ONE lIFE IS NOT ENOUGH
Author: Natwar Singh
Publisher: Rupa, Rs500
In his autobiography, Kunwar Natwar Singh — former senior bureaucrat, former Union Cabinet minister and an author — looks back at the glorious past which not only shaped his being but also the Indian political history. In an interaction with ANANYA BORGOHAIN, Singh recalls both the turbulent and lively times of Indian politics that he was privy to
Recreating history by revisiting it, Natwar Singh’s autobiography One life Is Not Enough is both didactic and confessional. It is a personal intervention in a political space. It is a conscious mapping of Indian political power through language, evoking human feelings at the core. Born on May 16, 1931, Singh belonged to the princely State of Bharatpur, Rajasthan, under the British Raj. He studied in Mayo College (Ajmer) and Scindia School (Gwalior), and graduated from St Stephen’s (Delhi University). He also studied in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, and was a visiting faculty at Peking University, China. In 1953, he joined the Indian Foreign Services, and in 1966, he was posted at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat under Indira Gandhi. In 1984, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in 2002, and twice to the lok Sabha, from 1984-1989 and 1998-1999. And in 2004, then PM Manmohan Singh appointed him the Minister of External Affairs.
On October 27, 2005, while Singh was in Moscow, he was mentioned in an investigative report by the Independent Inquiry Committee headed by Paul Volcker on the Oil-for-Food programme. It stated that India’s Congress party and Singh were non-contractual beneficiaries of the Oil-for-Food programme. Before Singh could reach New Delhi, the Congress claimed innocence and said that Singh would present his case as an individual separately. In December the same year, he was relieved as the Minister of External Affairs.
In the autobiography, Singh speaks exclusively on topics mentioned above. He recollects the moments he spent with Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Tse-Tung, EM Forster, Nirad Chaudhuri; he speaks of his various visits abroad and interactions with the likes of Fidel Castro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ayatollah Khomeini; about the decline of the Congress, about China, the USSR, and the UN; he also helped Sonia Gandhi draft her speeches. Said book was much in news as it reportedly launched an onslaught on Sonia and the Congress party, so much so, that Sonia surprisingly visited him, concerned about certain possible contents and following its release, declared that she might write her own rebuttal of Singh’s claims. The book will now be published in several other Indian regional languages.
In an exclusive interview, Singh discusses the nitty-gritty of his book.
Your accounts are detailed, accurate, and vivid. You seem to effortlessly visualise all nuances of the times passed. Did you always know you would one day write an autobiography and had preserved all records for itIJ
The first time the idea came to me when I was 75, but I kept postponing it until I finally sat down to write it in December 2011 and finished it in January 2014. I prefer writing by hand, and then my secretaries type it and make corrections, if required. The first title I thought of was Just Passing By which was followed by A Double life and The Autobiography of a Known Indian, inspired by Nirad C Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. Eventually, the current title was chosen. As for the research, I have a very vivid memory to rely upon. I also used my archives and had preserved all my letters for the last 60 years.
Autobiographies also tend to be self-glorifying because they are generally subjective versions. Does being neutral figure in your accountsIJ
Not at all. An objective autobiography would have been a disaster. Mine is very subjective. Reticence and understatements can paralyse an autobiography. There are indeed some things you cannot write about and I too have not bared it all, but besides that amount of self-censorship, I have tried to be as frank as possible.
EM Forster seems to have had an immense impact upon you.
I went to Cambridge in 1952. I first saw EM Forster at a meeting for the Tagore Society. My college Corpus Christi was next to his King’s College. He read out from his unpublished novel then. Then in September 1953, his book The Hill of Devi came out, so I dropped him a note saying that I read the book but it could be seen as a support for the princely order. He responded inviting me for tea. Our association built from that point; it was an opportunity of a lifetime to meet not only a great author but also a wonderful human being. If he would give me an appointment and the Prime Minister of England would ask for him at the same time, he would say, “Sorry, I have already allotted that time to Natwar”.
You also seem to be in awe of Mao Tse Tung and his control over China in his time. Your chapter on him is laden with praise and awe for his revolutionary fervour and charisma. However, there is one line where you do acknowledge that it was only later that people discovered that this inspiring leader also killed millions of people. Is there a sense of disillusionment in retrospectIJ Did that alter your impression of himIJ
The whole world was disillusioned when these facts unravelled after Mao’s death. It was shocking and unfortunate but it did not alter my impression of him as the founder of the People’s Republic of China or as a leader. He had a powerful mind and was very well read. He had read the Western classics, Marx, Tolstoy, the works. His place in history in creating a new nation is assured.
Your familiarity with the Nehru-Gandhi family is well documented in the book. Three of the chapters are exclusively about Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and Rajiv Gandhi. Given the long standing association you had with them, how do you think they would have reacted to this book as well as the controversy that eruptedIJ
I think they would have been very happy. Rajiv, I am sure, would have been very pleased and if he was around today, the controversy concerning Sonia would not have risen at all. People keep calling it Sonia centric but it is only one chapter towards the end that speaks of her. There is so much in the book about myself, my universities, China, Pakistan, the UN, and so on, but people are obsessed about the passages on Sonia.
Why did the controversy happenIJ
It happened because Sonia reacted. Had I been her advisor, I would have suggested her to not respond to any of it at all, but she did react and my book’s sales went up. I am surprised that she did that, she never really does it. And that’s a part of her strength in fact. I hadn’t met her in person for long, except in public meetings, Nehru memorial etc. She was by our side when our daughter took her life in 2002 or when I had heart surgery too. I shall always remember that.
Do you think you will be able to get over the Volcker controversyIJ
It’s absurd actually. The Justice Pathak Committee had exonerated me, saying there was no material to show that I made any personal financial benefit from the contracts. It should have ended there but it didn’t. The Congress, media, the Government went all after me. Anybody else in my stead would have collapsed but I am a gutsy person and I held on to my own. The Volcker report also names the the Congress party. Nobody mentions that. My son’s name does not appear in it.
You mention Rajiv Gandhi being manipulated even in moments of personal crises such as after Indira Gandhi’s assassination as well as when he was holding office. Was he surrounded by wrongly persuasive advisorsIJ
I have written really nice things about Rajiv. His Sri lanka policy was a tragedy but his China policy was a triumph. The fact that an Indo-China border agreement was signed in 1988 was due to Rajiv Gandhi. People don’t realise this; they don’t pick this up in the book. He also took Indo-Soviet relations to new heights. He was a noble person with no malice for anybody.
You see, he was not interested in politics. But suddenly his mother dies; the Congress party looks towards him. Sonia fought like a tigress against his becoming the PM but he believed that he faced fatal threat either way and chose to take up office. Now the friends that he had before joining politics became his chief advisors. They were intelligent people but didn’t know how a complicated country like India runs. He relied on them and realised in two and half years that they were amateurs.
In 1987, he told me, “You know, we are about to go to war with Pakistan.” I said that nobody in the Ministry of External Affairs knows about it. He said, “I was kept in dark by General Krishnaswamy Sundarji (the Chief of Army Staff) and Arun Singh (Minister of State for Defence)”. It took us a while to control the damage. Pakistan’s then President Zia-ul-Haq too called up Rajiv. I suggested that the best way to find out is to check if there had been any movement near our border. The best thing would have been for ND Tiwari (then Minister of External Affairs) to send for the American Ambassador and I would send the Russian Ambassador to find out.
later it was reported that Arun Singh was dismissive of the strategies. Rajiv valued his friendship.
I told Rajiv, “You know, you are not the President of the Students’ Society of Doon school. The Prime Minister does not have friends.” Subsequently, Arun Singh was removed as a Minister of State. He was a very nice person and General Sundarji took him for a ride.
likewise, given the state of politics all over, is it not then a required norm for a leader to be MachiavellianIJ You call Sonia Machiavellian; authoritative and not much trusting.
You see, Sonia learned a great deal from her mother-in-law. Her clear instruction to Sonia as a politician was, “listen. Never talk.” Now, if you don’t talk of her as a politician, she is a different person, someone who is relaxed, laughing and joking. Anything she says is broadcast outside so she has to weigh her words. This is a power game. In any politics, if you cross paths with a leader, you are in major trouble. Barring one or two, nobody could tell her that she was wrong.
You also mention that she had moles spying on your offices.
If you read about Snowden or Wikileaks, you will know that all major countries have this arrangement where somebody of the ministry keeps an eye on the office bearers. It’s very common.
You also say that Pandit Nehru’s personal secretary was associated with the CIA and that there was pressure on the Congress concerning your appointment as the Minister of External Affairs.
Yes, it is true and that is what Sarvepalli Gopal writes about as well. And Gopal was Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s son so there must be authenticity and intellectual integrity in his claims. And yes, both Manmohan and Sonia told me about the pressure from America against making me the Minister of External Affairs.
You also talk about MG Ramachandran funding the lTTE. Had that not been the case, would our political history been any different todayIJ
You see, in those days I used travel a lot to SE Asia because the Vietnamese had asked us to inform the other Asian countries that Vietnam will withdraw from Cambodia. We were training the lTTE at one time as well. The Tamils and the Sri lankan Tamils had old family ties. It was only when the lTTE became aggressive that Rajiv decided to send the Indian Peace Keeping Force. I feel he was too much in hurry and told him the same. He said that the situation was volatile and the President had asked him about it too, so he sent the troops. What happened was that there were too many agencies working, the RAW, IB, armed forces, PM Secretariat etc. suggesting various changes and so there was no continuity in our strategies.
Is it possible for a politician to separate the personal and the politicalIJ You have chronicled yourself, do you have regretsIJ
One always has regrets. I have pointed out my vices in the book, in fact in the preface itself. I’ve mentioned my weaknesses as well. As for the personal versus the political, I have done things which may be expedient rather than right and I am not too proud of it. During the Emergency, I was working as a Government servant and I write that my conduct towards the Emergency doesn’t do me much credit. So you don’t have to put yourself on a pedestal in your autobiography. Besides, you read Tagore’s, Churchill’s, Nehru’s autobiographies and you realise that one has several identities. My Rajasthaniyat, Hindustaniyat, Insaniyat are all different identities and they don’t conflict. You must reconcile the contradictions. There is no shortage of knowledge, but wisdom is restricted.
How has your family responded to the bookIJ Has it shaped up the way you intendedIJ Have you read itIJ
Frankly speaking, I have not had the time to read it myself. But my grandchildren are thrilled to read it. My family, friends are delighted. And I have not done any publicity myself but it has still been receiving wide coverage in the press and television channels.
There is speculation about a sequel.
I will write it when Sonia releases her autobiography.
Is she writing oneIJ
For that, she would need a ghostwriter. In Jug Suraiya’s words, her best choice for a ghostwriter would be Natwar Singh.