Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar slams ex-PM P V Narasimha Rao, calls him 'first BJP PM'
New Delhi, Aug 23: Congress leader and former Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Wednesday alleged that former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao was "communal" and described him as the "the first BJP PM" of the country.
The former diplomat, whose autobiography "Memoirs of a Maverick -- The First Fifty Years (1941-1991)" hit the stands on Monday, also batted for resumption of dialogue with Pakistan, saying that when it comes to that country, "we have the courage to carry out surgical strikes against them but we don't have the guts to sit across the table and talk to a Pakistani".
The book, published by Juggernaut Books, traces Aiyar's journey from Welham preparatory school to Doon school and then on to St Stephen's College and Cambridge University, and from being a top diplomat handling sensitive assignments to then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's key aide who was dubbed his 'Mani Friday'. Aiyar was part of Rajiv Gandhi's PMO from 1985-1989.
In a free-wheeling conversation with senior journalist Vir Sanghvi at the formal launch of his book here, Aiyar talked about a host of issues -- from his relationship with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to his stint as consul general in Karachi from December 1978 to January 1982.
Congress parliamentary party chief and Rajiv Gandhi's wife Sonia Gandhi was present among the audience.
During the question and answer session when asked about his criticism of Rajiv Gandhi in handling the Babri Masjid issue, Aiyar said, "It shows that I am even-handed. I think the Shilanyas was wrong."
"I think the biggest mistake that Rajiv Gandhi made was to bring in awful R K Dhawan into the PMO which immediately politicised an office that was otherwise, for the previous four years, a purely technical office and was giving the right advice without getting into politics," the 82-year-old leader said.
In his remarks at the book launch, Aiyar said he discovered "how communal and how Hindu-oriented" P V Narasimha Rao was.
Aiyar went on to narrate a conversation he had with Rao at a time when he was carrying out 'Ram-Rahim' yatra.
"Narasimha Rao told me that he had no objection to my yatra, but he disagreed with my definition of secularism. I said what is wrong with my definition of secularism. He said Mani you don't seem to understand that this is a Hindu country. I sat up in my chair and said that is exactly what the BJP says," Aiyar recounted.
The first BJP prime minister was not Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the "first BJP PM" was Rao, he said.
Rao led a Congress government and served as the ninth prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996.
The diplomat-turned-politician also recounted that when it was suddenly announced that Rajiv Gandhi was going to be prime minister he wondered how a man who was an Indian airlines pilot was going to run the country.
"It was only after I saw how he run this country, I came to admire him," he said.
Aiyar said he would be dealing with the controversies that surrounded Rajiv Gandhi such as the Bofors and the Shah Bano cases in the subsequent volumes.
"My problem was that I was no confidant of Rajiv Gandhi. In fact, I think he thought that I was politically naive. He never consulted me and never took my advice on anything political," Aiyar told the audience that was packed with several Congress leaders and former Indian Foreign Service and Indian Administrative Service officers.
The only reason that Rajiv Gandhi did not continue as the prime minister was because he was such a good man, Aiyar said.
"The man was most upright, straight forward and principled...He (Rajiv Gandhi) did not have the deviousness of V P Singh or the twists and turns of an Arif Mohammad Khan," Aiyar said. Aiyar, who was in the foreign service till 1989, also talked about Pakistan at length.
"We were coming back from a dinner one day when my wife Suneet asked me a question that reverberated in my mind in my stay in Karachi -- 'This is an enemy country, right?'"
Aiyar said he asked himself the question through his three years there and for the last 40 years since he came back from Pakistan.
"Is Pakistan an enemy country? My short answer to that is that Pakistanis are not enemy people. The government of Pakistan does a lot of things that does make them an enemy of ours. But how far are they reacting to us and how far are they provoking us? ...When it comes to Pakistan, we have the courage to carry out surgical strikes against them but we don't have the guts to sit across the table and talk to a Pakistani," he said.
Aiyar asserted that increasingly Pakistan ceased to be a foreign policy issue and become a domestic one.
"(This is) Because the word Pakistan and the word Pakistani are used as dog-whistles to indicate Indian Muslims and that is why these icons of Indian youth -- Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan Shahrukh Khan -- have in the past been told to go to Pakistan. Why go to Pakistan, why not Bangladesh, why not Saudi Arabia. They are told to go to Pakistan so that the prejudices that we have against Pakistanis are transferred to the Muslim icons of India's youth," he said.
He said former prime minister Manmohan Singh showed that by engaging with Pakistan they could arrive at a four-point agreement on Kashmir.
"So long we are not able to settle issues with Pakistan, I am afraid Pakistan will be an albatross around our necks and we will never become 'vishwaguru' of the world," he said.
Aiyar also hailed Sonia Gandhi for being a pillar of support as he navigated in politics after Rajiv Gandhi's death. "With Rajiv gone many thought that let's finish this guy. I survived in the party only because of her (Sonia Gandhi)".
Aiyar said he was made cabinet minister by Sonia Gandhi and he knew that the prime minister wondered whether he should be made a minister of state.
Talking about his flirtations with communism, Aiyar also said he was "probably the poorest boy in the richest school". This led him to question inequalities in society.
In Cambridge, he said, he took tutorials under Maurice Dobb who was highly regarded as Britain's leading Marxist analyst. Dobb could not answer most of his questions and he was disillusioned with Marxism.
Aiyar said the Intelligence Bureau meanwhile learned that he was very Left wing and so when he passed the foreign service exam, they "banned" him from all services.
Aiyar narrated it was finally then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's nod and file noting that brought him in the service which he said was worth the trauma he had to go through.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Death of 10 elephants in MP: Samples being sent to UP for probe; CM chairs high-level meet
Bhopal (PTI): Samples collected in connection with the death of 10 elephants in three days in Madhya Pradesh's Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve are being sent to ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute in Uttar Pradesh and a forensic laboratory in Sagar, officials have said.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Friday chaired a high-level meeting during which the government decided to send a state minister and top forest officials to Umaria to probe the elephant deaths, they said.
Meanwhile, a senior veterinarian linked to the probe cited staffers at the reserve and said the elephants fell to the ground and shivered before dying.
On Tuesday, four wild elephants were found dead in Sankhani and Bakeli under Khitoli range of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR), while four died on Wednesday and two on Thursday.
Talking to PTI on Friday over phone from the BTR, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) L Krishnamoorthy said, "We are sending all the samples we have collected from the field and also organs, like viscera, liver, kidney, etc to the IVRI in Izatnagar in UP's Bareilly as well as the MP forensic laboratory in Sagar."
He heads the five-member committee appointed by the state government to probe the death of the tuskers in Bandhavgarh, which is spread across Umaria and Katni districts in eastern Madhya Pradesh.
Krishnamoorthy had earlier said samples (viscera) of the elephants were sent to Jabalpur-based School of Wildlife Forensic and Health (SWFH) to find out toxins, if any, and the cause of death.
He was responding to a query on whether the elephants had consumed poisonous pesticides sprayed in the field.
"Only after the reports come in we can arrive at a conclusion on the cause of the death. Post mortem reports suspect it could be due to Kodo millets," MP Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF-Wildlife) VKN Ambade told PTI.
Citing staffers at the BTR, a senior veterinarian said the pachyderms fell to the ground and shivered before dying.
A ground duty officer said the forest department has identified six farmers from whose field the jumbos ate kodo millets, adding reports will clarify if any pesticide was mixed or sprayed on the crop.
Meanwhile, a five-member team of Delhi-based Wildlife Crime Control Bureau continued their probe into the deaths on the second day on Friday.
Officials said the Nagpur-based regional officer of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, assistant inspector general of forests Nandkishore Kale, continued his investigations at the BTR.
"The state tiger strike force also visited nearby agricultural lands, paddy fields, water bodies etc in connection with the kodo millets. All the dead elephants were part of a herd of 13. One of the dead elephants was male. The remaining three in the herd are healthy. They are being monitored," another official said.
Krishnamoorthy earlier said veterinarians had suggested chances of (presence of) mycotoxins associated with kodo millets.
Mycotoxins generate cyclopiazonic acid that causes poisoning in kodo millets, he said.
The forest department's wildlife veterinarians are consulting experts of Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) Bareilly, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) Dehradun, State Forensic Science Laboratory, Sagar, and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) Hyderabad to get details about the mycotoxins, he said.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) and special task force are investigating the case from all angles, the official added.
The Krishnamoorthy-led panel has been asked to submit its report in 10 days.
Some wildlife experts said it may be the first instance in the country when 10 elephants have died in a span of three days.
Talking about the meeting chaired by CM Yadav, an official said, "The government has decided to send minister of state for forests Dileep Ahirwar, additional chief secretary (forest) Ashok Barnwal and the state's head of forest force (HOFF) Aseem Shrivastava to Umaria district to probe the elephant deaths. They will submit their report in 24 hours."
"Strict action will be taken against the guilty. The meeting was also attended by state chief secretary Anurag Jain and Rajesh Rajora, additional chief secretary to the chief minister," he added.
