Jairam Ramesh must be applauded for writing a brave book. It is rare to come across the candour and objectivity that an active politician has brought to bear in putting together Intertwined Lives, a biography of late PN Haksar the advisor, aide, conscience-keeper, ideological pundit and principal secretary to late Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi.
For an active Congressman to write about the life and times of India’s most powerful Prime Minister when the legacy of even her father, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, is being bitterly contested and twisted out of context on a daily basis by right reactionaries is no mean feat. In the age of social media when trolling is a sport much like the Hunger Games, where an otherwise innocuous reference can be blown out of proportion just as it happened with Saifudin Soz recently, to write a 500-page tome about a very tumultuous period that unfolded not so long ago in India is a tribute to the ability of Jairam as a writer to stay the course and not flounder in uncharted waters.
PN Haksar was undoubtedly a man of many seasons. From almost a dilettante in London, to a struggling lawyer-turned-stodgy diplomat, he really had his moment in the sun as secretary and later principal secretary to the Prime Minister. The book through the writings, letters, public comments and records of private conversations brings to life the multi-faceted personality of this enormously talented individual.
The fact that Haksar was destined to work with Mrs Gandhi comes through very strongly.
His first recollection of Indira Gandhi or Indu or Induji as he refers to her in his numerous missives to her is interesting: “...and when the name Indu was mentioned she turned to me and asked whether I remembered seeing the little child who visited us at our home in Nagpur. I did remember and the name Indu was connected with a memory of a face with large round eyes”. Then there was the London connection where Haksar played the Indian gourmet chef to Feroze Gandhi and Indira Nehru. Jairam writes: “The three—Haksar, Feroze Gandhi and Indira Nehru—became close friends drawn together not just by Haksar’s cooking and their Allahabad links but more importantly, by Krishna Menon and the India league and by their common passion—India’s freedom from British Rule.”
The fact that Haksar was influenced by Nehru is really a non sequitur. All progressive young Indians of those times were under the tutelage of Marx and looked on Nehru as their philosophical sage. However, even Nehru he did not idol-worship. He was critical of the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953 during his later years and China was always on his mind.
After the Simla Agreement had been signed, HY Sharada Prasad had this to say, “I remarked to Haksar and PN Dhar that it was, all in all a day India should be satisfied with. I recall what Haksar said in reply: ‘Ah, not until there is an agreement also with China’.”
However what is relevant about Haksar’s views even now is his clear exposition of what secularism means: In a souvenir to mark the 80th birth anniversary of C Achutha Menon in 1993 he wrote… “If the words secular, secularism and secularisation are to be understood as part and parcel of a universal process of secularisation of the human mind, then we have inflicted enormous damage on the nation building process in India, by totally unacceptable and false translation of the word secular and secularism by equating them to the doctrine of religious tolerance expressed in the words like Dharam Nirpekshta and Sarva Dharma Samabhava.
These translations have produced great schizophrenia in our politics which in time have produced the situation with which we are now actually confronted in Punjab and Kashmir…”.
Jairam Ramesh’s chronology of the life and times of PN Haksar is eminently readable.