After I returned from Goa in early January 2018, I waited for the members of the AICC Central Disciplinary Committee to get back to me. None did. So, I called them. The Three Musketeers said they were yet to meet the newly sworn-in Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, while earnestly reiterating their plea to me to not reply to the show cause notice until they had met Rahul and got back to me. They never did.
Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi kept me away as if I were a political leper. There was no word of explanation, no opportunity afforded to me to state my case. Yet, to third parties like Shashi Tharoor and Kapil Sibal, who dared raise the issue with him, Rahul would protest his great affection and regard for me. Bizarrely, he told N. Ram of The Hindu that he ‘loved’ me! Yet, no occasion was afforded to me to meet him or to talk to him. It was ostracism at its worst. As for the very senior members of the disciplinary committee, they just went possum, warning me not to meet them and not to send my reply to the show cause notice until they had informed me of what to write. Bizarre!
An attempt to reach out to Rahul
This farce went on for the better part of six months. Then, on the eve of my wife and I leaving for Boston to spend a few weeks with our daughter, who was teaching at MIT, I called Priyanka and requested her to convey my birthday greetings to Rahul on 19 June while I was away. She asked why I could not send him my good wishes myself and seemed quite taken aback to learn that I was not allowed to communicate with him till my suspension from the party was revoked.
She started asking how, in that case, I was in touch with her, and quickly corrected herself to say, ‘Ah! I see – because I am not in the party!’ She then suggested I send her my greetings and she would pass them on to her brother.
As there were still a few weeks to go for the birthday, I thought this a window of opportunity to press my case for re-induction into the party. Accordingly, on the Delhi–Doha sector of our flight to Boston, I drafted my plea for revocation of my suspension, thinly disguised as a letter of birthday greetings. When we landed at Doha, I handed over my draft to Suneet. She was scathing. ‘Don’t you have any self-respect?’ she asked me. ‘Why are you cringing like this?’
I honestly did not know. That was the standard mode in which Congressmen begged and pleaded with their president for their rights. Here I was, Suneet replied, begging on bended knees before a man thirty years younger than me. For what? After three decades of serving the party and standing up for his father?
So, on the next sector, Doha–Boston, I rewrote the letter. Suneet took the draft from me and quickly glanced through it. She chastised me once again: Did I not have, she repeated, any self-respect? Did I have to crawl to demand my right to a hearing, to seek justice and fairness, to make my case before the person responsible for my arbitrary suspension? What was I after? A small corner in the Congress sun after having proved my worth over the past quarter of a century? Did I not realize that I was being made a scapegoat by people who wanted to save themselves? Could I not see that as they had no further use for me, I was being discarded like soiled tissue paper? Why not just walk away with my honour intact? Don’t run after them, she admonished me, especially after the abominable way in which I had been treated.
I withdrew my second draft and embarked on a third. That she refused to even see. The rest was up to me. I sent off the third draft and waited weeks for a reply. When it did come, it was just a routine letter of thanks for the birthday greetings that Rahul must have sent to hundreds of people. Of my personal issues, not a word.
Then, all of a sudden, K. Raju, IAS (retd), at the time one of Rahul’s closest aides, dropped in to confidentially inform me that I was being re-inducted into the party on Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday, 20 August, and I would have a meeting with Rahul on that day. I was, of course, pleased, but was flabbergasted to see Rajdeep Sardesai, two days before Rajiv’s birthday, waving an AICC letterhead on the small screen, saying it was a handout from the party announcing the end of my period of suspension. I never received a copy!
But a further surprise was in store for me. When I reached Vir Bhumi, the memorial built around Rajiv Gandhi’s samadhi, where his mortal remains had been consigned to the flames, rumour was rife that Rahul would be leaving immediately after the event for Hamburg via London. So, what of my promised meeting with him? It did not happen, not then nor later. Period.
This excerpt from A Maverick in Politics: 1991-2004 by Mani Shankar Aiyar has been published with permission from Juggernaut Books.
Too many politicians think that their worth is based on proximity to top leaders and the influence they get as a result. “Arrey, hum to Rahul Gandhi se one to one hain.”. Or, “I will do whatever the party asks me to do.” (Party = top leaders). They spend all their time hanging around party HQ to demonstrate their proximity.
Instead they should be working on solving real problems, be amidst the people.
It’s sad that Mr Aiyer did not learn this in a lifetime.