Missing the picture

Lady Pamela Mountbatten refused to grant television interviews after her first interaction with a Indian TV journalist...

Lady Pamela Mountbatten refused to grant television interviews after her first interaction with a Indian TV journalist, in which she was grilled on the specifics of Pandit Nehru’s friendship with her mother. Mountbatten was not mollified even though the offending interviewer sent a big bouquet of flowers from Fortnum & Masons as a peace offering. While the British aristocracy may be rather open and understanding of love out of wedlock even when it concerns their immediate family, the Congress party is more prudish in such matters. When asked to comment on Mountbatten’s recollections in her book, India Remembered, a Congress spokesperson dismissed her remarks on the grounds that she was a mere child at that time. In fact, Edwina’s daughter was 17 years old.

Incidentally, the publishers of the book were keen to use a photograph from the South Hampton University library, showing Nehru in a yogic headstand being handed the telephone receiver by Edwina dressed in a nightgown. Permission to use the picture was not granted. The photograph has since disappeared from the university archives.

Privileged disclosure

D eparting President Abdul Kalam has finally answered the question that has been much speculated upon. Speaking to veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, Kalam denied that Sonia Gandhi had first staked a claim to head the UPA government and only later submitted Manmohan Singh’s name. Kalam told Nayar that Gandhi had met him twice on the day of the UPA government formation. On the first occasion, she called on him merely to inform him that her party and its allies had the necessary majority in Parliament. The second time Manmohan Singh accompanied her.

Spying on superiors

B Raman’s book on RAW, The Kaoboys of RAW, provides some gossipy nuggets on the private behaviour of our politicians. For instance, Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq won around then Prime Minister Moraji Desai by telephoning him regularly to seek advice on naturopathy and urine therapy, even querying how many times a day he should drink urine. In contrast, the wife of our ambassador in Paris ordered her servant to throw away her whole set of wine glasses because the domestic could not recall from which goblet Desai had drunk. Raman, who was posted as Consul General in Geneva between 1985 and 1988, discovered that almost all VIP politicians visiting Geneva, and some CBI officials as well, happily enjoyed Prakash Hinduja’s hospitality but tried to keep their meetings under wraps after the Bofors scandal. A President of India denied to Raman that he had asked Hinduja to arrange an appointment with a ear specialist, but Raman later discovered the medical check-up was done clandestinely in Berne.

24 Karat gem

National parties plagued by infighting will be heartened to learn that minor cracks have emerged even in the highly disciplined CPM over party General Secretary Prakash Karat’s role in the selection of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees. A vitriolic e-mail against Karat has been sent out by a body called Save CPI(M) Forum, which seems to be based in Kerala. The letter questions Karat’s unilateral selection of Hamid Ansari as UPA’s vice-presidential nominee, alleging that Ansari is in Karat’s intimate circle of elite friends. It accuses Ansari of being a careerist — remaining so neutral that even then HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, with then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s approval, appointed him vice-chancellor of AMU and Ansari cleared a proposal to open a course on astrology at AMU in return. As India’s UN representative he never registered a single protest against US hegemony in world affairs, the note claims.

No language problem

Several journalists who were inducted as delegates for the World Hindi Conference in New York and given a $300 daily allowance played hooky from the deliberations after the opening ceremony. Still it was heartening to find that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who inaugurated the meeting, took a keen interest in the conference and even spoke a few sentences in faltering Hindi. The secretary-general explained that he had once been posted in Delhi and that his daughter is married to an Indian.