That Richard Nixon disliked Indira Gandhi intensely comes out very clearly in the declassified top secret Nixon era papers which have been sourced by senior journalist Kalyani Shankar in her just released book Nixon,Indira and India. One of the documents is a memorandum of conversations between Chinese Premiere Chou En-Lai and Nixon in February 1972 in Beijing. Nixon conceded to Chou that he was a hardliner on India and Kissinger was a co-conspirator. Nixon recalled with glee that he had reassured Mrs Gandhi that the US had stopped supplying arms to Pakistan just before the Indo-Pak war in 1971,when,in fact,the US was secretly sending arms shipments. Furious that despite the maneouvers of the US and China,the Pakistan army had to flee East Pakistan,Nixon commented maliciously,India has enough trouble trying to digest West Bengal. If now it tries to digest East Bengal,it may cause indigestion which would be massive.
Chou responded,That is bound to be so, adding,It is also a great pity that the daughter has taken as her legacy the philosophy of her father embodied in the book Discovery of India. The Chinese premiere seemed to feel that Nehru had visualised a greater Indian empire including Malaysia,Ceylon,etc. It would probably also include our Tibet, Chou added resentfully.
Fight over legacy
The return of George Fernandess estranged wife Leila Kabir Fernandes and son Sean to his side after being apart for a quarter of a century is seen in part as an attempt to claim his assets. The socialist Fernandes surprisingly has assets of some Rs 12 crores,which he declared in his affidavit while filing his nomination recently for the Muzzafarpur parliamentary seat in Bihar. The money came from the sale of a plot of land outside Bangalore in 2006. The land was meant to house an institution for Labour Studies. Since Fernandess health was failing and he did not have the energy to set up a Trust,he decided he would instead sell the land and donate the money for various worthy causes,including medical research. Because of his illness his plans did not fructify.
Cold leave wave
Absenteeism has increased because of the cold wave in the Capital,not just in schools colleges and offices,but also in the Union Cabinet. The Saturday before last,less than 10 out of the 33 ministers showed up. Most of the absentees were from the DMK,the TMC and the NCP. The cabinet wound up in less than half an hour with no major decision taken.
Homing in on security
M.K. Narayanan knew that he would lose his job as the National Security Adviser (NSA) after listening to Home Minister P Chidambarams speech at the IB Centenary Endowment Lecture on December 23 last year. Narayanan was so upset that he left the function without staying on for tea. In fact,in the presence of the Home Minister on Army Day last week,75-year-old Narayanan joked that he was being eased out.
In his significant address on December 23 last year,Chidambaram had spoken of a bold restructuring of our security setup. He wanted intelligence and security agencies to report to a single unified command. A new body called the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) under the Home Ministry would oversee security agencies,which are presently under the NSA and Cabinet Secretariat. Until Chidambaram took over the Home portfolio,Narayanan,a former police officer,had assumed that the NSA was overall in charge of both internal and external security. It appears that Narayanans successor will,however,focus largely on strategic affairs. Which is why the contenders for the post are all from the IFS.
In wrong company
The Ministry of Textiles put out an advertisement last week in the media,announcing the inauguration of a girls hostel for the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Gandhinagar,Gujarat,by the minister Dayanidhi Maran. Apart from Maran,the government advertisement also included photographs of Sonia Gandhi,Manmohan Singh, M Karunanidhi,Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and L K Advani. Marans rivals in the DMK,including leader of the DMK in Parliament T R Baalu,were quick to make much of the fact that the textile minister had put photographs of communalists like Advani and Modi in such august company. In fact,the advertisement simply followed the established protocol to include the chief minister of the state and the local MP in the programme. And Advani represents Gandhinagar.
