New Delhi: An engaging Twitter thread ensued on 14 July 2013 as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, then a spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), posted a photo from her JNU days.
It was the kind of photo every college student has clicked at some point or the other: A merry moment between friends, each face animated with mirth.
Sitharaman is seated with seven friends, her long, thick braid hanging on her right shoulder, her arm around a friend, whose hand, in turn, is resting on the future minister’s knee.
A picture from my days in JNU. pic.twitter.com/WRGxCmOnha
— Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) July 14, 2013
In the Twitter thread, Sitharaman patiently pointed herself out to people who didn’t recognise her. When a user said he had studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) long after her, a clearly nostalgic Sitharaman commented, “You must have had a great time too.”
The same year, career diplomat S. Jaishankar, then India’s ambassador to China and now External Affairs Minister, said in an interview to the JNU journal that his years at the university were “the most impactful on my life”.
“It shaped my intellectual outlook and brought out an abiding interest in international politics,” he added.
Asked about his memories of JNU, he said some of his closest friends were those who were with him at the university, before dwelling on the “great ideological debates” as well as the “pleasures of hostel food”.
JNU, he added, teaches “you to think and to talk”.
Jaishankar told the journal that he had met his first wife at the university, and it’s on the same campus that romance first bloomed between Sitharaman and her husband Parakala Prabhakar.
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The big shift
Sitharaman, the first woman to serve as a full-time finance minister in India, and Jaishankar, the second diplomat to take charge at the foreign ministry, are both set to receive JNU’s first-ever distinguished alumni award later this year, nearly four decades after they graduated.
The former joined JNU for a Master’s from the Centre of Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) and an MPhil in international studies. She registered for a PhD in 1982 but could never complete it.
Jaishankar got three degrees from the university: A Master’s in Political Science, an MPhil in International Relations, and a PhD, which he completed in 1981, four years after joining the IFS.
For both the JNU alumni, their stints as heavyweights in the Right-wing Narendra Modi government signify a big shift from the ideology they courted in their student days.
During their days in Left bastion JNU, the two were known ‘free thinkers’: People who let reason guide their opinions instead of prevailing ideas or diktats. At JNU, this meant people opposed to the Left ideology but not quite Right-wing.
While Sitharaman was an ardent student activist of the Free Thinkers’ Party, as she told Twitter users through another JNU photo posted on 24 May 2013, Jaishankar and his friends made posters for and propagated the freethought ideology.
A picture from my JNU, Delhi days. As a part of Free Thinkers (FT)campaigning during JNU Students Union elections. pic.twitter.com/ZO2QBjel40
— Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) May 24, 2013
Sitharaman, for one, understands that the shift gets people curious, and seems willing to explain how.
In the July 2013 Twitter thread, a journalist told her that “one day you must tell us how you managed to study at JNU and end up being right of centre :)”. Sitharaman replied, “:) 🙂 sure, will do sometime”.
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Different paths
Sitharaman joined the BJP in 2004, but Jaishankar, a 1977-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer, was a surprise pick in the new Modi Cabinet. He is currently unaffiliated to any political party.
Both, however, were actively involved in student politics during the JNU days, say people who knew them at the time.
Former JNU vice-chancellor S.K. Sopory, who was a faculty member from 1973 to 1996 and thus oversaw both Jaishankar and Sitharaman’s stints, said the university had “actually helped shape” the latter’s personality.
“When Nirmala came to JNU, she was very shy and reserved as she was from a humble family background,” he added.
Her future husband, said a JNU professor and former classmate of Prabhakar, was also a student activist.
“However, Prabhakar believed in the Congress’ ideology while Sitharaman was a free thinker, but they met here at the university and later got married,” he added. “It is amazing to see how people of different political affiliations meet at the university and click. This is the beauty about the place.”
Sitharaman’s “transformation” in the years since, the professor added, had surprised quite a few.
“When we see Sitharaman now, we are surprised at the kind of transformation she has had, from being a free thinker to a prominent BJP leader… She does not even speak anything when questions are raised on the university’s credibility,” the professor said.
Debater Jaishankar
The first thing that drew Jaishankar to JNU, by his own admission, was its culture of debate and politics.
He first entered the campus “by chance” during a strike on admission terms in the early 1970s. “My first impression, therefore, was very much of an actively political university with a strong culture of debate,” he said in his 2013 interview to the JNU journal.
Jaishankar joined the university in 1973 and at once sought to make the most of it by throwing himself into academics and debating competitions, say peers.
“He was always regarded as a very bright chap, and he was also the topper of his class,” said political commentator and analyst Sanjaya Baru, a contemporary of Jaishankar at the university.
“Apart from academics, he was also involved in politics… He was a free thinker… Jai and his friends Asif Ibrahim, who later became the director of Intelligence Bureau, Jayant Prasad, who got into the foreign service, and others, were actively involved in politics,” he added.
As a member of the institute’s debating society, he represented JNU at several competitions.
“He was very focused from the very beginning about getting into the civil services,” said a JNU professor who was a student at the university in the 1980s.
“I found Jaishankar very intelligent and was very impressed with his understanding of politics and international relations,” said Sopory.
“As the VC of JNU, I had invited him for a talk at the university, where he spoke about India-China relations, and I was highly impressed by the knowledge he displayed,” he added.
‘Both still care deeply for JNU’
According to the faculty and administration, both Sitharaman and Jaishankar have kept JNU close to their hearts despite having graduated decades ago.
Whenever they have been invited for alumni meets, they say, both have made it a point to come.
Current students of the university may not realise it but the India Coffee House that now stands on the premises is a sign of Sitharaman’s lingering affinity.
During her stint as commerce minister in the first Modi government, faculty members approached her with a request to have a coffee house set up on the campus. She visited the university, and the approval came less than 48 hours after she left.
The duo will receive their distinguished alumni award at JNU’s convocation ceremony in August.
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