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1991: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Made History
by Sanjaya Baru (Author)
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After regime changed in 2014, it was as if nation breathed, a long deep breath. It reflected in everything, including films. Within a couple of years there were not only startling changes in nation's dealing with the terrorist attacks that had become routine during the previous decade, but it reflected immediately in films.
One weekend that year was very remarkable and remains in memory as shining, less in events and more in terms of effect of a couple of films. "Uri ..." was, of course, expected to have that impact.
"Accidental Prime Minister" was, at the other extreme, had evoked few expectations other than that of a good performance by the seasoned performer in title role. But this was only a five percent of the final, immensely surprising impact, at the end. Apart from the complete delight by the artist playing the narrator, the background of the tapestry was the real pleasure, the author Sanjay Baru.
So getting this one was almost totally due to his name, and a small part to the subject, a very capable PM of India who was subsequently, especially post his demise, humiliated in a way unimaginable in any other nation or culture not supposedly a totalitarian dictatorship.
And the introduction already fulfills expectations far more than raised by the name of the author, who is a delight in his intelligent and honest discourse, the way Arun Shourie, Tavleen Singh - and few, too few others in the climate created by decades of congress regimes post independence have been.
To anyone who lived through the era, reading this introduction merely brings a "yes, that's so" affirmation, and a pleasure of coming across the honesty and intelligence, quietly, so rare when political scenario until 2014 was mostly of regimes that promoted fodder thefts and raised worse thieves to positions undeserved, with rare exceptions of eras - 1977-79, subsequent BJP years at turn of millennium - all too short, when a lot of hopes were dashed all too soon as the corrupt returned to power.
Nobody tells the story of the proverbial Lutyen's Delhi and its elusive, famous leading figures as well as this author, not even Tavleen Singh, an intimate of the said Lutyen's Delhi. He paints so clear a portrait of situations, personae and various facets of the story, economic and political, history and personalities, with backgrounds filled in, that it's simultaneously familiar and a revelation.
One is reminded of Arun Shourie, in the honesty and intelligence, as well as Tavleen Singh, in her portrayals of events and personae, added to the Intelligence and honesty. Sanjaya Baru occupies a middle ground.
One has little clue if any of his ideological inclination, unlike Arun Shourie who impresses more also with his exhaustively thorough research into diverse topics he rakes up. But one gets a fleeting impression of someone who knows a lot more than he'd reveal, despite being g not quite as much an insider of Lutyen's Delhi as Tavleen Singh.
................................................................................................"Guiding India through new and hitherto uncharted terrain, in that fateful year, PV became the man of the moment. It is a tragedy of Indian politics that PV’s leadership on the economic, foreign policy and domestic political fronts has not received the recognition it deserves. His own party let him down, on the specious plea that his inaction during the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh in December 1992 had alienated the Muslim community. That is another story altogether, and one which begins in 1985 with Rajiv Gandhi and his advisers opening the doors of the Babri Masjid to Hindus who wished to pray there."
Blaming him rather than Rajiv Gandhi was the typical fraud Congress perpetrates routinely, permanently defying two names in India and condemning others to every garbage heap unless they are permanent slaves wearing masks of those two names. And this particular blame laid against him is fraudulent at every one of several levels. His real crime as far as Congress went must have been his being known as a PM at all, instead of a puppet or a joke, despite being neither European nor Nehru or Gandhi or muslim.
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Author quotes, in appendix, the address by P.V. Narasimha Rao at Tirupati session in full.
It'd be good if it were worth quoting. But it's full of the Congress lies, such as commitment to Gandhi and nonviolence (forgetting 1984?), claiming Congress was democratic but people fooled into voting against it in 1977, and more of the sort.
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"For his part, PV is the only prime minister who has left behind an entire book explaining his side of the story on a major issue of his tenure. In PV’s view, as he sums up in the book, Ayodhya: 6 December 1992, published posthumously, ‘I tried to explain all these things to my colleagues, but on their side also political and vote-earning considerations definitely prevailed and they had already made up their minds that one person was to be made historically responsible for the tragedy, in case the issue ended up in tragedy. If there had been success (as there definitely seemed to be, in the initial months) they would of course have readily shared the credit or appropriated it to themselves.’
"The real collapse of the Congress occurred in the 1980s. PV held everything together. He helped stabilize the economy and make the strategic shifts India was required to make in the post-Cold War era, recognizing the nature of the emerging multi-polar world. Of course, PV had his flaws and made his mistakes. Of course, there was much that was wrong with his government. But, in that one year, 1991, he offered quiet, sober and competent leadership to a nation unnerved by multiple crises and unforeseen changes and challenges.
:From vanaprastha he was on the verge of taking up sanyasa. He was called upon to be a karmayogi. For the leadership he provided in that fateful year PV deserved the Bharat Ratna. It is a sad commentary on this nation of ours that we do not know who our real heroes are and do not know how to honour them."
Baru has elsewhere mentioned him being blamed for mishandling 1984. Neither congress nor Baru nor most people, until recently, are willing to point a finger towards where real abdication of responsibility, if not outright guilt of genocide of innocent, lay.
But then, how few even name Suhrawardy in context of Calcutta massacres of ten thousand Hindus in three days, as per orders of Jinnah, beginning 16th August 1946?
Or how often is name of Noakhali mentioned in the real context, of massacre of 150,000 Hindus at time of Hindu festivals, after the Calcutta massacre?
Instead the name of Noakhali is used as glorification of Gandhi, who eventually nowhere close, claiming he succeeded in establishing peace - and showing how Hindus were dissuaded from retaliation by his fasting.
Obviously, no such dissuasion of the other side, from massacre of Hindus - immediately, and occasionally thereafter - was aimed at, much less expected. It's continued, including the train at Godhra set on fire in 2002, burning hundreds of pilgrims to death, including women and children, old and young alike.
Neither the then PM, nor the then home minister, are blamed directly for 1984 massacre, in Delhi or in Punjab or throughout India - except claiming mishandling by home minister, who really didn't hold power, PM being present when massacre began. So harping on BJP leaders for guilt about 1992, or 2002, is sheer fraud, not merely hypocrisy.
It's ironical that while they claim he was to blame for alienating a very appeased minority, they have no compunction claiming to be Hindu and denying the very existence of Rama, categorically and officially, in public! But then they even question the very existence of India, that too in Parliament, in extremely offensive terms.
Sushama Swaraj replied to the last one, more than comprehensively. But point remains, thst in all but name, Congress had turned India into an Abrahamic dictatorship, introducing a bill that parallelled inquisition - anyone of two later abrahmic minorities, Abrahamic-II and Abrahamic-III, could simply claim a Hindu had done something to displease, and the accused was to be indefinitely imprisoned without habeas corpus, no recourse to law or hearing; smaller minorities, however, were not accorded such rights, nor were Hindus; and, of course, thus was all strictly one way.
Even now, when it's about any object of worship of Hindus, anyone questioning or abusing the said object, or Hindus, is considered deserving of rights to free speech- while anyone responding with facts admitted throughout history by adherents of Abrahamic religions is not only immediately questioned but is demanded beheading of, by not just the said adherents, but those appeasing them under a fraudulent label of secularism. That last, of course, is led by congress.
Refugees in Delhi circa 1947-48 were far more realistic. They had to be. It was their lives staked by those asking them to return and be murdered cheerfully with love for murderers suffusing their beings!
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"It is a measure of his modesty that in his own lifetime he never made any claims about either making history or how he would be judged by it. In that sense, he had internalized the qualities of a sanyasi."
"If he had succeeded in conducting nuclear weapon tests in the winter of 1995, as he had planned to, his tenure would not only have begun with a bang but also ended with one, so to speak. In the event, he left the opportunity to test and declare India a nuclear weapons state to his friend and successor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee."
In fact India failed during tenure of congress due to the operating style of the then regime. It wasn't that "he left the opportunity to test and declare India a nuclear weapons state to his friend and successor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee" as much as that the style of functioning of said regime, changing even marginally then, made the difference. Major difference was, allowing those who could, unfettered by red tape and incompetent sycophants.
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"All these developments were politically significant both for the country and the ruling party. For the first time in years the Congress was learning to function once again like a normal political party. It is interesting to note that in PV’s semi-autobiographical work of fiction, The Insider, ... "
" ... PV’s observations, articulated through the various protagonists in the story, were his way of commenting on his own party. Within a decade of assuming power, Indira Gandhi changed the INC beyond recognition. In 1951, the INC was given the election symbol of two bullocks carrying a yoke. When the party split in 1967, the breakaway group that Indira Gandhi headed, called the Indian National Congress (Requisition)—INC (R)—because a group of Indira supporters ‘requisitioned’ a meeting at which the split with the original ‘organization’—INC (O)—was made official, was given the symbol of ‘cow and calf’. Few at the time made much of the fact that the cow and calf symbol represented the implicit hereditary succession in Congress leadership, from Nehru to Indira. Indeed, even fewer would have noted that this was equally a sign of things to come."
" ... As late as in 1966, Indira Gandhi was the only second-generation leader to step into a parent’s political office, albeit with a lag."
Baru has erred, if history of congress party as such is taken into account. Motilal Nehru had, through Gandhi, ensured in 1930 that party presidentship passed from him to his son, although party choice that year was Sardar Patel. Gandhi did this again by pushing out the elected popular president Subhash Chandra Bose via almost illegal conduct, and then ensuring he was thrown out.
So Indira Gandhi was third generation as far as Congress Party’s presidential position is concerned.
"It is possible to suggest that the first step towards inherited political power came when Motilal Nehru urged Mahatma Gandhi to name his son Jawaharlal as Congress president. Motilal did that on more than one occasion and Gandhiji obliged, to the dismay of both Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel. While Bose rejected Gandhiji’s preference for Nehru, Patel was too much of a loyalist to question the Mahatma. The Mahatma’s grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, a distinguished scholar in his own right, records in his book on the Mahatma, The Good Boatman, ‘Presiding at Lahore, Jawaharlal declared that he was “a republican and no believer in kings and princes”, but the succession from father (Motilal) to son seemed to send Jawaharlal’s mother Swaruprani into “a sort of ecstasy”, and there were admiring references to “a king passing on the scepter of the throne to his logical successor”. ... "
That drama was repeated recently in party and family.
" ... Gandhi, champion of the rights of the halt and the lame, the last and the least, had unwittingly launched a dynasty.’"
Unwittingly?
"It is this seed of hereditary succession that grew into a full-blown tree of family rule in Indira’s time. Dynastic politics took a huge leap forward in 1975 when Indira Gandhi brought her son Sanjay into the decision-making circle of her party. In 1980, Indira Gandhi returned to power as though she had a divine right to rule India. The durbar that had come into being during the Emergency and remained loyal to her after she was ousted in 1977 reinforced the image that she was the natural leader of government. Without inhibition she elevated her son Sanjay Gandhi to the status of heir apparent. Those who resented Sanjay’s bossism within the party and government were sidelined. A new generation of brash, young, socially upwardly mobile wannabes including Akbar Ahmed, Gundu Rao, Rukhsana Sultana, Jagdish Tytler, Kamal Nath, Ambika Soni, Bansi Lal and so on, acquired prominence both in party and government.
"No other national or even major regional political leader had till then so inducted a family member into politics and policymaking. Ideology-based parties of the political Left and Right were never touched by this syndrome. The elevation of Sanjay Gandhi to a position of unquestioned power heralded a new phase of politics in India wherein a political party leader’s family became the core of the party’s power structure. Following this precedent, most regional and caste- or community-based political parties have adopted dynastic succession as the method of leadership transition.
"Not surprisingly, therefore, when Sanjay died in a plane crash in June 1980 the coterie around Indira who ran party affairs ensured that Rajiv Gandhi, then an Indian Airlines pilot, was inducted into the party’s leadership. Rajiv’s induction after Sanjay’s death happened as if it was the natural order of things. ... "
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"Before PV at least four senior political leaders—three of them ex-Congressmen—tried leading non-Congress governments in New Delhi: Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, V. P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar. All of them failed. Most of them were in office for less than a year. PV, however, demonstrated his staying power within a year. He did this not by becoming authoritarian, but by being democratic in his instincts, consensual in his approach and, above all, transactional in his dealings. His style of slow decision-making and not revealing his mind often frustrated people. But, over time, it became a new principle of political management—not taking a decision is also a decision.
"Within the span of a year PV showed that the Indian economy and polity could dream of normal times, of better times; that India would enter the twenty-first century as an open society, an open economy and a normal democratic polity. India was no banana republic in which one family would rule. India was not a closed economy in which bureaucratic socialism would crush free enterprise. India could now aspire to be like many other democracies—a nation built on meritocracy and individual enterprise in which feudal privilege would no longer give anyone an advantage at birth."
"In 1998, when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was unseated by a vote of no-confidence, Sonia made an abortive bid to become prime minister. She was thwarted by Mulayam Singh Yadav who withdrew support to the Congress-led government after indicating an initial willingness to offer it.
"In May 2004, when the Congress was once again in a position to form a minority government leading a coalition, the family coterie pushed for Sonia to become prime minister. This time she wisely chose not to. ... "
Wisely, nothing. Has Sanjaya Baru missed the frank admission by Dr Subramanian Swamy telling different audiences about how she was all set to be PM, when he saw her own nomination for herself amongst the (over five hundred or so) nominations individually signed by various makers of party, as he went by invitation for lunch with the then president of India, Dr, Kalam?
Dr Subramanian Swamy had informed Dr Kalam of the illegality of such a possibility, since constitution of India was particular about reciprocity; and an Indian couldn't be even a municipal official in Italy!
Thus informed, the president took steps, and as Dr Subramanian Swamy tells, when he called her, sobbing was witnessed; a coterie of Italian friends and relatives, after all, was present, having travelled all the way to watch an Italian enshrined at the position of PM of India!
Later the speech giving it a turn of individual choice was much publicised as choice, but subsequently the law (against an Italian or another foreigner from similar country becoming PM of India) was, reportedly, changed during the 2004-14 decade.
Someone on internet argues this change as being independent of policies of other nations (who prevent Indians from comparable positions).
" ... However, the party adopted a new methodology to select its prime minister. It elected Sonia as the chairperson of the CPP. Sonia was then authorized to ‘nominate’ the head of government.
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"It was only in May 2014 that once again a single party with a simple majority was able to form the government. This time it was a government of the BJP, headed by Narendra Modi. The Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, experienced its worst ever rout in history, securing 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha.
"During the intervening years the Congress Party disowned PV. His name was virtually erased from the party’s public memory. When he died, the party shut the gates of its headquarters and refused to bid official farewell to a former president. His crime: seeking to end the proprietary control of the INC by the Nehru-Gandhi family. PV died on 23 December 2004. In the decade since then the only Congress leader who has regularly and religiously paid tribute and honoured PV’s memory on the occasion of his birth anniversary has been Manmohan Singh—the man whose political career was made by PV. But even Manmohan Singh was unable to honour PV with a Bharat Ratna during his decade-long tenure as prime minister. The party had again become a proprietorship."
Baru isn't recounting here but has done so in his more famous work, The Accidental Prime Minister - about the graceless way the once PM of India was dealth with after his death, by further kicking out of the deceased PM by the party, at instructions by the party president - how she insisted his son not even conduct his funeral in Delhi, but take his body back to Andhra Pradesh for the purpose, with no one from party allowed to be present, much less from government or Parliament.
"In the Indian subcontinent the tone for the 1980s was set by two significant developments in India’s wider neighbourhood. First, the emergence of Deng Xiaoping as China’s new leader. Second, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and the joint Pakistan-US led jihadi campaign against Russia. Under Deng began the inexorable rise of China. Thanks to Soviet action and US response in Afghanistan, Islamic radicalism knocked at India’s door.
"Deng blew the dust off Zhou Enlai’s Four Modernizations of 1963 and launched, in 1978, his own revolution for the modernization and transformation of China. The modernization of agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology were Deng’s four priorities. Deng’s assumption of power was preceded by a rapprochement between the People’s Republic and the United States of America. This altered the Cold War balance of power across Eurasia and the Asia Pacific region. Not only had India’s strategic environment been altered, but Indian attitudes towards nation-building and modernization began to change."
"According to Dixit, Indira sent Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao to Moscow to persuade the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko called on her, asking her to ‘understand’ what factors led to the ‘Soviet initiative’, as he put it. Mrs Gandhi merely let him know that she had heard what had been said and had ‘taken note of it’. She stopped short of expressing her ‘understanding’."
Did India fail to recognise the threat of jihadists that had been inserted by Pakistan, specifically by Zia, into Afghanistan, leading the country's then president to ask USSR for urgent help? This was part of the Green crescent strategy by Reagan and Kissinger to surround USSR, pursued independently by Pakistan in tandem, as part of an agenda towards world conquest in name of faith to justify its own existence.
" ... But despite tentative Indian efforts there was no qualitative change in the US-India relationship during the 1980s. "
Seeing the efforts by Reagan and Kissinger to use Pakistan and China towards breaking up USSR, and their disdain for India that was a slightly less virulent version of Nixon's openly abusive language referring towards Indira Gandhi, with a background of the general attitude of colonial racism that expected India to grovel and hated India for not kowtowing, what else could one expect from the then Republican regime of US while India wasn't about to go on knees (- and still won't)?
After FDR, and JFK, the only US leadership actually friendly to India instead of tacitly or openly supporting jihadist terrorism against India by Pakistan has been Donald Trump, and perhaps to a much smaller extent, Clinton during his visit, but not necessarily before the visit.
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"In this decade of flux, the external environment was far from comfortable for India. In many ways, India’s unwillingness or inability to think its relationships anew, the rekindling of old suspicions with respect to the West, a new discomfort with an old friend, the Soviet Union, and the changing equations in Asia defined the 1980s. India retreated into an old comfort zone hosting the Non-Aligned Summit in 1983 and building new equations with other developing countries in associations such as the G-77 and G-15."
"India’s investment in South-South links and developing country partnerships were not particularly helpful when it came to dealing with the balance of payments crisis. In fact, in order to deal with this crisis, India’s finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, had to turn to the world’s rich, the Group of 7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US), for help, even if in vain. His counterpart in Tokyo did not even have time to meet him. Japan was busy doing business with China."
And yet, reciprocation from China was to oppose every move by Japan on world political stage, citing WWII history, assumptions underlying being any misbehavior by China was only right - treatment of Tibet and Tibetans being only one glaring example, threatening and attacking India periodically another, treatment of its own citizens an unacknowledged one that includes huge genocide to the tune of a hundred million, and generally bullying every neighour and claiming and occupying island territories, arguing that the nomenclature "South China Sea" justifies China claiming such ownership of everything therein.
If that were conceded, shouldn't India be conceded ownership of Indian Ocean, and be paid hugely for islands therein, along with passage fees by every vessel and every plane transiting during last millennium to begin with?
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"As that long decade came to an abrupt end, global geopolitics shifted rapidly. India was caught unawares, dealing simultaneously with political transition and economic crisis. While Chandra Shekhar was quick to grasp the implications of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Indian diplomats and strategic thinkers took time to understand what these changes in the global environment would mean for India."
They hadn't got it even post Kargil, when Israel was a huge help while few others were anywhere near helpful in a comparable range. Diplomats from India at UN had, nevertheless, despite instructions specifically otherwise, voted against Israel in UN, disobeying orders from the then government of India!
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"By the time PV took charge the picture was clearer. Speaking to the Economic Times in July 1991, on the options available to the government on the economic policy front, a chastened Yashwant Sinha observed: ‘The budget will mark a major departure from the kind of economic policies that have been followed since Independence. Policy will have to be viewed in the context not only of the dramatic collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe, but also of the decisive victory of the United States in the Gulf War. The impact of these two events should not be underestimated.’
"The implosion of the Soviet Union had more than geopolitical consequences for India. It also had profound economic implications at a particularly difficult time. In 1990 the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries that had rupee payment arrangement for trade with India accounted for 17 per cent of India’s total external trade. This share collapsed to 2 per cent in 1992. The sharp decline in rupee trade and the Russian insistence on moving away from the rupee-rouble arrangement to hard currency payments, especially for oil, imposed a further burden on India’s balance of payments. Officials in the ministries of finance and commerce were busy managing the crisis at home as well as the consequences for India of the crisis in the Soviet Union."
"In December 1991, the Chinese Premier Li Peng visited New Delhi. A new phase in India-China relations was quietly inaugurated and resulted, in 1993, in the two Asian neighbours who had fought a war along their border in 1962 signing the historic Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas. Whatever the continuing tensions between India and China over the years, this agreement ensured that no more lives were lost along the border in the subsequent quarter century."
That only lasted so long as China’s need for respite until they were ready to strike again, as usual.
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"The impact of the new turn in economic policy and India’s global economic reintegration on her diplomacy is clearly brought out by the contrasting remarks of two distinguished foreign ministers.
"In an interview to the Times of India given in 1993, the diplomat Natwar Singh remarked: ‘In my 31 years of service I never once spoke on economic issues. We thought it was infra dig to do so and left it to our commercial officers.’
"On the other hand, in the same news report, the foreign minister of the day, Dinesh Singh, was quoted as saying: ‘The work is cut out for our missions abroad. They will not only act as sales offices for marketing India’s new economic environment but will also be responsible for communicating the feedback from the local government and business community. Above all, they should actively seek foreign investment and new markets for India’s exports.’"
It's startling to realise that the latter name is one familiar from late sixties.
"The export push that followed the balance of payments crisis required India to place greater emphasis on relations with the world’s rapidly growing markets of East and Southeast Asia. As foreign minister in Indira’s cabinet, PV had travelled extensively around the region and was impressed by the development experience of Singapore, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong. In Singapore he quickly established a warm and purposeful relationship with its premier, Goh Chok Tong, who spoke of an ‘India fever’ gripping the island nation.
"A natural consequence of this search for markets and investment was PV’s ‘Look East Policy’. PV overturned India’s longstanding reticence to dealing with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and actively sought closer links with its member countries. Focused on taking advantage of China’s new policy of openness, Japan neglected India in the 1990s. Finance Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, the man who had no time for Yashwant Sinha in early 1991 did visit India in late 1991 but no investment was forthcoming."
Baru is refraining from explaining history thereof, of Jawaharlal Nehru and subsequent congress led Indian regimes treating Japan and Formosa with disdain, hostility and contempt, even after the 1962 debacle of supposed friendship with China. This, in spite of - or was it because of? - history of Japan not only helping Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in his aim of freedom for India, but the immense regard and loyalty showed him by Japan and its top leadership, especially military.
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"The outreach to Southeast Asia, through a ‘Look East’ policy and the outreach to West Asia, packaged in a new pragmatism, were shaped by the evolving Indian view that its geopolitical and geo-economic interests spanned a much wider circumference around the subcontinent than that suggested by the post-Independence geographical construct called ‘South Asia’. ... "
If by 'construct', Baru means a made up name to hide reality and wipe of memory thereof, the viciousness of the term is still evident - for it's only what was once called India, regardless of political fividions thereof, for tens of millennia, by those not of the kind and her culture, belonging to it, but were outsiders.
" ... India had already rejuvenated its ancient cultural links with Southeast Asia, and Nehru had tried to forge post-colonial political links, ... "
Is Baru unaware of how congress, especially Jawaharlal Nehru, dealt with neighbour's other than China? He'd on a visit to Indonesia told them it was "Coca-Cola land", to which they'd factually enough replied to the effect that they had to accept help where they could find it!
" ... but it was left to PV to forge new economic ties in the context of the end of the Cold War and India’s own economic opening up. India sought closer economic ties with Japan, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, member nations of ASEAN and even China."
"Even China", presumably, refers to China's vicious behaviour of 1962 and subsequently at least one skirmish at border in twentieth century, latter not very publicised.
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"Turning to the West, PV entered 1992 elevating the India-Israel relationship to the diplomatic level. India’s economic rise required West Asia’s energy resources as much as India’s growing middle-class population needed the employment and business opportunities being generated in West Asia."
Baru seems uncomfortable referring to Israel. Else why talk of West Asia when referring to Israel? Fact is, that's another area where India, following Gandhi, erred morally and ethically. Excuse given by later discussions and policy was, any relationship with Israel would draw wrath of Arab nations. But most of West has managed it well enough. The kowtowing to Islamic lands to the extent done by India prior to 2014 was a choice following Gandhi uncritically and unthinkingly.
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"India had extended recognition to Israel in Nehru’s time and did have consular relations. It even hosted a secret visit by General Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defence minister, in the late 1980s. But it was in January 1992 that the two countries established formal diplomatic relations. The decision about Israel had many dimensions to it. First, Israel was a potential supplier of defence equipment. With the implosion of the Soviet Union India had to diversify its sources of defence imports; in 1990, the Soviets supplied as much as 90 per cent of India’s defence equipment. Attempts to diversify sources and bring in European suppliers suffered a blow on account of the Bofors controversy. Israel was a new and a good option.
"Second, India wished to get out of the West Asian trap by maintaining good relations with all regional powers—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Israel. Finally, Israel opened new doors for India in the United States. The powerful Jewish lobby in the US held the key to many doors in the corridors of power and wealth along the US East Coast. India was seeking money and a new strategic equation with the world’s biggest economy and the sole superpower. Establishing diplomatic relations with Israel was one more initiative towards that end."
Considering Israel Knesset's first resolution was thanking India because it was the only kind where, for centuries, millennia, Jews had lived with dignity and freedom of worship without any fear of persecution, all due to Hindu culture not persecuting others, recognition of Israel was the least India owed. And a friendly tie with a nation that shared either India the question of survival when surrounded by what US terns "green crescent ", is only wisdom.
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"PV’s first foreign tour as prime minister was, however, to Germany. He told Parliament that this decision was shaped by economic considerations. The US victory in the Cold War might have turned the world ‘unipolar’ in military terms, PV told the Lok Sabha in September 1991, ‘but in the economic sense it is multi-polar, it is multi-centric’.
"Germany lay at the heart of the new European project. The unification of the European market would create a new global economic entity led by Germany. That is why, PV explained, he chose to make Germany his first port of call.
"In emphasizing the emerging global economic multi-polarity at a time when geopolitical analysts were all focused on US military power and the new ‘unipolar’ world that they thought would replace the dying ‘bipolar’ Cold War era, PV was prescient. The US had an exaggerated sense of its military power at the end of the Cold War and got embroiled in military conflicts in Eastern Europe and West Asia, while China quietly built its economic capability. Today’s multi-polar world has been built on the foundations of globally dispersed economic development, especially the rise of China as an economic superpower."
That last would be impossible had US not bent over backwards helping.
"European geopolitical analysts have only recently begun to view Germany as a ‘geo-economic power’, but PV’s remarks in Parliament in 1991 suggest an early Indian appreciation of the changing nature of international relations in the post-Cold War era. To view the world as multi-polar or multi-centric, as PV did, because of the global dispersal of economic power, without being overwhelmed by the concentration of military power among a few, shows a very sophisticated strategic mind at work.
"In PV’s time, when the US still enjoyed overwhelming military power, only a few scholars like Samuel Huntington at Harvard, were emphasizing the importance of economic power. We now know from Sitapati’s biography of PV that he was in fact familiar with Huntington’s writings and may well have been aware of how historians and strategic analysts were beginning to view the nature of power in the post-Cold War world. Once the brief post-Cold War ‘unipolar moment’ was over, with the US-led fiasco in Iraq, the global balance of power was increasingly shaped by geo-economics. Nothing symbolized this better than China’s rise as a trading superpower."
"Even as he improved relations with ASEAN, PV became the first Indian prime minister to travel to the Republic of Korea. In Seoul, he urged Korean chaebol to invest in India in a big way. In 1991, there was no major Korean brand available in the Indian market. A decade later, Samsung and Hyundai had become household names across the subcontinent. In the months to come India would also take steps to establish closer links with Taiwan."
" ... Building bridges with Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea, Taiwan and the member countries of ASEAN was a natural response of a country seeking to stabilize its external economic profile, rebalance relations between major powers and accelerate the rate of growth of the economy. In the years that followed it was this thinking that defined the role of BRICS—the coalition of middle powers—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa."
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"The Nehru-Indira era in foreign policy was defined by multiple imperatives: (a) the Cold War and a desire to remain outside the military blocs of that era; (b) India’s quest for a global role as a post-colonial nation committed to the empowerment of other nations of the global South; and (c) India’s own development needs. ... "
Baru hasn't either realised it or isn't saying it. Nehru, inspired by and attempting to follow example of Gandhi,
(- who hadn't been content to use passive resistance for political aims but had instead strive towards an ambitious image as man of nonviolence and more, often going to extreme and often at cost of his own people -),
was trying to carve a niche in global history, build an image of himself as a messenger of peace and friendship, someone who dared to speak against colonial powers of West in general; so much so he didn't see realities close - Tibet occupied by China, Tibetans losing their rights and homelands - just as Gandhi didn't see he was damaging those he demanded extraordinary, inhuman levels of sacrifices from, all without any point.
" ... This phase began to end in the 1970s. The 1980s was a decade of flux in Indian foreign policy. On the one hand, India would host the Non-aligned Summit and propose universal nuclear disarmament, on the other, it would reach out to the West and quietly build its own nuclear capability. This incipient pragmatism of the 1980s found freer expression during PV’s time and after. Indian foreign policy was increasingly defined by the demands of economic development and India’s reintegration into the global economy. India needed markets, technology, capital. India wanted a quieter and more stable neighbourhood. India had to catch up on the development front with East and Southeast Asia. India needed an assured supply of energy and access to new employment opportunities for Indians in West Asia."
Those were more realistic assessments and aims.
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Baru begins final chapter by summing up Chandra Shekhar, PV Narasimha Rao and Rajiv Gandhi in context of 1991, giving credit to last two, and saying
"Rajiv contributed to the Congress victory in 1991 with his life. It was his dastardly assassination that gave his party the numbers to form a government. In that hour of crisis, the diminutive, retiring PV stepped up."
If, living and working in Delhi as a journalist that Baru did then, he was unaware of the 1984 massacre mislabelled conveniently as 'riots' were in fact well pre-planned ahead and involved Congress party members directing so-called mobs, Baru couldn't have been much of a journalist. Else he's avoiding mentioning major factors unrelated to his thesis.
As for Chandra Shekhar’s stepping down, it was result of Rajiv Gandhi’s attempts to turn him too into a puppet, which backfired. Chandra Shekhar has always been known throughout his life and career as an honest, upright man. He did not place ambition, whether personal or larger, above values. This quality cannot be manipulated by those seeking to achieve aims other than welfare of nation.
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"Guiding India through new and hitherto uncharted terrain, in that fateful year, PV became the man of the moment. It is a tragedy of Indian politics that PV’s leadership on the economic, foreign policy and domestic political fronts has not received the recognition it deserves. His own party let him down, on the specious plea that his inaction during the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh in December 1992 had alienated the Muslim community. That is another story altogether, and one which begins in 1985 with Rajiv Gandhi and his advisers opening the doors of the Babri Masjid to Hindus who wished to pray there."
Blaming him rather than Rajiv Gandhi was the typical fraud Congress perpetrates routinely, permanently defying two names in India and condemning others to every garbage heap unless they are permanent slaves wearing masks of those two names. And this particular blame laid against him is fraudulent at every one of several levels. His real crime as far as Congress went must have been his being known as a PM at all, instead of a puppet or a joke, despite being neither European nor Nehru or Gandhi or muslim.
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"For his part, PV is the only prime minister who has left behind an entire book explaining his side of the story on a major issue of his tenure. In PV’s view, as he sums up in the book, Ayodhya: 6 December 1992, published posthumously, ‘I tried to explain all these things to my colleagues, but on their side also political and vote-earning considerations definitely prevailed and they had already made up their minds that one person was to be made historically responsible for the tragedy, in case the issue ended up in tragedy. If there had been success (as there definitely seemed to be, in the initial months) they would of course have readily shared the credit or appropriated it to themselves.’
"The real collapse of the Congress occurred in the 1980s. PV held everything together. He helped stabilize the economy and make the strategic shifts India was required to make in the post-Cold War era, recognizing the nature of the emerging multi-polar world. Of course, PV had his flaws and made his mistakes. Of course, there was much that was wrong with his government. But, in that one year, 1991, he offered quiet, sober and competent leadership to a nation unnerved by multiple crises and unforeseen changes and challenges.
:From vanaprastha he was on the verge of taking up sanyasa. He was called upon to be a karmayogi. For the leadership he provided in that fateful year PV deserved the Bharat Ratna. It is a sad commentary on this nation of ours that we do not know who our real heroes are and do not know how to honour them."
Baru has elsewhere mentioned him being blamed for mishandling 1984. Neither congress nor Baru nor most people, until recently, are willing to point a finger towards where real abdication of responsibility, if not outright guilt of genocide of innocent, lay.
But then, how few even name Suhrawardy in context of Calcutta massacres of ten thousand Hindus in three days, as per orders of Jinnah, beginning 16th August 1946?
Or how often is name of Noakhali mentioned in the real context, of massacre of 150,000 Hindus at time of Hindu festivals, after the Calcutta massacre?
Instead the name of Noakhali is used as glorification of Gandhi, who eventually nowhere close, claiming he succeeded in establishing peace - and showing how Hindus were dissuaded from retaliation by his fasting.
Obviously, no such dissuasion of the other side, from massacre of Hindus - immediately, and occasionally thereafter - was aimed at, much less expected. It's continued, including the train at Godhra set on fire in 2002, burning hundreds of pilgrims to death, including women and children, old and young alike.
Neither the then PM, nor the then home minister, are blamed directly for 1984 massacre, in Delhi or in Punjab or throughout India - except claiming mishandling by home minister, who really didn't hold power, PM being present when massacre began. So harping on BJP leaders for guilt about 1992, or 2002, is sheer fraud, not merely hypocrisy.
It's ironical that while they claim he was to blame for alienating a very appeased minority, they have no compunction claiming to be Hindu and denying the very existence of Rama, categorically and officially, in public! But then they even question the very existence of India, that too in Parliament, in extremely offensive terms.
Sushama Swaraj replied to the last one, more than comprehensively. But point remains, thst in all but name, Congress had turned India into an Abrahamic dictatorship, introducing a bill that parallelled inquisition - anyone of two later abrahmic minorities, Abrahamic-II and Abrahamic-III, could simply claim a Hindu had done something to displease, and the accused was to be indefinitely imprisoned without habeas corpus, no recourse to law or hearing; smaller minorities, however, were not accorded such rights, nor were Hindus; and, of course, thus was all strictly one way.
Even now, when it's about any object of worship of Hindus, anyone questioning or abusing the said object, or Hindus, is considered deserving of rights to free speech- while anyone responding with facts admitted throughout history by adherents of Abrahamic religions is not only immediately questioned but is demanded beheading of, by not just the said adherents, but those appeasing them under a fraudulent label of secularism. That last, of course, is led by congress.
Refugees in Delhi circa 1947-48 were far more realistic. They had to be. It was their lives staked by those asking them to return and be murdered cheerfully with love for murderers suffusing their beings!
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" ... 1991 was the year in which the Congress Party grabbed the opportunity to return to its origins as a national political party, and not just one more of the many family-dominated parties. Since then the ‘Indira Congress’ has morphed into the ‘Sonia Congress’. Can the party once again claim to be the Indian National Congress, as it could at Tirupati in 1992?"
Unlikely.
If once thinkers and honest idealists were deluded into joining the party that pretends democratic values, today its morphed into an honest mafia led by a family ensconced at top that has thrown out every possible claimant including other members of family, as soon as clouds changed.
"Today the BJP and the Communists are among a handful of political parties that can claim that their political future is not a function of the physical longevity of their current leadership and that the emergence of a new leadership is not a function of their family and kinship ties."
And communists, Abrahamic-IV as termed by another author, are still kowtowing to China when not joining other abrahmics, specifically Abrahamic-II and Abrahamic-III, to attack everything of India.
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"It is a measure of his modesty that in his own lifetime he never made any claims about either making history or how he would be judged by it. In that sense, he had internalized the qualities of a sanyasi."
"If he had succeeded in conducting nuclear weapon tests in the winter of 1995, as he had planned to, his tenure would not only have begun with a bang but also ended with one, so to speak. In the event, he left the opportunity to test and declare India a nuclear weapons state to his friend and successor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee."
In fact India failed during tenure of congress due to the operating style of the then regime. It wasn't that "he left the opportunity to test and declare India a nuclear weapons state to his friend and successor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee" as much as that the style of functioning of said regime, changing even marginally then, made the difference. Major difference was, allowing those who could, unfettered by red tape and incompetent sycophants.
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Author quotes, in appendix, the address by P.V. Narasimha Rao at Tirupati session in full.
It'd be good if it were worth quoting. But it's full of the Congress lies, such as commitment to Gandhi and nonviolence (forgetting 1984?), claiming Congress was democratic but people fooled into voting against it in 1977, and more of the sort.
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Contents
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Introduction
1.January: The Politics
2.March: The Crisis
3.May: The Elections
4.June: The Government
5.July: The Reforms
6.November: The Party
7.December: The World
8.The Middle Way
Acknowledgements
Appendix
Notes and References
Index
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REVIEW
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Introduction
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" ... We cannot understand 1991 without understanding the role of the political leadership that made the policy changes of 1991 possible. In that fateful year, India saw new political leaders emerge out of the shadows of the Delhi durbar, who set a different course for the country to follow. Equally responsible for political and economic change were global whirlwinds of various sorts. This book is an account of the politics, the economics and the geopolitics that combined to make 1991 an important year in India’s recent history. But without doubt, the central character was PV. The year made him. He made the year. For India, it was a turning point."
" ... It was a landmark year.
"And yet, the commonplace view is that 1991 was eventful because of an economic crisis that forced India to take a new turn in its economic policies. But 1991 was about more than just that. It was also the year in which Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and the Soviet Union imploded. In that dark hour, a diminutive, uncharismatic Congressman rose to the occasion.
"PV was India’s first ‘accidental’ prime minister, and a path-breaking one. He took charge of the national government and restored political stability; assumed leadership of the Congress, proving that there was hope beyond the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty; pushed through significant economic reforms; and steered India through the uncharted waters of the post-Cold War world.
"PV, as I shall henceforth refer to Narasimha Rao, not only ruled a full term but his policies ushered in a new era and gave new direction to national politics. He was an unlikely prime minister but a seminal one. Unlike the many short-lived prime ministers before him—Gulzarilal Nanda (May-June 1964, 11-24 January 1966), Morarji Desai (March 1977-July 1979), Charan Singh (July 1979-January 1980), Vishwanath Pratap Singh (December 1989-November 1990) and Chandra Shekhar (November 1990-June 1991)—PV was not even a Member of Parliament on the day he was named India’s twelfth prime minister."
"The economic crisis of 1991—an external payments, or a balance of payments crisis, to be precise—was in fact the consequence of a political impasse India found itself in. A series of political and economic events of the 1980s came to a head around 1990-91. India was on the verge of defaulting on its external payments obligations, with foreign exchange reserves dwindling rapidly as oil prices went up, exports went down and non-resident Indians began withdrawing their deposits in foreign currency accounts in India.
"While this situation can, in part, be attributed to unexpected and extraneous factors like the Gulf War of 1990-91, one important reason for the precipitous fall in foreign exchange reserves was a loss of confidence in the Indian government’s ability to deal with a difficult economic situation. That difficulty was almost entirely on account of the political brinkmanship and populism of a variety of political actors. In the end, it was politics that trumped economics.
"The economic crisis of 1991 was as much a consequence of bad economic management of the preceding half decade during the tenures of Rajiv Gandhi (1984-1989) and V. P. Singh, as it was of the political choices they made. That is, the responsibility for the events that combined to push India to the brink of default must lie with Rajiv Gandhi and V. P. Singh. It was then left to Chandra Shekhar and Narasimha Rao to arrest the slide and clean up the mess. And the credit for understanding the seriousness of the situation and acting in time must go to the two of them."
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"Like the shift away from the Congress system in political management, the turn away from Nehruvian economics to what one may rightfully describe as ‘Narasimhanomics’ occurred through several gradual moves, beginning with Indira Gandhi’s decision to enter into a borrowing programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1981. This shift gained pace during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure in the 1980s.
"However, Indira Gandhi was defensive and tentative in the policy reform she chose to undertake after 1980. She made much of returning the last tranche of the IMF loan and ending the programme when faced with criticism from the Communist parties. Her modest attempt to change course would always be viewed against the radicalism of many of her earlier policies. In fact, the licence-permit raj and many restrictions on business enterprise were post-Nehruvian and the contribution of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi too was defensive in his liberalization moves, not wanting to be viewed as pro-business. As the economist Jagdish Bhagwati observed, ‘[Rajiv Gandhi’s] reforms were hardly revolutionary in conception or in execution. In retrospect, they amounted to an acquiescence in the regime but a mild attempt at moderating its worst excesses.’
"PV was unabashed about his moves. The ‘credibility’ of his initiative, as Bhagwati notes, was ‘far greater’. He was convinced that the ancien régime (the licence-permit raj) must go. And that is what he made happen. Within a month of taking charge PV dismantled it in one fell swoop. Indian enterprise, PV believed, would bloom if liberated from the straitjacket of bureaucratic socialism. It is worth noting that he was the only prime minister who had the political courage to confer a business leader with the nation’s highest honour, when he bestowed the Bharat Ratna on J. R. D. Tata. No businessman has since been so honoured."
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"India’s sovereign credit ratings had gone up and down over the years but never before had any rating agency pointed to ‘political risk’ as a reason for downgrading India. That happened in October 1990. In December 1990 Chandra Shekhar committed his government to implementing policies that could have averted a balance of payments crisis. His finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, entered into a fiscal stabilization and structural adjustment programme with the IMF. If he had been allowed to present his government’s budget in February 1991, and undertake the reforms the government had promised the IMF it would, confidence in India would have been restored. That did not happen.
"The global environment too was in a flux. The end of the Cold War and the implosion of the Soviet Union had altered the strategic environment shaping Indian foreign policy. China, for a long time a dragon asleep, or at least one with its head hidden between its legs and looking inward, was emerging as a more open and dynamic economy. Asia to India’s east was rapidly moving ahead, while Asia to India’s west was embroiled in conflict. The delicate balance of power in West Asia was rudely disturbed when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. India felt the impact of this destabilization as oil prices shot up."
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" ... The story that most economists like to tell is that in 1991 good economics drove out bad economics. Few have made the point that in that historic year, good politics also drove out bad politics. By good politics I mean good political management. PV’s wisdom came to India’s rescue. The brinkmanship, the one-upmanship, the short-termism of the 1989-91 period, driven by the petty political ambitions of myopic and inexperienced leaders, was replaced by a long-term vision of a long distance runner. True, Chandra Shekhar too could have been India’s man of destiny. But destiny chose PV."
"I have often been asked how one should evaluate the tenure of a prime minister. My reply has always been that one must compare the nation, the polity and the economy that a person inherits the day she takes charge with the state of affairs when one demits that office. By that yardstick Jawaharlal Nehru was a great prime minister at the end of his first decade in office. His image and legacy were dented by the last five years of his tenure, especially the border war with China in 1962. Indira Gandhi entered the history books by supporting the struggle for the liberation of Bangladesh. But her management of the economy was patchy. All the prime ministers who had short-lived tenures during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and Rajiv Gandhi did not leave the kind of imprint that would earn them a place in the history books. PV did. He steered the country through a period of political uncertainty, economic crisis and shift in the global balance of power.
"The initiatives that PV took within a year of assuming office have since defined the post-Nehruvian era in India. The policy shift on the economic front was the more obvious of the changes and the one that has received the most academic attention. Less appreciated have been the shifts on the foreign policy front, both within Asia and around the world, and the interrelationship between the two. Finally, there was the new turn on the political front with the era of single party dominance giving way to an era of coalitions."
" ... The manner in which PV dealt with each of these challenges marks 1991 as a ‘landmark’ year, to use Hobsbawm’s term. After 1947 it was, without doubt, the single most important year in India’s contemporary history."
" ... The ‘Indira Congress’ once again became the Indian National Congress at the 1992 Tirupati session of the AICC. The party briefly came out of the long shadow of the Nehru-Gandhis. ... "
"The story of 1991 begins with external events impacting India. Through the spring, summer and monsoon months, domestic economics and politics shaped the course of events. In the winter of 1991 tectonic shifts in the global balance of power altered India’s strategic environment.
"India entered 1991 with trepidation. As the year came to an end it found its feet."
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June 17, 2022 - June 17, 2022.
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1. January: The Politics
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"In the early hours of 9 January 1991, a giant United States Air Force’s transport aircraft, the C-141 Starlifter, lowered its body onto the tarmac of Bombay’s Sahar International Airport (now called Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport). While on a flight from a US airbase in the Philippines to a base in the Gulf the aircraft decided to refuel in Bombay. Operation Desert Storm, the US attack on Iraq, aimed at liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s occupation army, was about to be launched. The US armed forces were gathering men and material in countries surrounding Iraq in preparation for an attack.
"Information of the aircraft’s arrival and departure was conveyed by the Intelligence Bureau to the then cabinet secretary, Naresh Chandra. Chandra decided that the prime minister should be briefed immediately. Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, an ex-Congressman and a quintessential Congress socialist, was angry. Why would the United States want to implicate India in its campaign against Iraq’s strongman, Saddam Hussein? Saddam had been friendly towards India, the only Arab leader to support India against Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. But then Chandra reminded the prime minister that Saddam had now become a terrible dictator, ready to destroy any opposition. He had become unpopular among the Arabs and was engaged in a territorial dispute with Iran. Moreover, India needed US support in securing assistance from the IMF. It was time for India to rethink its approach."
"The foreign office was, however, divided on Iraq. Some felt Saddam was still a useful friend of India and so the government should deny refuelling facilities to US military aircraft henceforth. Others felt that Saddam’s actions had already imposed a heavy burden on India not only by pushing oil prices up but also by creating uncertainty for thousands of Indians living in Kuwait. Moreover, there was no evidence that the aircraft that had already refuelled and left was carrying any military hardware. It, and those to follow, may have had only non-combat materiel.
"Even though India was a non-aligned nation during the Cold War, it had reached out to the US for military assistance when attacked by China in 1962, and to the Soviet Union in 1971, in preparation for the liberation of Bangladesh (when the US and China had ganged up on Pakistan’s side). It was now India’s turn to respond to a US request for help.
"Chandra Shekhar’s major concern at the time, apart from ensuring the political survival of his minority government, was to get the IMF to extend balance of payments support to India. India’s foreign exchange reserves were rapidly dwindling, and it had thus approached the IMF, the lender of last resort, in December 1990. The United States was the largest shareholder on the IMF board, and in that capacity had virtual veto power when it came to the authorization of loans. The US could hurt India by not supporting its loan application.
"Back in 1981 the US had threatened to do just that when Indira Gandhi’s government approached the IMF for a US$5 billion extended fund facility. At that time, the US wanted more forthright criticism of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan than what Indira Gandhi had been willing to make. Not that Indira was not critical of the Soviets. When the Russian supremo, Leonid Brezhnev, asked Indira, ‘I want to get out of Afghanistan. Please show me the way,’ she is reported to have said, in a tone that implied disapproval, ‘The way out is the same as the way in.’
"The US sought a more public condemnation of the Soviets. But India still needed the Soviets, not least because they were still the most important suppliers of defence equipment. The rupee-rouble trade also made USSR an important trade partner, with a share of over 16 per cent in India’s total trade. India’s executive director on the IMF board, M. Narasimham, was advised to tell the Americans that if the US did not support India’s application then India’s dependence on the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), a Soviet-led economic grouping including socialist economies and the allies of the Soviets, would only increase."
"As US strategic policy guru Henry Kissinger explained in a column in the India Today, the purpose of the US intervention in the Gulf was not to dethrone Saddam, but to ensure that no one country emerged as a regional hegemon in the new post-Cold War world. Whatever the merits of US strategy, the fact is that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait gave the US an early opportunity to define the new rules of engagement in the emerging post-Cold War world. India understood the game in time."
"Chandra Shekhar trusted the cabinet secretary’s judgement. He chose to remain quiet. The US aircraft were only landing to buy fuel, and this was permissible under international law. The only minor concession India had to extend was to forgo checking the cargo aboard the aircraft and take the declaration in the manifest as factual. The declaration did not list any military hardware or troops on board. But who knew what was inside? The government did not insist on entering the craft to check what was on board. That was a conscious decision of the prime minister and his cabinet secretary. Chandra Shekhar’s helpful ‘pragmatism’ did not go unnoticed in Washington DC.
................................................................................................"Over the next month, two US military aircraft landed every day at the Bombay, Madras and Agra airports, flying from the Philippines to the Gulf. Bombay’s Sahar airport and Madras’s Nungambakkam airport were civilian airports. Agra was a military airport. Moreover, Madras and Bombay can be regarded to be on a straight line from the Philippines to the Gulf. Agra was further north. Perhaps the fact that India allowed US military aircraft to land at a military airfield was in itself seen as an important gesture. The US also sought and secured transit facilities for its navy. On 21 January, the USS Ford, a guided missile frigate, docked at the Bombay harbour, also en route from the Pacific to the Gulf.
"For over two weeks these visits remained unreported. On 28 January 1991, the Times of India ‘spilled some hazardous beans’, as Inder Kumar Gujral, V. P. Singh’s foreign minister, observed in his autobiography. It was Gujral who had originally authorized the overflight of US military aircraft over Indian territory. He claims he had done so during peace time with no knowledge of any planned US attack on Iraq. Gujral had been severely criticized at home for hugging Saddam Hussein in a warm gesture of friendship even as Indian workers in Kuwait were living in fear of invading Iraqi soldiers."
"It was not surprising that many in India and around the world viewed the Chandra Shekhar government’s decision to permit refuelling of US military planes as a political concession aimed at securing US support for an IMF loan. It was also thought of as an early Indian response to the shift underway in the global balance of power with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Indian defence strategists were also aware that China had become militarily active in the Gulf, with growing defence ties to Iraq and Saudi Arabia. India could not afford to sit back on its haunches."
................................................................................................"But the US administration wasn’t the only entity Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar had to keep happy that January. He had to keep the president of the Congress Party happy too. Remember, the prime minister was heading a minority government with the support of the Congress. His Janata Party had a mere 64 members in the 529-member Lok Sabha, and he needed the support of Rajiv Gandhi’s 197 Congress MPs."
"It wasn’t that Rajiv did not understand the importance of growing US–India defence cooperation, particularly following his successful visit to Washington DC in 1985. In December 1990, President George Bush Sr. sent his assistant secretary of defence for international security, Henry Rowen, to New Delhi along with a large delegation of civil and military officials. While the US was looking at India as a potential partner in dealing with a resurgent China and a troublesome West Asia, India was viewing the US as a source of both technology and defence cooperation given the declining fortunes of the Soviet Union, the rise of China and the problems with Pakistan.
"But larger and long-term strategic issues were hardly on Rajiv’s mind; he had his own problems. Within two months of extending Congress’s support to Chandra Shekhar to form a government, he realized his folly. Chandra Shekhar had become a bigger problem than Rajiv could ever imagine. He was, after all, a former Congressman from Indira’s days and knew the Congress well. Rajiv suspected that Chandra Shekhar was getting together with powerful provincial Congress leaders like Sharad Pawar to lengthen the longevity of his minority government. He may have hoped to lure the Congress Party, in spite of Rajiv, to join a coalition government. He had Rajiv and his coterie at sixes and sevens.