After reading A Maverick in Politics 1991-2024 (Juggernaut), my response was that this is a book written by a brilliant mind. These are not the memoirs of a maverick but a brilliant ideologue caught in a time capsule. It encapsulates the tragedy of the author’s life and career as he so honestly acknowledges: “What remains are the memories and fantasies of yesteryear. …..Coping with failure was more personal. …I just never thought the Gandhi family that had brought me into politics would bowl me out too. Do I regret having quit the Foreign Service midstream to take the plunge into politics? Not for one second. I took my decision consciously, never looking back, knowing that it might end in disaster, not triumph….No, I regret nothing”.
Unlike most who are ‘born’ into politics and do not switch from civil service to a completely different milieu, Mani, as we affectionately call him, refused after moving to politics, to change with the times, or accept that India had changed. He liked his time capsule and unlike Dr. Who, of BBC fame [a British science fiction programme produced by the BBC], refused to emerge from it. The consequences were clear and revealing and frequently tragic.
An example was his position on the Babri Masjid, outlined in fascinating detail in Chapter 3, ‘Life as a National MP’. As he writes: “I went with a Parliamentary delegation to the site and ….. declined the prasad distributed by the pujari of the makeshift temple of Ram Lalla virajman….I adamantly held that prasad cannot be distributed in a Muslim place of worship”.
Later, Mani decided to do a Ram Rahim Yatra but was summoned back by the then PM PV Narasimha Rao from Behrampore. As narrated by Mani: “The PM began by telling me that while he had no objection to my yatra, he didn’t agree with my definition of ‘secularism’. Why, I asked, what was wrong with my definition of ‘secularism’? The PM said: “You don’t seem to understand, Mani, that this is a Hindu country”! Mani responds honestly. “But Sir, that is exactly what the BJP says”.
Another example is Mani’s attachment to a socialist ideology for his party. As he recounts in the chapter ‘Back to Parliament’, as a member of the Committee under A.K. Antony to examine the reasons for setbacks in the 1999 elections, he added a short section arguing that ‘garibi hatao’ should be revived. Congress must remain a left-of-centre party’. Reforms must be presented in this perspective.
Mani ruefully reflects that in the furious inner party fallout of this paper, he did not realise he was the fall guy. He writes: “I should have realised then – but did not – that without any political base of my own, and wholly dependent as I was on the goodwill of the Gandhis, husband and wife, I could never make the grade on my own. Hence, whatever my other uses, I was politically dispensable”.
Knowing Mani and his family as well as I do, perhaps the saddest chapters were the last three, ‘Decline…Fade out’ ,‘Musings on a Long life’, and ‘Curtain Call’.
Some of his musings make perfect political sense, but the Congress president refused to listen. On the choice of PM/President, few can disagree with his assessment. “Personally, I was of the view that Pranab Mukherjee should have been given the reins of the government and Dr Manmohan Singh elevated to President of India when the office of Rashtrapati presented an opening in 2012. This was principally because we needed a very active PM in good health and with the energy to lead the government (Pranabda) and a person of high distinction who had served his country exceptionally well (Dr Singh) to preside over the nation”.
He adds: “The decision taken to retain Dr Manmohan Singh as PM and shift Pranab Mukherjee upstairs as Rashtrapati…… doomed any prospects the Congress might have had to form UPA-III”.
His suspension from the party for which he gave up his foreign service career devastated him. He writes honestly that he shared with his wife, Suneet, his draft letter of birthday greetings to Rahul Gandhi, which was actually a plea for revocation, which she rejected saying: “Don’t you have any self-respect? Why are you cringing like this”?
When the 3rd draft, not shown to Suneet, was sent, there was no positive response. Mani reflected: “What was I after? Did I not realize that I was being made a scapegoat by people who wanted to save themselves? Could I not see that as they had no further use for me, I was being discarded like soiled tissue paper”?
Mani had begun by saying he never regretted quitting the foreign service, a little bit like Edith Piaff’s defiant song: ‘Je ne regrette rien’. I think he does regret it, because he would have had a glorious career.
His political mentor Rajiv Gandhi had warned him that as an outsider, the Congress party would never accept him. Mani never anticipated that he would also be made the fall man and be unceremoniously dumped by Rajiv’s politically naïve, ungrateful and inexperienced son, Rahul.
There is also another important issue. Mani is committed to a socialism/secularism which has faded out in the new world order. His vision of secularism, a rigid division of religion and State emanates from the French Revolution of 1789 and subsequent history. In today’s France, hijab is not tolerated, nor is the turban and the Catholic Cross, in any government school.
In India, secularism is understood as tolerance for all religions. This flows from our history of 7,000 years of civilisation and 188 bitter years of divide and rule and Partition. As for socialism, today’s young India is fiercely aspirational and capitalist in approach. Those who told Mani that ‘Garibi Hatao’ would no longer work were right!
Mani is too loyally attached to the ideals on which he was brought up. That is what defines him. He cannot change. That India belongs to the past. Mani must embrace the new India. It is not a ‘curtain call’ at all. It is an invitation to move into the new future that beckons him forward. Even if he would not agree with me, I am sure his wife Suneet would!
(Reviewed by Ambassador Bhaswati Mukherjee. Mukherjee was Ambassador to UNESCO, France and to The Netherlands.)