The row over Rao

First, it needs to be stressed that the Congress and Congress alone chose P.V. Narasimha Rao as its leader. He was not imposed on the party. There were others in the running, notably Sharad Pawar. He was left far, far behind because neither in intellect nor in integrity, nor in experience nor in national standing did he anywhere match up to Rao. It was the Congress which discovered in Rao the virtues the media have only now starteddiscovering in him.

Had the Congress not wholeheartedly backed him, he would have come acropper within weeks. For Yashwant Sinha had made such a mess of the economy(as he is now doing for a second time) that when Rao brought in thepolitically unknown Dr. Manmohan Singh to alter course, the novice PM wouldhave been dethroned if the ordinary run of Congressman had not had the wisdomto stand by their leader in the difficult decisions he had to take.

Rao grew immensely in stature within the party’s ranks over the next eighteen months. It was the Babri Masjid which undid him. His inaction was a shameful act of abstinence, which made a mockery of our much-vaunted secularism and alienated from the party millions of voters — Muslims, of course, but also large numbers of secular-minded Indians of all religions and denominations. It is a blow from which the party is yet to recover. It does nothing to increase Rao’s popularity within the party.

The praise heaped on him by Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the best Prime MinisterIndia had seen was not an isolated instance of recognition by a nobleopponent. Rao by nature seemed more inclined to fulfill the demands of otherparties than run a Congress programme. Thus, he more effectively mandalisedthe polity and administration than V.P. Singh came anywhere near accomplishing. Traditional Congress policies were relegated to theback-burner. Even the reforms programme was projected as an admission offailure, a discontinuity with the past. None of this was calculated to raiseRao’s popularity in the party.

More than government policies, it was Rao’s negligence and deliberatemischief in regard to the investigation of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination thatwidened the gap between him and the rank-and-file. To curry favour with theOpposition, the Rao government’s Action Taken Report (ATR) on the VarmaCommission deliberately omitted any endorsement of Justice Varma’s findingthat the root cause of the failure of security had been V.P. Singh’s failureto put in place a suitable alternative to the Special Protection Group. Thatwas only reluctantly brought into the ATR through an amendment afterbackbenchers like me were compelled to take on their own government on thefloor of the House.

This was followed by repeated and deliberate endeavours to sabotage and evenwind up the Jain Commission investigation, apparently at the behest of anotorious godman. These shenanigans were the prime cause of a section of theparty splitting and going its way.

Then on the eve of the 1996 elections came the hawala affair. Rao sought tocapture the moral high ground by not only encouraging the law to go forwardin respect of an array of his own senior-most colleagues but also Oppositionleaders of considerable note. The cleanest hands were to be seen andapplauded as his. It did not take long for his name to be found figuring inthe hawala mafia’s diary. It takes a Gandhi to capture the moral high ground– and retain it.

Yet, when Rao led the party to defeat at the polls, the Congress did not turn on him. That is not the Congress way. If nemesis overtook Rao a few months down the road, it had little to do with the party abandoning a loser, and everything to do with his entanglement in a series of strange personal cases, including the weird pickle king affair.

Even then, he was asked to hand-pick his successor. He fashioned the daggerthat stabbed him. The choice led to internal rot. Had it not been for theavalanche of defections which resulted from that choice, Sonia Gandhi wouldstill be no more than the chairperson of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Theridiculous argument being made that the party is avenging itself on Raobecause of his lese majeste in daring to be a non-Nehru/Gandhi Prime Minister is rubbish. If Rao had been all the party thought him to be when electing him its leader — wise, intelligent, honest, and politically savvy — Rao would still be Congress president. But his political epitaph is that he made the likes of Matang Singh arbiter of the nation’s destiny.

Yes, the law must take its course because the higher courts will not fail tosee the inherent contradiction in a judgment which holds that a bribe nottaken was given! P.V. Narasimha Rao is not a petty octogenarian crook. Thelaw, if allowed to take its course, will do the sensible thing and overturnwhat appears to be a perverse judgment. If the belief is there in justicebeing eventually done, why take to the streets?

It did not take long for Rao’s name to be found in the hawala mafia’s diary. It takes a Gandhi to capture the moral high ground — and retain it