Natwar Singh, former External Affairs Minister, fancied himself as a Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist but died as a bitter, disillusioned man. Apart from his admiration for Jawaharlal Nehru and loyalty toward Indira Gandhi, the diplomat-turned-politician was close aide of Rajiv Gandhi. He had stood unflinchingly behind Sonia Gandhi during her darkest years, even braving water cannons and tear gas to fight her cause against former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao. Prior to 2005, columnist Jug Suraiya had written that whenever Sonia Gandhi writes her memoirs, she would need a ghost writer and that person would be Natwar Singh.
Singh, however, turned against her in 2005 when the UPA chairperson performed Rajdharma on Volcker report. He was asked to step down as country’s foreign affairs minister in December 2005. Sonia Gandhi lost a loyalist forever. The Volcker Committee — set up by the UN to inquire into the oil-for-food programme — named Singh, his son Jagat and some other Indian companies as beneficiaries of the scam. For a few days in December 2005, Singh was a picture of confidence till Sonia discovered that the name of India’s grand old party had indeed been misused. Singh tried meeting her but the doors of 10, Janpath were firmly shut to him. In 2013 too, he tried returning to the parent organisation but Team Rahul Gandhi blocked it on the grounds that his politician son Jagat could cause embarrassment.
Birth of Tiwari Congress
In 2014, Singh’s memoirs, One Life is not Enough, came with a barrage of allegations and startling revelations—it prompted a sharp reaction from Sonia Gandhi. In his book, Singh had claimed that “it was not her [Sonia Gandhi’s] inner soul” but Rahul Gandhi who asked her to turn down the post of Prime Minister in the general elections of 2004. Rahul feared that his mother’s fate would end up like that of his father and grandmother.
Sonia Gandhi issued a statement saying, “I will write my own book and then you will come to know everything…the only way truth will come out is if I write… I am serious about it and I will be writing,” adding, “I am far from getting hurt from these things. These things do not affect me,” she said. “Let them continue to do this, it will not affect me… They can continue to do this if they so please.”
Ironically, from May 1991 to 2005, Singh was Sonia’s adviser on literary matters, peacemaker, street fighter all rolled into one. Between 1991-1995, he repeatedly snubbed Narasimha Rao’s emissaries, rejecting and refusing to become part of his government.
On May 18, 1995, he along with Arjun Singh, ND Tiwari, ML Fotedar, Sheila Dixit, Mohsina Kidwai, KN Singh, P Shiv Shankar and others left the Congress to form a breakaway party – Tiwari Congress. Members of Tiwari Congress were mocked and even mercilessly thrashed outside Parliament by police for raising the slogan “Narasimha Rao hatao, Sonia Gandhi lao.” When this correspondent had entered police station minutes after water cannon charge, tear gas shells and lathi charge, Tiwari was spotted drenched, Arjun nursing a blow and Natwar Singh crying involuntarily due to exposure to tear gas. He was heard saying, “aaj hum rohe hain, kal who rohenge.”
The publication of Indira: The life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, a book by Katherine Frank provoked Maneka Gandhi. She alleged that Sonia Gandhi was instrumental in the inclusion of hoary tales involving Sanjay Gandhi in the book. Frank had met Sonia Gandhi while conducting research and acknowledged her support in terms of granting access to the family letters and photographs. Maneka Gandhi also won an out-of-court defamation suit against publishers of Frank’s book in UK, claiming that both Indira and Sanjay Gandhi were shown in bad light. While Sonia Gandhi dithered, Natwar Singh launched a frontal attack on Maneka Gandhi reminding everyone the circumstances and manner in which she had made common cause with Indira Gandhi’s detractors and joined the BJP.
Also read: How would Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee want to be remembered? A politician with the soul of a poet
The gang of four
Apart from rebelling against official Congress members and PM Rao, ostensibly for Sonia, Singh battled on many fronts. He assumed a job of ensuring every visiting foreign dignitary met Sonia Gandhi at 10, Janpath. There were many hiccups. Leaders like Yasser Arafat insisted upon calling on her, while South Bloc mandarins, as if taking a cue from Rao, began to discourage likes of King Hussain of Jordon not to visit Sonia on grounds of protocol—or rather, the lack of it. Singh was outraged. He used backroom channels and contacts in political parties such as African National Congress, B’ath Party, Conservative Party, Peoples Party of Pakistan, Communist parties of China, and others to ensure that flow of high-level dignitaries to 10, Janpath never dried up.
This rather understated duty of Singh continued even after the NDA came to power. He used his proximity to fellow IFS officer Brajesh Mishra (principal secretary to prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and national security advisor) on several occasions. In 2001, it resulted in Sonia Gandhi heading a delegation at the UN while she was leader of Opposition, much to the chargin of then Union health minister CP Thakur. Thanks to Natwar-Brajesh network, Sonia Gandhi was accorded importance and met former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
When Sonia Gandhi took over as the Congress president in 1998, she initially accorded some importance to Singh. However, soon some party leaders who had sided with Rao, began a whisper campaign alleging preferential treatment to members of Tiwari Congress, which had now merged with the parent organisation. Natwar, Arjun, V George and Fotedar were described as “gang of four” or a coterie around Sonia Gandhi, responsible for “misleading” her. Sonia Gandhi understood the need to head of a united Congress and slowly, this gang of four lost out to Ambika Soni, Ahmad Patel, Pranab Mukherjee and Shivraj Patil. Sheila Dixit was an exception to retain her clout till 2014.
When Natwar Singh was sacked as foreign minister after Volcker Report disclosures, Arjun Singh was a senior minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet and was considered close to Sonia Gandhi. He could muster the courage to tell her to be lenient to Natwar. But privately, he used to say, “Natwar Singh is foreign policy of the Congress and country.”
Writing for Outlook, Mani Shankar Aiyar could not resist recalling an old joke about him and Singh at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
“I had been invited by the Informal Discussion Group, a venerable Stephanian institution going back at least half a century, to my own days in the college….in a desperate quest for inspiration, I started turning the pages back and came upon Natwar having signed it with a flourish:
Name: K. Natwar Singh Designation: Minister of State for External Affairs
Remarks: ‘I am what I am because of St Stephen’s’. I asked for a pencil and scribbled under it: ‘Why blame the College?’”
Trip to Russia
Natwar Singh’s earlier book, Walking With Lions: Tales From A Diplomatic Past, which came out in early 2013, includes an interesting story about Sonia Gandhi in Russia in the chapter titled, “In Russia with Sonia Gandhi and President Putin”.
Narrating the incident from 14 June 2005, Singh wrote that he and Sonia Gandhi flew to Vladimir town by helicopter in the afternoon. Singh was puzzled by the visit to this obscure medieval town. Upon arrival, they reached an unkempt courtyard with a main building that had once been a church, now converted into a museum.
“Inside we came to an octagonal room. On one of the walls were stuck with paper slips. Sonia was much interested in these. She reads Russian and obviously looking for something. ‘Natwar my father was a prisoner of war here during the World War II. He (Stefano Maino) escaped, walking all the way to Italy.’ She was deeply moved. This was for her a very special moment, I listened. Any comment would have been banal and inappropriate.”
The storyteller
Singh was Secretary-General of the Seventh Non-aligned Summit in New Delhi held in 1983, which was attended by Cuba’s Fidel Castro. He had met Castro in Havana in late 1982 when the Indian foreign service officer had gone to seek “inspiration and guidance” from him. In Walking With Lions, Singh said when he met Castro, the Cuban leader asked him, “Who are the Gurkhas and what were they doing in the Falkland Islands?”
There were reports of Gurkhas slitting throats of 40 Argentine soldiers and jumping into enemy foxholes with live grenades during 1982 Britain’s war with Argentina over Falkland Islands. Legend has it that once a Gurkha unsheathes his kukri, he must draw blood with it. If a Gurkha unsheathes his weapon in a noncombative situation, he must then nick himself to satisfy the “blood thirst” of the blade. The 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles Regiment were a part of the British task force sent to repel Argentinean invasion of the Falkland Islands—known as the Malvinas by Argentina.
Singh told Castro a short history of the Gurkhas and their British connection. Castro then told him that he was reading Maurice Herzog’s book Annapurna in which they were frequently mentioned.
A storyteller, par excellent, Singh had once given a vivid description of how godman Chandraswami impressed Margaret Thatcher, then the leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons in the summer of 1975. Chandraswami had approached Natwar Singh with a reference from Yashpal Kapoor – a key Indira Gandhi aide. He asked the diplomat to introduce him to Lord Mountbatten and Thatcher. Singh said doubts assailed him about Chandraswami meeting Thatcher, not yet the iron lady. “Suppose Chandraswami made an ass of himself. I would look a bigger ass. I sought an appointment with the Leader of the Opposition. She promptly obliged. I met her in her tiny office in the House of Commons. When Singh cautioned Chandraswami not to do or say anything silly, he told the diplomat, “Chinta mat kareay (Don’t worry)”.
Chandraswami, Singh noticed, was dressed in his “sadhu” kit, with a huge tilak on his forehead and a staff in his right hand. “Rudraksha malas round his neck. He banged the staff on the road till I told him to stop doing so. I confess, I was feeling self-conscious,” Singh recalled in his book. When the introductions were over, Thatcher supposedly asked: ‘What did you want to see me for?’ Chandraswami spoke in Hindi while Natwar acted as a translator. “Tell her she will soon find out,” he had said.
Singh described what happened after this as follows: “He gave Mrs Thatcher five strips of paper and requested her to write a question on each. She obliged, but with scarcely camouflaged irritation. Chandraswami asked her to open the first paper ball. She did. He gave the text of the question in Hindi. I translated. Correct. I watched Mrs Thatcher.”
“The irritation gave way to curiosity. Next question. Again bull’s eye. Curiosity replaced by interest. By the fourth question the future iron lady’s demeanour changed. She began to look at Chandraswami not as a fraud, but as a holy man indeed. My body language too altered. Last question. No problem. I heaved a sigh of relief. Mrs Thatcher was now perched on the edge of the sofa. Like Oliver Twist, she asked for more.”
Natwar Singh wrote Chandraswami was like a triumphant guru.
“He took off his chappals and sat on the sofa in the lotus pose. I was appalled. Mrs Thatcher seemed to approve. She asked supplementary questions. In each case Chandraswami’s response almost overwhelmed the future prime minister. She was on the verge of another supplementary, when Chandraswami regally announced that the sun had set. No more questions. Mrs Thatcher was not put out. She enquired if she could meet him again. I was entirely unprepared for this. Very coolly, almost condescendingly, he said, ‘On Tuesday at 2.30 p.m. at the house of Shri Natwar Singh.’”
Singh told Chandraswami he was overreaching himself by dictating the day and time without taking into account her convenience. This was not India, but the godman remained unmoved. “Kunwar sahib, anuvad kar dijiye aur phir dekhiye (Please translate and then see),” he said.
Singh recalled being astounded when Thatcher asked him, “Deputy High Commissioner, where do you live?” He wrote: “This was not all. What followed was something out of a weird novel. Just as we were about to leave, Mr Holy Man produced a talisman tied to a not so tidy piece of string. He then pronounced that Mrs Thatcher should tie it on her left arm when she came to my house on Tuesday. I was now on the verge of losing my temper. I said I would not translate this dehati (rustic) rubbish. Mrs Thatcher intervened to know what the holy man was saying. ‘Mrs Thatcher, please forgive me, but Chandraswami would like you to wear this talisman on your left arm.’ She took the talisman. We were saying our goodbyes, when Chandraswami produced his sartorial bomb. Turning to me he said:
“Kunwar Sahib, kindly tell Mrs Thatcher that on Tuesday she should wear a red poshak (outfit).’ I felt like hitting him. He was overdoing this. I firmly told him it was the height of bad manners to tell a lady what she should or should not wear. Mrs Thatcher looked a bit apprehensive at this not so mild altercation between a distraught Deputy High Commissioner and a somewhat ill-mannered holy man. Very reluctantly I said to her that the holy man would be obliged if she wore a red dress on Tuesday. I was looking down at the floor as I said this.” When Thatcher turned up at Singh’s residence at Sun House, Hampstead, she was wearing a red dress and the talisman given by Chandraswami was in its proper place.
The diplomat met Thatcher again in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1979 when she had become the British prime minister. At the airport, Singh said he had gently whispered to Thatcher, “Our man proved right.” For a moment, he wrote, Thatcher looked flustered. “She took me aside, “High Commissioner, we don’t talk about these matters.”’ “Of course not, prime minister, of course not,’ Natwar Singh replied instantly.
Rasheed Kidwai is an ORF visiting fellow, author and journalist. Views are personal.