Inside out

I K Gujral has written a meticulous, insider’s account of his life in politics. But, says Sunanda K Datta-Ray, just the facts do not make a great memoir

Inder Kumar Gujral impressed me greatly at King Jigme Singye Wangchuck’s coronation in Thimphu in 1974 which he attended as minister-in-waiting to President V V Giri. He was about to be introduced to a controversial member of the Bhutanese elite when she suddenly decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with Indian politicians and flounced off rudely. “A residue of bitterness is understandable when public policy impinges on private lives!” was Gujral’s murmured comment.

 

Traces of that human understanding are evident in this racy account of the intrigue and conspiracy that passes for statecraft in India. One is reminded of Talleyrand’s comment, “Nations would be terrified if they knew by what small men they were governed.” Gujral’s strictures are all the more damning for being so artless. He calls Om Mehta, a small-time politician who shot into notoriety during the Emergency, a “man of straw” almost as a compliment. Sadly, that description can be applied to almost all the other players in this game.

One suspects that it was all a game for Gujral who didn’t take any of these poltroons seriously. The deadpan reporting of H D Deve Gowda promising to make G K Moopanar prime minister in return for support in his bid for the presidency suggests the absurdity was not lost on him. But did he wonder what all this politicking and back-stabbing was doing to the administration? Dare one ask, did he care? Gujral tells us that the intriguing extended even to the Indian embassy in Kabul where the ambassador and his deputy were clearly at loggerheads.

Such paradoxes are possible only in a country where personalities matter and principles don’t. It’s too late in the day to strike a high moral note in writing about Indian politics; but one must be grateful that an insider (not to be confused with P V Narasimha Rao’s The Insider) has written such a meticulous factual account of the political bazaar. Gujral is probably the only Indian prime minister to have kept a diary and written an autobiography in the conventional sense. It isn’t entirely candid of course — astonishment at Nawaz Sharif being defied by his colleagues glosses over his own humiliation at the hands of C M Ibrahim and the aviation secretary over the proposed Tata-SIA airline — but it gives more information than anyone else has done in a land that makes a cult of secrecy.

Gujral’s best time was as external affairs minister. He comes off worst in his choice of friends, the circle of self-seeking India International Centre cronies who made hay under the sun of his eminence. Whoever was responsible for the Gujral Doctrine, it was sound strategy to seek the support of India’s smaller neighbours in the confrontation with China and Pakistan. As it happens, the lack of reciprocity Gujral proposed was exactly what Lee Kuan Yew had advised Rajiv Gandhi, citing Suharto’s successful diplomacy in dealing with Indonesia’s smaller neighbours.

As for Gujral’s friends, there are too many of them still around to bear comment. The point is that not only did he advance their material prospects but he also allowed them to interfere in his political (mis)management, and still writes of them in glowing terms. Bhabani Sen Gupta seems the only one to have forfeited his friendship by going too far.

Gujral made his debut in Delhi politics when he was 39 years old, and entered the Rajya Sabha at the age of 45 in 1964. He is witness to an era of tectonic change. One wishes, therefore, that with his natural culture and interest in art and poetry, he had written a more substantive book. There is too little analysis here, too few intimate portraits. He shies away from telling us why exactly V P Singh plunged the nation into the trauma of the Mandal Commission report. Just recounting events is not enough for a man of his calibre.

Gujral is no dogmatic Morarji Desai or smug V P Singh. He could easily have examined people and events to far greater effect. When he does essay an examination, it is entirely without rancour. His description of Indira Gandhi as being “a split and very complex personality” is presented as simple truth. He goes on to say, “And yet she could be large-hearted, gracious and charming. She could be warm one moment and cold, withdrawn and distant the next.” Fallen from grace, the embittered P N Haksar dismissed her as “a mediocrity who achieved great heights”. Gujral is more large-hearted though, perhaps, he does look back with a touch of wistfulness to turning down on her advice the deputy ministership Lal Bahadur Shastri offered him. “In politics once you miss the bus, it becomes very difficult to board it again.”

He did board it again, not that cabinet bus he had once spurned but the prime minister’s private limousine in April 1997 and rode it, albeit in a caretaker capacity during the last few months, to the middle of the following year. That entitles him to be bracketed with Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, V P Singh, Chandra Sekhar and Deve Gowda who also manipulated their way to the hot seat without a national mandate.

It was Mani Shankar Aiyar’s cutting jibe that he liked the cut of Gujral’s turncoat. Yes, Gujral did leave Indira Gandhi’s Congress but only because, unlike some others, he was not prepared to remain in the fold and carp about it behind her back or slavishly do her bidding. Even so, one gets the impression from reading between the lines of this memoir that he never ceased to be a Congressman and never lost his awe of and respect for Mrs Gandhi. Otherwise, Sonia Gandhi would not have offered him a party ticket in September-October 1999 or nomination for the Rajya Sabha. He declined both, deciding “that having held the position of the prime minister of India, I must refrain from switching parties and call it a day gracefully”.

No one can fault that exit.

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MATTERS OF DISCRETION
An Autobiography
Author: I K Gujral
Publisher: Hay House
Pages: 520
Price: Rs 795