Paper no. 1202	25. 12. 2004
R. N. KAO ON NARASIMHA RAO by B.Raman It was November 1996. 2.The Congress (I) had been defeated in the elections. P.V.Narasimha Rao had lost office as Prime Minister and unceremoniously ousted from the leadership of the Congress (I). He was being dragged from court to court. Allegations galore against him ---corruption, nepotism, indecisiveness etc etc. He was literally down on the ground. Brickbats were being thrown at him from all sides. 3.There was hardly anyone inside the party or outside to defend him, speak well of him and draw attention to all the great things he had done as a member of the Cabinets of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi and as the Prime Minister: Economic reforms. Throwing open the Indian economy and jettisoning the remnants of the socialist policies of his predecessors. The end of terrorism in Punjab without conceding any of the demands of the terrorists. There has been no terrorism in Punjab since 1995. The successful termination of many hijackings without conceding the demands of the terrorists. His successful crisis management as the Home Minister after Operation Blue Star in June,1984, during which the Army raided the Golden Temple at Amritsar to neutralize a group of terrorists, who had literally taken possession of it. His refusal to concede the demands of the Kashmiri terrorists, who kidnapped P.Doraiswami, an executive of the Indian Oil Corporation, and of the Sikh terrorists, who had kidnapped Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat posted in New Delhi, in October,1991, in order to secure the release from detention of some terrorists. Both the Kashmiri and Sikh terrorists were ultimately forced to release the hostages without their demands being conceded. His decision in 1992 to bring into the open India's relations with Israel, which had been kept secret since they were first established under Indira Gandhi's orders in 1969 and to permit Israel to open an Embassy in New Delhi. His orders to the intelligence community in 1992 to start a systematic drive to draw the attention of the international community to the Pakistani State-sponsorship of terrorism against India and not to be discouraged by the US efforts to undermine the exercise. His crisis management after the Mumbai blasts of March,1993. He personally visited Mumbai after the blasts and after seeing the evidence of the Pakistani hand in the blasts, ordered the intelligence community to invite the intelligence agencies of the USA, the UK and some other West European countries to send their counter-terrorism experts to Mumbai to see things for themselves. He felt that if they felt convinced of the Pakistani role, they would at least tell their leaders, even if they did not admit it to India. His handling, as the Prime Minister, of the occupation of the Hazratbal holy shrine in Jammu & Kashmir by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in October,1993, and bringing it to an end without any damage to the shrine and  of the kidnapping of some foreign  tourists by Al Faran in J&K in 1995. He resisted pressure from various quarters to concede the demands of the terrorists in order to secure the release of the hostages. His launching of the "Look East"  foreign policy, which brought India closer to the ASEAN. Even while countering in a determined manner Pakistan's use of terrorism against India, keeping the lines of communications open at various levels.  He himself met Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani Prime Minister between 1990 and 1993, at Davos, Jakarta and Harare and encouraged his officials to keep meeting their Pakistani counterparts for discussing matters of common concern such as narcotics smuggling, border security etc. However, the meetings at the top political level came to a halt after Benazir Bhutto, who returned to power in 1993, repeatedly spurned his overtures for bilateral talks at the political level. His decision to maintain a distance from the Dalai Lama in order to avoid aggravating Beijing's suspicions and concerns and his successful overtures to Teheran. The "cultivate Iran" policy was pushed through vigorously by him. These policies paid rich dividends in March,1994, when Benazir Bhutto's efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu & Kashmir  failed for want of support from  China and Iran. 4. As a people, we revel in degrading  ourselves, our country, our leaders, our officials. 1996 was a free for all year---particularly after the publication of the observations of the N.N.Vohra Committee on the alleged links between politicians and criminals. Very few had any good word to say about our political leadership. It was being projected in large sections of the media in the most negative colours. 5. I felt the urge to defend the political class and Narasimha Rao. I felt that public opinion was unjust to Rao. Of course, there was a negative side to his record. His failure to prevent a Hindu mob from demolishing the Babri Masjid, his proximity to holy men of dubious reputation, the allegations of political corruption against him and personal corruption against a member of his family. Despite all this, he had more achievements to his credit than any of the post-1989 Prime Ministers. I wrote an article, which most newspapers won't accept. Ultimately, the "Business Line" of Chennai accepted it and carried it  on November 15,1996 ,  under the heading "In Defence of the Much-Maligned Class". 6. I was flooded with letters criticizing me, abusing me and questioning my judgement and  motive. It was quite depressing. And then  on December 4,1996, I received the following letter from one of the readers of my article: "Your piece on Narasimha Rao is specially thought-provoking, and I think that you have done a major service by drawing attention to the other side of the coin.  Public adulation is notoriously fickle. So, one should not be entirely surprised with what has happened to his reputation now. Quite often, we fail to see the wood for the trees.  I am not a great authority on Hinduism, but may I respectfully add that I do not entirely agree with your statement that Hinduism does not teach magnanimity? If anything distinguishes our religion from others, it is the spirit of tolerance. And, to my mind, magnanimity is only an extension of tolerance. In this particular instance, what has come to the forefront is the essential bitchiness of public fame. Perhaps, from the point of view of history, we are living too close to Narasimha Rao's times, to be able to do full justice to him." 7. Guess who it was? None other than R.N.Kao, the founding father of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's external intelligence agency and a close adviser to Indira Gandhi for many years. 8.  As I read the encomiums that are being showered  on Narasimha Rao after his death on December 23, 2004, ---in many cases, by the very same people who vied with each other in abusing him in 1996--- I was reminded of my article and Kao's reaction to it. 9. It does not require courage and magnanimity to praise a man after he is dead. It requires courage and magnanimity to defend  a man when he is still alive and appears to be down and out and becomes the target of unjustified maligning. 10.Here is my article of November 15,1996, a cutting of which I have fortunately preserved. (The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com ) IN DEFENCE OF THE MUCH-MALIGNED CLASS  When the hounds are hunting, it would be sheer folly to come in their way--- even with good intention. One would be mauled. At a time when a majority of the public, in its mind, seems to have already proclaimed the political class as the vilest of the vile,  and to be relishing the spectacle of what appears to be the culmination in humiliation of a long and distinguished political career of one of the rare scholars to have adorned the high office of the Prime Minister, it would be an act of utter stupidity to write in defence of the much-maligned class of politicians. But there are occasions when one has to commit such folly  and stupidity  in an attempt, even if it be in vain, to restore balance to a debate consumed by unthinking fury. The Vohra Committee's report on the alleged nexus between politicians and criminals was not the basic cause of this fury, but it broke the dykes of pent-up public anger against this class. Since then, any abuse of this class is fair criticism; any uncorroborated allegation is credible evidence and any innuendo is worthy of acceptance. The elite, with its air of self-assumed importance, has already pronounced judgement on this class. To it, the credibility of the evidence is immaterial. When the Vohra Committee report was published, I was not convinced of its objectivity and balance. More than a year later, I am still not-----despite all the scams, cash recoveries, dispensers of divine wisdom  to the powers that be and the sellers of pickles to ordinary mortals. We live in an age of MacHeroes. You stand on a soap-box  and denounce politicians and bureaucrats as unrepentant evil-doers. You become a star in the Indian firmament, adulated by a wide-eyed public and the press. You plead for them and you are dismissed as an unabashed apologist for their evil machinations. Many countries in Asia rose to nationhood in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Democracy worth the name has survived and flourished only in three of them--- India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Two of them are Hindu countries and one was strongly influenced  by Hindu and Buddhist thought. Hinduism teaches us the importance of detached judgement and balance---in our thinking, action, behaviour and attitude to others, whether friend or foe. It is our ability to maintain this balance that has contributed to the success of our democracy and it is the failure to do so that has delivered severe blows to it in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia and so on. The recent debate on the political class has shown disturbing signs that we are tending to lose this balance. I was invited to address a group of serving officers dealing with national security on threats to our national security. I covered the activities of the various extremist groups. During lunch break, some of the young officers told me : 'Sir, you did not cover the most important source of threat." I asked them what it was. "Politicians," they replied and referred to the Vohra Committee report in justification. This is but one such indication  of such signs and should make us think where we are heading. I have lived in Western Europe for eight years--- three of them at the height of the Bofors investigation. I had the privilege of knowing Ms.Chitra Subramanian, who along with Mr.N.Ram, played a stellar role in exposing the undesirable aspects of this deal. I was not involved in the Bofors investigation,  but was privy to the progress of it. During my career, I have traveled widely from Canada to Uganda, from the US to Macau. In the last eight years of my service, I traveled on many occasions across the Asia-Pacific region and was witness to the opening by China and the emergence of the Asian tigers. And I headed a division which played a role in coordinating the study  which formed the basis of the Vohra Committee report. And considering what venality really is in other countries, we can be proud of a large majority of our politicians, and we owe the success of our democracy in considerable measure to many of them. When President Gerald Ford granted pardon from criminal prosecution  to Richard Nixon at the moment of the latter's greatest humiliation, he said he kept in mind Nixon's phenomenal service to the nation in the field of foreign policy. When Nixon died two decades later, a large majority of the nation saluted him and all the serving and retired Presidents attended the funeral as a tribute to what this man had done for the country. Mr.Ronald Reagan left office a smaller man than what he was when he entered it because of his alleged involvement in the Contra controversy. Today, as he is slowly dying of a dreadful disease, which has made him even forget that he was once the President, what many in the US  are recalling is not the smaller side of him, but his contribution to setting in motion the events which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and the Communist regimes in East Europe. Today, as large sections of the public are applauding with unconcealed glee, the former Prime Minister, Mr. P.V.Narasimha Rao being dragged from court to court, it must be remembered that here is a man who set in motion the process of reforms, brought peace to Punjab,  brought in a change for the better in Jammu and Kashmir and in relations with China, had the courage to break the self-imposed  ideological shackles of the past and thus set the economy moving forward, made the ASEAN countries welcome India as a valued partner, brought India and Iran closer to each other and gave our relations with the US a level of maturity which it was lacking previously. Hinduism teaches us many good qualities, but, unfortunately, magnanimity is not one of them. It is not too late to learn this.
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