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What caused Giani Zail Singh’s frayed ties with Rajiv Gandhi? Fault lines developed over time

In 'The Indian President', K.C Singh gives a detailed insider account of the Zail Singh years.

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It would be useful to first try to understand how and why the relationship between President Zail Singh and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got so frayed. As the year 1987 began, their standoff reached an inflection point where the president’s political sinews were coiled in cobra-like alertness from which he was ready to parry, defend or confront. The prime minister, on the other hand, was still unmindful of his slipping popularity and rising concern about his governance style. After all, he had a mammoth majority in Parliament, the halo of his mother’s sacrifice and the mystique and charisma of an unwilling politician, recruited by fate to serve India. The fault lines now out in the open had developed over time.

The president had been the chief minister of Punjab from 1972 to 1977. With the defeat of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, held after Mrs Gandhi lifted the Emergency, the newly installed Janata Dal government dismissed all the Congress 86 The Indian President governments in states. During Mrs Gandhi’s two-year political eclipse, President Singh was a solid pillar of support to her. He would often come to her 12, Willington Crescent home and ensured, alongside a handful of other loyalists, that she was never short of material, moral or political support. During this period, he cemented his relations with Sanjay Gandhi, with whom he did not have a particularly comfortable equation during the Emergency because he had handled the Opposition, including the Akali Dal leadership, only with gentle firmness. He had ensured that the leaders were comfortable under detention, and any special food or medical needs were promptly attended to. But following their close contact during the 1977–80 period, Sanjay Gandhi apparently decided well before the election that Giani ji would have a principal political position in the Union Cabinet.


Former speaker Gurdial Singh Dhillon was a friend of my father-in-law from their days at Government College, Lahore. He often complained that Giani ji made sure he lost the Tarn Taran seat in the 1980 Lok Sabha election so that Giani ji would be the only senior leader available for a cabinet post. The third senior Congress leader, Darbara Singh, had been earmarked for Punjab, where he became chief minister. But Giani ji’s camp always maintained that making him the home minister was Sanjay Gandhi’s decision, taken well before the Lok Sabha polls, naturally with his mother’s concurrence who would be prime minister again. Giani ji told me that immediately after assuming charge, he suggested to Mrs Gandhi to take away at the start whatever departments she desired. If done later, it would look like she was cutting her home minister down to size. The Ministry of Home Affairs then included the Department of Personnel as well as the Intelligence Bureau and CBI. She told him to carry on. Giani ji continued to hold complete charge till his elevation as president in July 1982. He remains only the third home minister to have held this composite charge after Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Neither Lal Krishna Advani, despite his designation as deputy prime minister, nor Amit Shah, de facto deputy to the Prime Minister, was given control of the Department of Personnel. That department controls the IAS cadre and the CBI. Giani ji quickly brought to North Block a few of his lieutenants who had earned a reputation in Punjab for being fearless in execution and independent in giving advice. His special assistant’s post was filled by I.S. Bindra (IAS, 1966) and the establishment officer’s job went to S.P. Bagla (IAS, 1959), who had been his first principal secretary when he became chief minister in 1972. The CBI director’s post went to Punjab cadre IPS officer J.S. Bawa. An incident that illustrates the close working relationship between Giani ji and Sanjay Gandhi relates to the plethora of cases registered against the Congress leadership, including Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, during the two-year Janata Party government.

Sanjay Gandhi told Giani ji that all the officers who had held sensitive positions and assisted the Shah Commission during that period should be suspended forthwith. After a discussion with his aides, Giani ji sent Bindra to explain to Sanjay Gandhi that this would unnecessarily generate controversy. Instead, he suggested that the very same officers be retained and used to undo what they had set afoot. Sanjay Gandhi agreed at once. The key factor in the new structure around Mrs Gandhi was the power play between R.K. Dhawan, her special assistant, shadow and controller of access during her waking hours, and a motley group aligned with M.L. Fotedar, comprising predominantly non-Punjabi and Kashmiri aides.

The Punjabi group ruled the roost because of Dhawan’s brilliant reading of Mrs Gandhi’s likes, needs and political predilections. But this could also be because of Sanjay Gandhi’s partiality to this group. The Indian President Giani ji, having control of the Intelligence Bureau, kept a keen eye on possible rivals for presidency, such as P.V. Narasimha Rao. He also subtly advanced his own name in an unnoticed manner, as a premature surfacing of his name would have not only annoyed Mrs Gandhi but alerted his rivals. For instance, he cultivated a maternal uncle of Mrs Gandhi, a brother of Kamala Nehru, who quietly met the Prime Minister and canvassed support for Giani ji. Undoubtedly, Dhawan provided information about who could influence Mrs Gandhi as well as feedback about the effect of any intervention.

While this was going on, the situation in Punjab was worsening under Darbara Singh, who had become chief minister. Giani ji was, by temperament, a tolerant and nonconfrontational man who rarely lost his temper. In the case of Darbara Singh, however, his dislike for the man was visceral. He felt Darbara Singh was using excessive strong-arm tactics to put down the brewing Sikh militancy without addressing the concerns of the Sikh community.

These were the same tactics that another chief minister of Punjab, Partap Singh Kairon, had used in the late fifties and early sixties to put down the demand by the Akali Dal for a Punjabi Suba, or a separate state carved out of Punjabi-speaking areas. This demand was in line with what was done elsewhere in India on the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission of 1956. Darbara Singh, on the other hand, persistently complained to the Union government that Giani ji, as home minister, was taking an intrusive and excessive interest in Punjab, making his task difficult. This is the background to the controversy around who created Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

Was it Giani ji who cultivated the Sikh firebrand, when he was out of power after 1977, to divide the Akalis? It is possible he did that, but what enabled a simple preacher to ride the tide of militancy was largely Darbara Singh’s strong-arm tactics, employed without a simultaneous political outreach. It is possible these dynamics would have ended differently had Sanjay Gandhi not suddenly died in a plane crash on 23 June 1980, months after the Congress assumed charge of the new government. He would have known the background of Congress’s relationship, if any, with Bhindranwale.

Rajiv Gandhi, having entered politics after that date, saw the presidential election only against the backdrop of these recent allegations and counter charges, especially as Giani ji’s detractors had his ear. Perhaps, one of the reasons Mrs Gandhi might have had for elevating Giani ji as president was a desire to kill two birds with one stone. She would remove him from the sensitive home ministry, where he came into irritating contact with Darbara Singh, and send a political signal to Punjab that a Sikh was being given the post of the head of state for the first time ever. Some sources also claim Mrs Gandhi was fulfilling a wish that Sanjay Gandhi may have expressed before his death about who should be the next president. The move to elevate Giani ji was strongly opposed by the group of Mrs Gandhi’s aides roughly aligned with Fotedar. Sympathetic to this group was Arun Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi’s cousin and fellow political trainee in the post-Sanjay rejigging of Congress’s ‘generation next’. Giani ji’s elevation was an obvious success for Dhawan, a strong supporter of the move. One of the allegations levelled against Giani ji by this group was that he would turn Rashtrapati Bhavan into a place of easy virtue, as he allegedly had a glad eye.

Mrs Gandhi decided to deal with the allegations by summoning their chief representatives before Dhawan and Bindra. She asked the complainants to repeat the allegation so that the officials could give a reasoned response. Confronted directly, the whisper campaign dissipated. The Indian President ensured that one of the staff members to the home minister, who was allegedly having a bad influence on Giani ji’s reputation, was not taken to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Having been unsuccessful in their use of innuendo, the Fotedar group moved a new proposal to test Giani ji’s loyalty through a unique agnipariksha (trial by fire). Sources close to the president recounted that the group inimical to him then asked Mrs Gandhi to get Giani ji to submit an undated signed letter of resignation so that it could be used to keep him in line or even curtail his presidency, if required.

For instance, it created an option to enable Rajiv Gandhi to assume the prime minister’s post, after the next Lok Sabha elections in 1985, with Mrs Gandhi becoming the president. This put Giani ji in a bind, but he had no option but to give such a letter on the letterhead of Rashtrapati Bhavan. After his swearing-in as president, the first act of his close aides was to take the protective measure of completely changing the stationery of the presidential office as well as the typewriters. This was to ensure that if the resignation letter was ever invoked, the president could disown it. Confirmation is now available of the impact that these salacious charges and moves had on Rajiv Gandhi’s thinking.

This excerpt from K.C Singh’s ‘The Indian President: An Insider’s Account of the Zail Singh Years’ has been published with permission from HarperCollins India.

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