Worried about Babri, Narasimha Rao called Mani Shankar Aiyar at 5am. PM was ‘frozen in fright’

When it came to economic reforms, Rao was half a lion, but when it came to Babri Masjid, he was half a man, said Aiyar at the launch of his book The Rajiv I Knew.

Mani Shankar Aiyar and Vir Sanghvi (R) at the launch of the book The Rajiv I Knew in New Delhi recently. | Keshav Padmanaban | ThePrint

New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao froze in fright as the kar sevaks readied themselves to bring down the Babri Masjid in December 1992, said Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar in Delhi recently.

Speaking at the launch of his book The Rajiv I Knew: Why he was India’s Most Misunderstood Prime Minister at the Jawahar Bhawan auditorium, Aiyar told a gathering of 200 people how he had visited Rao at 3 Lok Kalyan Marg (then Race Course Road), the official residence of the Prime Minister, just a little after 5am upon Rao’s request to find a way to prevent the fall of the mosque.

“I got a call at 5 in the morning from the prime minister’s office…And when the prime minister came on the line, he was talking to me in mid-sentence. He said ‘Mani, I have tried everything, they have betrayed me, I do not know what to do’,” Aiyar said in conversation with Vir Sanghvi.

To continue with the conversation, Aiyar requested to visit Rao at his home. He told the audience how he had convinced Rao to hold a counter-demonstration with the leading opposition leaders in Parliament, denouncing the events unfolding in Ayodhya.

“You be the last speaker, you go there and give the country a message of secularism,” Aiyar said was his final suggestion to Rao. However, the speech was never made. Aiyar asked Ramu Damodaran, then Executive Assistant to the Prime Minister, to see if he could find the speech and it was found on Rao’s bed.

“The man (Rao) had simply got frozen with fright. And it was in that mood he did his puja, right through the time the domes [of Babri Masjid] were broken. He was looking for divine inspiration since he could not find material inspiration from the circumstance,” Aiyar said.

Aiyar described Rao as the perfect presentative of his name – Narasimha – which represents half a man and half a lion. “When it came to economic reforms, Narasimha Rao was half a lion, but when it came to Babri Masjid, he was half a man,” said the former UPA minister before an entirely silent audience that comprised many old congress persons, including former Vice-President Hamid Ansari.

But when it comes to the Babri Masjid, the prime minister under whose tenure the locks to the mosque were opened – Rajiv Gandhi – was defended by Aiyar till the very end of the conversation.

“How could Rajiv [Gandhi] or even Arun Nehru in 1986 have imagined that by opening the locks at the Ram Lalla moorthy, we would end up with the whole of Barbi Masjid knocked down…Even Rajiv Gandhi as bright as he was, was no jyotish [astrologer],” Aiyar said in his attempt seemingly to exculpate Gandhi’s role on Ayodhya.

Bofors and the misunderstood prime minister

Rajiv Gandhi during his tenure as the prime minister of India between 1984 and 1989 witnessed five major controversies, according to Aiyar in his book – Shah Bano, Babri Masjid, Operation Brasstacks, Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) and Bofors.

Aiyar’s defence of Gandhi on Babri Masjid was anchored more in his belief that the blame for the opening of the locks lies with former Congress leader, and union minister Arun Nehru (also Rajiv Gandhi’s cousin), rather than the man in charge of the government at the time.

Similarly with regards to Bofors – one of the main controversies that led to Gandhi’s eventual defeat in 1989 – Aiyar once again pointed to Arun Nehru rather than Rajiv Gandhi.

He also mentioned the impact of two journalists in particular – N. Ram of the Hindu and Arun Shourie of The Indian Express — who believed they had discovered the “roots of a scandal” that led to the damning of Rajiv Gandhi.

“In the Ardbo diaries, there were a number of initials…Q they [Ram and Shourie] said that is obviously [Ottavio] Quattrocchi, R they said is quite obviously Rajiv [Gandhi], H they said is obviously Hinduja, N they did not ask who was N,” Aiyar said.

“Why did they not ask who was N? Because if there is an N, it is either Arun Nehru or the N stands for nobody,” Aiyar argued, adding that the journalists deliberately “delayed or refused” to go into the question of the connection between N and AE Services.

AE Services, a company Aiyar claimed was involved in “industrial espionage”, was promised a payment of $35 million, provided that the deal would be concluded by 31 March 1986. The payments would be in instalments corresponding to the instalments by which the government of India would pay for the Bofors gun, according to Aiyar.

In his book, Aiyar paints a picture of a prime minister thoroughly misled by his closest aides and one who while good at heart was far too naïve and trusting of those around him. But while Aiyar had nothing but praise and defences for Rajiv Gandhi, he had no such kind words for his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi.

On hearing of the younger Gandhi’s death due to an air crash near Safdarjung Airport in New Delhi, Aiyar looked out of his window and said, “God I do not believe in you but if you exist, thank you.”

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)