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Journalism of Courage
Mani Shankar Aiyar would not be Mani Shankar Aiyar if he did not court controversies. There is little doubt that he would have gone higher up the political ladder had he been more circumspect.
It is not for nothing that two of his three-part memoirs have “maverick” in their titles. However, it is not his latest book but what Aiyar said in an interview to a podcaster that sparked a controversy recently. The veteran leader said that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had flunked out of Trinity College in Cambridge and the Imperial College in London when “failing is very difficult (in Cambridge)”.
That Rajiv failed is not news to those who were around when he was the PM, for he had himself admitted it (in an interview to Dhiren Bhagat in 1985 and this finds a reference also in Nicholas Nugent’s book on Rajiv). But, it became ready masala for some BJP leaders who took out the spicy bits from the interview, with these clips going viral.
Soon, top Congress leaders went ballistic, using the choicest of adjectives to describe Aiyar: “sirfira (someone who has lost his mind)”, “frustrated”, and “irrelevant”. However, none of them weighed in on something of far greater importance: Rahul Gandhi’s comments about removing the suspected double-dealers in the party’s Gujarat unit and the work needed to rebuild the party over “the next few decades”, “not years”.
It was not as if Aiyar had raised the hackles of the Congress leadership for the first time. In 2014, he referred to Narendra Modi as “chaiwallah”, with Modi seizing the opportunity and deriving huge political capital for himself and the BJP. Then came his reference to Modi as a “neech kisam ka aadmi (a low kind of person)” in 2017 at the time of the Gujarat elections. The PM again turned this to his advantage, alleging the Congressman was denigrating the lower castes, just when India had an OBC PM like him at the helm. The Congress suspended Aiyar for some time to distance itself from him.
Aiyar had enjoyed a close relationship with Rajiv as his aide after he quit the IFS. When Rajiv was assassinated in 1991, I remember seeing Aiyar sitting all alone in a corner of Teen Murti Bhavan, grieving for his friend. With the rest of the Gandhis, however, Aiyar has had a troubled relationship. In his latest book, A Maverick in Politics: 1991-2024, he describes in detail the tongue-lashing Sonia Gandhi gave him an hour before he was sworn in as a Rajya Sabha MP because she thought he had criticised then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, whereas he said the media had quoted him out of context.
Though he lost from Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu in the 2009 elections, Sonia, in a surprise move, brought him into the Upper House in 2010 but as a nominated member. That marked the start of the Congressman’s decline. Sonia Gandhi, as he has revealed, did not meet him for 10 years, nor did he have any meaningful meetings with Rahul Gandhi.
Did Aiyar get carried away by the flow of his words as he often tends to do? People have noted that he did not bring up Rajiv’s academic failures in his books. He is an old hand and would know that the BJP could use his words to attack the Congress, which the ruling party promptly did.
In all likelihood, Aiyar’s indiscreet comments are unlikely to cause the kind of damage he did in 2014 or 2019. Rajiv is a distant memory for most Indians and there are no elections around the corner today, unlike the last two times.
More to the point is what Rahul Gandhi had to say about the Gujarat Congress. The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha alleged that some Congress leaders were working for the BJP and called for the party to be cleansed, even if it meant getting rid of “20 to 30 people” disconnected from the ground.
For those who know the inner workings of the Congress, this is hardly a closely guarded secret. While Gandhi has taken the bull by the horn, it is not clear how it helps the party. Without an action plan to follow, it only underscores the Congress’s weakness. Blaming “Vibhishans (traitors)” for the mess the Congress finds itself in may only provide an immediate alibi to the party brass to explain its inability to win election after election.
Gandhi’s words also show that he would like to create a new Congress nationally and refashion it as an entity very different from what it is today. But reforging a 140-year-old party that has been in the business of power may take years, possibly decades, to achieve. Gandhi himself admitted the enormity of the task, telling Congress workers in Ahmedabad, “We do not have to talk about the elections, this is not a two-three year project but a 50-year project.”
This will be music to the BJP’s ears. But it may make many in the Congress, who may not be in touch with the BJP so far, wonder what Gandhi is on about and whether they should seek greener pastures. Can the Congress afford a “50-year project” if it does not appear to have a clear roadmap to effectively challenge the BJP and win elections, which is what any political party is about?
Moreover, so far, Gandhi has not shown the stamina for a hands-on approach that the task would entail. Assuming it can be taken care of by a dynamic team around him, it is the short term versus the long-term dilemma that is not easy to resolve.
This dilemma is something politicians have faced in the past, including V P Singh who had to choose between joining Opposition parties to take on the Rajiv-led Congress in the short run or fashion a new party given the ground-level upsurge he had created. VP had little choice but to exercise the second option as the long-term option would have lost him the immediate political support and a chance to become the PM.
Gandhi too does not face easy choices. But then politics is the art of the possible and political leaders have to work with imperfect possibilities, and put to good use even those like Mani Shankar Aiyar.
Discretion may not be in Aiyar’s genes but he is certainly no member of a BJP sleeper cell nor ever will be, no matter how much he is berated by his party colleagues. Surely, the Congress is a big enough umbrella to accommodate leaders like him as well as those who find it easier to be circumspect. And Indian politics will surely be dull without some mavericks like Aiyar.
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)
