is yours, you write Moscow and pronounce it Leningrad’.

• Robin Raphel once said to me that when one leader of your party — whom I shall not name now — went to the State Department, they said, ‘Hey these Indians speak 16 dialects of the English language’.

That’s quite right. They also have dialects of the English language.

• In America?

Yes. The person from the south is almost unintelligible to the person coming from, say, the north. Or the border states. Every language has this. Spanish in Latin America has its own flavour. Then Spain proper has its own flavour. Including the speed with which they speak, there is a variation.

• Talking about foreign languages, one of your great achievements was running and evolving India’s foreign policy, not just as prime minister. And you dealt with many international leaders. Tell me about a couple that you remember.

I remember several people… Shafi happened to be the foreign minister of Maldives. I’ll tell you a very interesting anecdote. We all met in Jakarta for the Non-Aligned summit. It happened to be his birthday. We were staying at the same hotel. I was prime minister, he was foreign minister. There was something like a gang of foreign ministers, five or six of them. I was one of them once upon a time. So they wanted to celebrate. (But) they never approached me because of protocol.

• You were prime minister now.

I came to know through my own people that it was Shafi’s birthday. Then I said why is it that they didn’t call me… I trooped in, they were flabbergasted. I said somebody says I can’t come in just because I have become prime minister.

• Iranian foreign minister Velayati and you were thick as thieves.

He came here once or twice. We were very close…

• And Gromyko?

He was 27 years old as foreign minister when he came here, I was 27 days old as foreign minister… Still he did not look down upon me. He treated me like a brother. He had qualities not many people know of.

• Such as what?

A sense of humour. He had a repertoire of jokes that ran into thousands.

• Printable or unprintable?

Both. Oral literature as well as written literature.

• My Pakistani friends…

Pakistan! Sahibzada (Yaqub Khan)… He was Rampuri.

• Sahibzada, you were fond of him.

He was a very good friend of mine because his uncle, Mickey Mian, was our colleague in Parliament for two or three terms. That’s how we became good friends…

Once I asked him why do you have another plane from Pakistan to go to Maldives? Am I not on the way? What makes you spend so much money, don’t you think we are all developing countries? He laughed, came here and we went in our plane… All the way to Maldives, four-and-a-half hours.

• He was westernised and proper.

He was a very disciplined person. He was receptive to new ideas, wanted me to give him a description of our navodaya vidyalayas.

• Let me get back to Velayati. My Pakistani friends, particularly the foreign policy establishment, have always told me, ‘Mr Rao stole Iran away from us.’ One of your great achievements was to get Rafsanjani at the Imambara in Lucknow in the aftermath of Babri Masjid and to say he believed Muslims were safe in India.

I think they (the Iranians) have a more balanced understanding of Islam than those who want to politicise it. We also have the same kind of broad composite culture, consisting of so many religions. So they appreciate that… If he said what he said in Lucknow, I am not surprised.

• He said Muslims are safe in India’s secularism. Do you see that as one of the greatest moments of your career as a diplomat?

There are no great moments, there are no low moments. A person has to have what is called samadrishti.

• What’s that?

Samadrishti. The Bhagavad Gita says that if you are successful to a level, don’t bloat, and if you are not successful don’t get yourself buried in the ground… And I think India is perhaps the only country that has cultivated this samadrishti for centuries and centuries.

PART I

PART III