New Delhi: Former Union minister and veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar described P.V. Narasimha Rao as the “first BJP prime minister” of India, accusing him of leading the country from “the secular path to the communal path.”Speaking to The Wire at the launch of his autobiography Memoirs of a Maverick: The First Fifty Years (1941-1991) on Wednesday, August 23, the former diplomat said that he discovered “how communal” the former prime minister was during a discussion on secularism.“When I was on my Ram Rahim Yatra from Rameshwaram to Ayodhya, I was summoned from Odisha to come back to Delhi and Narasimha Rao said to me, ‘I don’t disagree with your yatra but I do have a disagreement with your definition of secularism.’,” he told The Wire.Mani Shankar AiyarMemoirs of a Maverick: The First Fifty YearsJuggernaut (August 2023)“So I asked him, ‘Sir, what is wrong with my definition of secularism?’ and his reply which has remained engraved in my heart and on my soul was, ‘Mani you don’t understand that this is a Hindu country’. I sat up in my chair and said, ‘This is what the BJP says. (But) this is not a Hindu country. We are a secular country and in this secular country we have a huge majority of Hindus but we also have nearly 200 million Muslims and several other Christians, Jews, Parsis and Sikhs. So how can we be a Hindu country? We can only be a secular country.’”“It is because Narasimha’s mind was so partisan, was so sectarian that he led this country from the secular path to the communal path.”Rao served as the prime minister from 1991 to 1996. While his term is usually associated with the initiation of economic liberalisation reforms in 1991, his tenure also saw the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. In the ensuing communal riots, thousands lost their lives.Aiyar’s book traces his journey as a diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service with a significant stint in Pakistan (as consul general in Karachi from December 1978 to January 1982); and his relationship with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The book also traces his observations during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 – following the assassination of Indira Gandhi – and questions government decisions taken during that time to control the violence.A companion volume will examine the Rajiv Gandhi-era in detail, which is expected to be published soon.‘Wanted to vote against Rajiv Gandhi following 1984 Sikh Riots’Speaking about choosing to write in detail about Gandhi’s tenure as prime minister, Aiyar said that while he wanted to vote against him following the 1984 riots, working with him showed what a “wonderful character” he was, which has been hidden from the public eye.“I am 82 years old, the doctors tell me another two decades to go but I am not quite sure that they are right. So I put down my memories. And this book has about 200 pages in which Rajiv Gandhi’s name is not mentioned. He only came into my life when as prime minister he incorporated me in his office,” he told The Wire.“I had been very skeptical and I had gone to the voting booth to vote against him because of the Sikh pogrom. But fortunately or unfortunately, my name was not on the voting rolls so I could not vote against him. But despite that, he summoned me to his office and then over the next five years I saw what a wonderful man he was. And that wonderful character of the man has been hidden from public eyes by the media particularly – and also by all these traitors who cheated him and went away. And it is they – the Left, the liberals – who brought the BJP back.”“Because the BJP at that time had two seats. Because of V.P. Singh, they got 88 seats. And now for the last nine years, we have been suffering this awful majoritarian, authoritarian rule. I only pray… but alas I can’t pray, because I am an atheist. But I pray to the forces that this awful era of the last nine years is brought to an end one way or the other in 2024.”Also Read: How Bad Advice Led Rajiv Gandhi To Make Mistakes in Handling the Babri Masjid Issue‘Pakistan will remain an albatross around our neck if we don’t engage’Earlier, while speaking to senior journalist Vir Sanghvi during the launch, Aiyar recalled his experiences in Karachi while he was posted there. He said that dialogue with Pakistan is crucial to ending the demonisation of Indian Muslims.“Is Pakistan an enemy country? My answer to that is: Pakistanis are not enemies. The government of Pakistan does a lot of things which make it an enemy of ours. In many ways, they are reacting or provoking us. When it comes to Pakistan, we have the courage to do surgical strikes but don’t have the guts to sit across a table and talk to them. Why don’t we have the courage to talk to them?” he asked.Aiyar said that Pakistan is ceasing to be a foreign policy issue in present day India.“Pakistan is ceasing to be a foreign policy issue and is becoming a domestic issue. Because the word Pakistan and Pakistani are being used as dog whistles to indicate the Indian Muslim community. Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan – all have been told to go to Pakistan. Why not Bangladesh or Indonesia? So that the prejudices that we have against Pakistanis are transferred to India’s Muslim icons,” he said.He added that the Modi government needs to “engage with Pakistan like Manmohan Singh and arrive at a four-point draft agreement that was not on visa or films or Bollywood songs or trade it was on Kashmir”.“We should deploy the talents of our foreign services by engaging with Pakistan. If not, we are wasting their talents. So long as we are not able to engage, Pakistan will remain an albatross around our neck. How will we advise Russia when we don’t know Pakistan?”Mani Shankar Aiyar and Vir Sanghvi speak at the launch of the former’s book ‘Memoris of a Maverick’. Photo: Sravasti Dasgupta‘Admired Rajiv Gandhi only after working with him’While the book delves into some detail about the Rajiv Gandhi years, Aiyar said that his admiration for the former prime minister – who was his junior at Doon School in Dehradun – only came after he started working with him.“Here is a man who was a pilot till the other day. How will he become a prime minister?” Aiyar recalled himself thinking.“It was only after I saw how he ran this country, I came to admire him,” he said.He said that his forthcoming companion volume would deal with the controversies that surrounded Gandhi’s prime ministership, including the Bofors deal and the Shah Bano case.“My problem was that I was no confidant of Rajiv Gandhi. In fact, I think he thought that I was politically naive. He never consulted me and never took my advice on anything political,” he said.Referring to an audience question on an excerpt from his book that was published in The Wire that refers to “bad advice” that was given to Gandhi in the handling of the Babri Masjid issue, Aiyar said that it only shows that he is “even-handed”.“The biggest mistake that Rajiv Gandhi made was bringing this awful R.K. Dhawan to the PMO, which was immediately politicised, which was otherwise an office of technical advice without looking into politics but without compromising the principles of the government,” he said.After entering active political life in the Rajiv Gandhi government, Aiyar went on to serve as the Union minister for panchayati raj, petroleum and natural gas and youth affairs and sports in subsequent years.In 2017, he was briefly suspended from the Congress party over his “neech” remark against Modi, which mushroomed into a massive controversy just ahead of the Gujarat polls. In the run-up to the 2014 general election, he had kicked up a storm after mocking Narendra Modi as a “tea-seller”.Aiyar’s book launch saw a packed audience, among whom was Sonia Gandhi and a host of former diplomats.
