SHAKTI SINHA

VAJPAYEE
The Years that Changed India

PENGUIN BOOKS
 Contents

1.Swearing-in
2.A Hung Parliament
3.The Incomplete Mandate
4.The Ground Moves
5.The Stumble
6.Vajpayee Asserts
7.The Bus Ride
8.The Fall
9.The Failed Snare
10.Looking Back

Illustrations
Footnotes
1. Swearing-in

2. A Hung Parliament

3. The Incomplete Mandate

4. The Ground Moves

5. The Stumble

6. Vajpayee Asserts

7. The Bus Ride

8. The Fall

9. The Failed Snare

10. Looking Back

List of Sources
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
 Advance Praise for Vajpayee

‘A fascinating account of Vajpayee’s life as prime minister and a bold

statesman. Shakti Sinha comes across as a keen observer and an able
narrator’—General V.P. Malik, former Chief of Army Staff

‘The most challenging period in India’s most difficult decade has been amply
captured by the author who had the ringside view that was the envy of
many’—Manvendra Singh, veteran journalist

‘Those interested in a fascinating period of India’s recent political history

will glean much from a careful perusal of this compelling first-hand
account’—Sumit Ganguly, professor of political science, Indiana University

‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee was one of India’s finest prime ministers. Shakti
Sinha’s wonderful book offers us a deeper understanding of one of the key
architects of the golden economic growth period that marked India’s coming
of age, both as a promising global economic power and a confident nuclear
power with continental reach’—Vijay Kelkar, chairman, Thirteenth Finance
Commission, and chairman, India Development Foundation

‘Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ended India’s prolonged handwringing

on nuclear policy, rolled back Pakistan Army’s aggression in Kargil, and
made a bold new effort to promote peace in Kashmir and reconciliation with
Pakistan. A close associate of Vajpayee, Shakti Sinha offers deep insights
into Vajpayee’s leadership in those turbulent yet transformative years’—
Professor C. Raja Mohan, Institute of South Asian Studies, National
University of Singapore
Dedicated to the memory of my parents, Hemprabha and Shivaji Sinha

The love of books, curiosity and eclecticism that all four of us siblings,
Nalini, Ranjan, Kiran and I, gained from you is the best inheritance any
child could hope for
 1
Swearing-in

The morning of 19 March 1998 was unusually calm at 7 Safdarjung Road,

the home of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It seemed time had stood still. The new
day after a long night seemed almost surreal when I reached the place at
around 7.30 a.m. The swearing-in ceremony was to be at 9.30 a.m., still
some time away. This silence was in sharp contrast to the atmosphere I had
witnessed on 15 May 1996 at 6 Raisina Road—where Vajpayee lived then—
as he was sworn in for the first time as prime minister. It was all rather
unreal, as the first Vajpayee government did not have any meaningful chance
of surviving. The atmosphere was joyful, even riotous, with hundreds
streaming in and out of the house, a genuine Indian tamasha in full flow.
My mind went back to when I first saw and heard Vajpayee. It must have
been November or early December 1970 in Ranchi. It was an early-evening
election meeting, and the mid-sized Kutchery ground was quite full. Indira
Gandhi, who ran a minority government with the support of the Communist
Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist), had called for early
elections. The leading Opposition parties, Congress (O), Jana Sangh,
Swatantra Party and the Samyukta Socialist Party, had formed a
mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance). It seemed to pose a very formidable
challenge to the ruling Congress (R) of Mrs Gandhi. Just as Vajpayee began
to speak, it started drizzling. Naturally, he interpreted it as the blessing of
Lord Indra. The crowd loved it; the speech was mesmerizing and we all felt
elated. But that feeling did not last very long, as Indira swept the elections,
including Ranchi, where the Jana Sangh candidate, Rudra Pratap Sarangi,
lost. The mahagathbandhan was created with the sole motivation of ‘Indira
hatao’ (remove Indira). It had developed no coherent vision, no alternative
point of view; it was hobbled together only to get rid of her. It had learnt no
lessons from past defeats and assumed that if the parties got together, then,
mathematically, their polling numbers would stack up enough to defeat her.
Indira Gandhi was relatively alone and all she said was, ‘Garibi hatao’
(remove poverty). The people gave her a crushing mandate—330 MPs out of
536 in the Lok Sabha.

FOR DECADES, VAJPAYEE HAD BEEN paving his path towards electoral success.
Finally, twenty-eight years later, he assumed the position of India’s thirteenth
prime minister. It was a long journey that began in 1957, when he was
elected to Parliament for the first time, a member of the Lok Sabha from
Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh.1 This was not his first electoral foray, having
unsuccessfully contested a Lok Sabha by-election from Lucknow a couple of
years before. This time, his party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Jana Sangh for
short), asked him to contest from Lucknow, Balrampur and Mathura.
Vajpayee was a familiar face in Lucknow, having begun his journalistic
carrier there in 1948. Balrampur was seen as a relatively safer seat, and
there were no volunteers to fight the elections from Mathura. Vajpayee won
Balrampur, narrowly lost Lucknow but failed badly at Mathura, where he lost
his security deposit since he got less than one-sixth of the votes polled. The
Jana Sangh won only four seats in a Lok Sabha of 494 members, and none of
the four had ever been members of any legislature. Initially, the Jana Sangh
members, being few in numbers and seated on the backbenches, rarely got
opportunities to speak, and Vajpayee even had to stage a walkout, protesting
against the non-allotment of time to speak. Yet he soon made his mark. His
first speech in 1957 was on foreign policy, which remained his favourite
subject throughout his public life.
 Jawaharlal Nehru had retained the foreign ministry portfolio even as he
was prime minister. During the 1958 debate on the budget of the foreign
ministry, Nehru, in his reply to the discussions, addressed the points raised
by Vajpayee in great detail. Nehru began in English, but when he came to
Vajpayee’s points, he switched to Hindi. Even as Vajpayee was critical of
Nehru’s policies, he seemed overawed by the latter. After Nehru’s death,
Vajpayee’s eloquent eulogy in the Rajya Sabha, of which he was then a
member, was that of an admirer.
Vajpayee lost his seat from Balrampur in UP in the next general election in
1962. He said that he had looked after his constituency well and had a good
reputation because of his scathing criticism of the government. (In those days,
elections for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies used to be held together,
with ballot papers of different colours.) Money power and the manipulation
of caste and communal sentiments have been used by political parties over
decades to win elections. On the day of polling, a communal incident of
stabbing was staged to frighten away Hindu women from the polling booths.
But what tilted the balance was the message that was spread by his
opponents, asking people to vote for Vajpayee, to stamp that Jana Sangh
symbol (deepak or lamp) on the pink ballot papers used for assembly
elections. As a result, the Jana Sangh won in four of the five assembly
constituencies of Balrampur, but Vajpayee lost his Lok Sabha seat. Even after
thirty-seven years, this defeat rankled Vajpayee.
He entered the Rajya Sabha soon after, since by now the Jana Sangh had
enough legislators in state assemblies to send its representatives to the Upper
House of Parliament. And a few years down the line, in the 1967 general
election, Vajpayee won back his seat from Balrampur—this was the last time
he would contest from that constituency.
The 1967 election was the first time that the monopoly of the Congress
party was challenged, both at the union level and in many states. One of the
most interesting features of this election was an informal understanding
between the Jana Sangh, led by Deendayal Upadhyaya, and the socialists,
under the leadership of Ram Manohar Lohia. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,
who was seen as a puppet in the hands of the Congress high command until
that time, decided to take matters into her own hands. She adopted pro-
socialist policies, like the nationalization of private banks and the abolition
of privy purses. She also forced a split in the Congress party and then went
on to run a minority government for one and a half years.
The ’70s was an eventful decade for India and for Vajpayee in various
ways. Late in 1970, Indira Gandhi called for midterm elections in order to
establish her authority. As mentioned earlier, four leading Opposition parties
came together and formed a mahagathbandhan but failed to stop her from
sweeping the elections. The liberation of Bangladesh in December 1971 and
the Congress party’s landslide wins in the elections to the state assemblies in
1972 made Indira Gandhi’s position extremely dominant. Her mishandling of
the economy, which led to high inflation, and her political dominance made
her very unpopular and increasingly authoritarian. The JP Andolan, a strong
movement that started in Bihar and Gujarat but then spread all over north
India, challenged her politically.2 Faced with the prospect of losing power
after a judicial verdict set aside her electoral win as a member of
Parliament, she imposed a state of emergency, suspending Fundamental
Rights in June 1975. Vajpayee, like most Opposition leaders and tens of
thousands of others, was arrested and kept in detention. His health
deteriorated in custody in Bangalore, and he was shifted to the All India
Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi.
Then, in a sudden move in January 1977, Indira Gandhi announced the
holding of elections and most political prisoners were freed. Having grown
wiser through their jail experience, the Opposition parties instead of forming
a loose alliance decided to come together as a single party, the Janata Party,
which received an overwhelming mandate from the people. Morarji Desai
became the prime minister and Vajpayee, the foreign minister, something that
he had prepared himself for over his two decades of parliamentary life.
Unfortunately, this government did not last long and fell in less than two and
a half years, in August 1979.
Contrary to assumptions, Vajpayee ensured broad continuity in India’s
foreign policy at the time, but he also showed an inclination to make bold
moves. He went to Pakistan (1978) and to China (1979), the first ministerial
visits to these countries since the wars of 1965 and 1962 respectively. He
also hosted the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Dayan, whose visit was
initially kept under wraps. The Morarji Desai government fell in August
1979; Vajpayee’s next stint in office, of a fortnight, was to come only in May
1996, when he was sworn in as prime minister.
Mrs Gandhi came back to power with a large mandate in the elections of
January 1980. But she got embroiled in the troubles in Punjab and was
tragically assassinated on October 1984. The parliamentary elections of
December 1984 held after Indira Gandhi’s death and the subsequent large-
scale massacre of the Sikhs resulted in a total sweep for the ruling Congress
(I). Her son Rajiv Gandhi succeeded his mother as prime minister. Vajpayee,
who had successfully won the elections from New Delhi in 1977 and 1980,
was shifted by his party to his old seat of Gwalior, his hometown, where he
had spent his youth and which had sent him to Parliament in 1971.
This time, Congress (I) sprung a surprise by fielding Madhavrao Scindia,
scion of the former princely family of Gwalior. Vajpayee lost, and his party,
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—formed in 1980 from the ruins of the
Janata Party, which self-destructed in 1980—won only two seats in the 1984
parliamentary elections.

THE 1984–96 PERIOD SAW CONSIDERABLE political and economic turmoil: Rajiv
Gandhi’s mishandling of the Shah Bano case; the banning of Salman
Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses; the re-opening of the locks of the Babri
Masjid–Ram Janmabhoomi structure; and the serious allegation of
corruption, in the Bofors case, against the Congress. Due to all this, Congress
(I) badly lost in the 1989 elections.3 V.P. Singh, who had been a minister in
Rajiv Gandhi’s government before resigning and leading the Opposition
campaign, became the prime minister. His Janata Dal had won only 140 seats
but received support from the BJP, with its 86 MPs, and the left parties.
The BJP’s long match to power was now coming into view. L.K. Advani
emerged from Vajpayee’s shadow and, with his championing of the Ram
Janmabhoomi movement, changed the contours of Indian politics. V.P. Singh
did not last long, but his decision to implement the long-forgotten Mandal
Commission’s recommendations on the reservation of government jobs for
Other Backward Class, was another game changer. Chandra Shekhar, who
succeeded V.P. Singh, did not last long as well. He had split from the Janata
Dal and was supported by the Congress (I), but his efforts to sort out the
Ayodhya dispute were nipped in the bud by Rajiv Gandhi, who withdrew
support.
As the 1991 midterm elections were underway, the country got a jolt with
the brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The polling was even halted for
some time, with later rounds held after a gap of a couple of weeks. Sonia
Gandhi rejected the Congress’s request to lead the party. The responsibility
then fell upon P.V. Narasimha Rao, whose political career seemed to be over
at that time and who was therefore not contesting elections. Vajpayee had
decided to contest these elections to the Lok Sabha. His constituency of
choice was Lucknow.
Even though Vajpayee was in the Rajya Sabha then, his first home in
Parliament remained the Lok Sabha. At the last minute, the party asked him to
file his nomination from Vidisha as well. He felt this was hardly fair. Since
L.K. Advani was also contesting from two seats, Gandhinagar and New
Delhi, the party wanted to justify that decision, and so it made Vajpayee
follow suit. Vajpayee won from both the constituencies, and the BJP crossed
the three-figure mark, ending up with 119 MPs in a house of 542. The
Congress won 221, and though well short of a majority, Narasimha Rao
became the prime minister and appointed Manmohan Singh as his finance
minister. The rest, as they say, is history.
Advani became the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, a
development that disappointed Vajpayee. Years later, he was to tell a visitor
that if a secret ballot of BJP MPs were to be held to determine the position,
he was confident that he would have won the election. Vajpayee became very
active in Parliament, and though the BJP welcomed economic reforms, on
specific details there was enough space to take on the government.
Advani became the face of the party; Vajpayee, even when he disagreed
with the party, went along, as was his wont. He had opposed Advani’s Rath
Yatras but also flagged off one. Similarly, while he never encouraged the kar
sevaks to build the temple—the idea, in fact, disturbed him—he never said
anything that would embarrass the party. A video has been doing the rounds
that shows Vajpayee addressing a group of kar sevaks in Lucknow a day
prior to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. His language is ambiguous; he
did not ask them to demolish the disputed structure but, in a play of words,
spoke about the land being levelled before the construction could begin.
The unexpected turn of events at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 started the
process of the shifting of the BJP’s focus away from Advani and towards
Vajpayee. The fact that the demolition took place in Advani’s presence,
despite the UP BJP government’s assurances to the SC that the structure
won’t be demolished, diminished his standing. The demolition meant that a
potent symbol that had been used to rally people was gone. Then, the
resultant communal violence across the country that took thousands of lives,
and especially Dawood Ibrahim’s bombings in Mumbai that left 300 dead,
unnerved the country. In response to the demolition, Advani resigned as
leader of Opposition, Kalyan Singh resigned as chief minister, the UP
government was dismissed, President’s rule was imposed and the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was banned. Advani was arrested and kept in a
government guest house in Jhansi. After a few days, the BJP state
governments in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh were also
dismissed.
Upset and hurt at the turn of events, Vajpayee rose to the defence of the
party and the RSS. When Parliament reconvened, he moved a no-confidence
motion against the Narasimha Rao government. Vajpayee said that he was
unhappy at what happened, expressed regret and even called Ayodhya a
tragedy. His basic point was that the BJP and RSS were not behind the
demolition. He blamed the politics propagating a distorted version of
secularism and asked that the culprits be punished. It was often said of
Vajpayee that he was the ‘right man in the wrong party’, but he dispelled such
thoughts.
The Ram Mandir issue had delivered for the BJP, but it had to move
beyond this issue if it wanted to become India’s ruling dispensation. When
Advani was appointed the party president in 1994, after Murli Manohar
Joshi’s single term, Vajpayee became the leader of the Opposition in the Lok
Sabha. The same year, when Pakistan put Kashmir on the agenda of the UN
Human Rights Commission, at Narasimha Rao’s request, Vajpayee led the
official Indian delegation and successfully countered this move. On 13
November 1995, when the BJP National Convention was being held in
Mumbai, Advani announced at a public meeting at Shivaji Park (Dadar) that
Vajpayee would be the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the 1996
general elections. This announcement sent shock-waves through the Indian
political system, catching even Vajpayee by surprise. It was the first time any
Opposition party had said that it had a prime ministerial candidate, and it
was a sign that the BJP was going to make a serious bid for power. Who
better than Vajpayee to reach out beyond the base to the larger electorate?
The BJP’s isolation, post-Ayodhya, is often forgotten. Going into the
elections, it had only two allies, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the
Samata Party in Bihar, the latter more as an anti-Lalu front than any
ideological compatibility. The Shiv Sena thought that the BJP was not
pushing the Hindutva agenda aggressively enough, now that Bal Thackeray
was Hindu Hriday Samrat.

THE HOUSE ON SAFDARJUNG ROAD was quiet for various reasons, the least of
which was that there was no novelty attached to the idea of Vajpayee
becoming PM any more. The consensus among the workers and supporters of
the BJP and among most political analysts was that Vajpayee deserved, or at
least was expected, to become the prime minister after the 1998 midterm
polls. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was on the
threshold of a parliamentary majority when the final results came in,
something no political party or alliance had managed since 1984, when the
Congress overwhelmingly swept the elections in the aftermath of Indira
Gandhi’s tragic death.
The enhanced security detail guarding Vajpayee since May 1996 had made
it much more difficult for anyone to walk in and out of his house, and this
was another reason for the relative absence of people at his swearing-in
ceremony on 19 March 1998. But these were minor issues that paled in
comparison to the hectic political drama of the previous two weeks. If a
marathon could be run like a combination of a sprint and an obstacle race,
with a hint of Greek drama thrown in, this was it. The joy of victory, of
achieving what you set out to be, had been considerably watered down. In
fact, there was a lingering bitter taste that would not go away for the entire
thirteen months of the government. It wasn’t sombre all the way; there were
many highs, some unbelievably so, but it mostly felt like skating on thin ice.
I had left 7 Safdarjung Road only a few hours earlier, around 3 a.m., after
ensuring that all the ministers-to-be had been tracked down and the invitation
cards for the swearing-in ceremony for their families, friends and supporters
handed over to them. Luckily, the function was to be held in the forecourt of
the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Earlier, such functions were normally held in the
Ashoka Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhawan, but it could hardly accommodate a
couple of hundred people.
The list of ministers had been finalized late the previous evening—a
moment in which I was extremely nervous. Even though I had been with
Vajpayee since May 1996, I was not expected to attend political meetings
and had only recently started interacting with so many big leaders—L.K.
Advani, George Fernandes, Jaswant Singh, Ramakrishna Hegde, Surjit Singh
Barnala, Pramod Mahajan and others. Even after the names had been checked
and re-checked, the cards distributed, and it was time to go to bed, there was
a last-minute rethink: the name of Jaswant Singh was withdrawn, since he
had lost the election and it was not considered proper to make him a minister,
yet.
This did affect the composition of the government, as had been slotted for
finance, a key portfolio. He had been the chair of the parliamentary standing
committee on finance and had come across as a big-picture person, a genuine
liberalizer with his Swatantra Party background. Of all the leaders, I knew
him the best, as he would frequently drop into Vajpayee’s parliamentary
office. He was then co-writing a book on battles fought in India since the
sixteenth century and used the office to read and write occasionally.4 (It was
another of his books, the one on Jinnah, that got him into trouble with his
party, but that was still many years away.) The staff called him Major Sahib,
for he had been one until he quit the army for public life. We would exchange
a few desultory words on the challenges facing the economy.
Vajpayee was the epitome of grace whenever he ate his breakfast of
papaya and toast, completely unhurriedly, as if it were just another day. Little
did I realize then that it was this ability to face adversity that was among his
greatest strengths. The newspapers read, the galabandh in place, we set off
for Rashtrapati Bhavan. Before I got into the car, Namita, Vajpayee’s foster
daughter, embraced me as only a sister-in-law, who was a strong pillar of
support, could and wished me luck. As I got into the car with Vajpayee to
drive to Rashtrapati Bhavan, I felt overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions. I
recall being told in June 1996 that continuing with Vajpayee could mean
jeopardizing my career in bureaucracy. After the expected fall of the first
Vajpayee government, in May 1996, I could have gone back to my regular job
as a director in the commerce ministry but chose to continue with Vajpayee
as secretary to the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, a first for any
member of the higher civil services.5 I actually didn’t think too much about
continuing with him despite his losing office. If I had worked with him when
he was prime minister, it was only natural that I would do so when he was
not. Did I expect him to become PM? Yes, but the ‘when’ of it did not seem
relevant.
We rode to Rashtrapati Bhavan in silence as usual. Somewhere on Rajaji
Marg, he asked me, ‘Finance ka kya hoga?’ My instinctive, immature
response was that he should keep it with a good minister of state to handle
routine matters. I said that we would manage until a regular finance minister
was found. One minister of state had already been decided upon. It was to be
R.K. Kumar, Jayalalithaa’s point person in Delhi. No more words were
uttered during the rest of the short journey.
The almost unnatural quiet of Safdarjung Road was replaced by the
cacophony of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The sun was much higher and it was
getting warm. The swearing-in ceremony was impressive. The council of
ministers was a mixture of those who had made a name for themselves in
public life and those who were representing important state leaders. From
the BJP, there was L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sikander Bakht,
Madan Lal Khurana, Yashwant Sinha, Rangarajan Kumaramangalam and Ram
Jethamalani among others. Important leaders from other parties included
George Fernandes, Ramakrishna Hegde, Surjit Singh Barnala, Buta Singh,
Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, Suresh Prabhu, V. Ramamurthy, etc. Ministers
of State included Ram Naik, Uma Bharti, Maneka Gandhi, Sukhbir Singh
Badal, Babulal Marandi and R.K. Kumar.
It was an interesting group. Two ministers, Nitish Kumar and Naveen
Patnaik, and two ministers of state, Uma Bharti and Babulal Marandi, would
go on to become chief ministers of their respective states. At the time of
writing, Naveen Patnaik is the longest-serving chief minister of Odisha by a
mile, and Nitish Kumar is the second longest-serving chief minister of Bihar.
(Of Sri Krishna Sinha’s seventeen years as premier/chief minister of Bihar,
three and a half years were pre-Independence; so Nitish Kumar is catching
up with Sri Babu, as he was known, as the chief minister for the longest
tenure post-Independence.)
Sikander Bakht and Sushma Swaraj came to the BJP after the Janata Party
self-destructed. Neither had been with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), BJP’s
precursor. Nor did they have any RSS connection. The Janata Party came
about with the merger of the leading non Congress (I) parties: the BJS,
Congress (O), Bharatiya Lok Dal and the Socialist Party. Bakht was a former
Congressman, while Swaraj had a socialist background. Swaraj, in fact, had
been a minister in Haryana in the Janata Party government in 1977, when she
was hardly twenty-five, but quit her position on grounds of principle when
she felt that Chief Minister Devi Lal was autocratic.
Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, who regrettably died so young, was a third-
generation minister. He had joined the BJP from the Congress and had been a
minister of state in the Narasimha Rao government but had had to quit, having
asked the party high command to introspect after some electoral losses. His
father, Mohan Kumaramangalam, who died in a plane crash in Delhi, was
among the group of communists who had joined the Congress and rose to
become a minister in the Union government.
Besides Bakth and Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, there were a number of
other long-term Congressmen, among whom V. Ramamurthy still regarded
himself as a Congressman. A veteran Congress leader from Tamil Nadu and
a former union minister, he had formed the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress
(TRC). Another was Buta Singh, a former union home minister in Rajiv
Gandhi’s government who had a played a major role in the post-Operation
Blue Star reconstruction at the Golden Temple in 1984–85, for which he was
temporarily excommunicated from the Sikh Panth. He apparently courted
controversies, or at least they followed him, as his subsequent career would
show. At this moment, he was out of Congress but was to return to it soon.
Jayalalithaa had her two representatives in the cabinet, senior leaders S.
Muthaiah and M. Thambi Durai, and her point person in Delhi, R.K. Kumar,
as minister of state. BJP’s need to accommodate the allies was so great that
even a senior leader like Ram Naik was sworn in only as minister of state.
The swearing-in ceremony passed in a blur. Vajpayee did mention to some
presspersons that he would be holding the finance portfolio for the time
being. This time, Vajpayee’s entry into the prime minister’s office seemed
natural. N.N. Vohra, the outgoing principal secretary to the prime minister,
and Brajesh Mishra, the incoming one, received the prime minister as we
alighted from the car. Little did I realize that over the next year and a half, I
would accompany Vajpayee in all car journeys, except when ill or really
tired. In the prime minister’s room, photos were taken and the first order
signed, appointing Brajesh Mishra as the principal secretary. Somewhere
down the line, my appointment order was also signed. I was technically an
interloper till that moment, since I had been posted at the Delhi Vidyut Board
as member (administration).
The previous day, Mishra and I journeyed to South Block to get a feel of
the place and be briefed about its functioning, upcoming crises, etc. While
Vohra and Mishra secluded themselves, I met with other officers. I got a
detailed briefing from C. Phunsog, then a joint secretary in the PMO and,
later, chief secretary of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. I really
benefited from my interaction with Phunsog, an outstanding officer, who
introduced me to other officers, told me who does what and so on. It was
important to know the processes and persons, since it seemed quite easy to
step on toes, which I did fairly soon, but that story can wait.
 One of Vajpayee’s clear instructions was that other than the principal
secretary, there would be no change in the PMO. All officers from the
secretary down would remain. Vacancies would be filled in by normal
means, unless some specific expertise was required. Then we could tap
persons trusted and needed, but not by pushing out somebody. The principal
secretary and private secretary serve the same term in office as their boss,
unless sacked without notice.
Appointing Brajesh Mishra was a stroke of genius, though it did not feel
that way then. When Vajpayee became prime minister in 1996, Bishan
Tandon, an extremely competent and straightforward officer had become the
principal secretary. He had worked in Indira Gandhi’s PMO as a joint
secretary and had written about it. Vajpayee and Brajesh Mishra had known
each other for a long time. This, presumably, was from the days Mishra was
the Indian representative to the United Nations (UN), and Vajpayee regularly
went to the annual session of the UN General Assembly as a member of the
Indian delegation. Mishra quit the government after Indira Gandhi treated him
unfairly. He later joined the BJP and became the convenor of its foreign
policy cell.
Vajpayee’s first major parliamentary intervention was on foreign policy in
1957, and since then he had developed a deep knowledge and expertise on
the subject. He was the foreign minister in the first non-Congress government
in 1977, headed by Morarji Desai. Vajpayee’s understated personality and
his silences at meetings, discussions and conversations meant that most
people underestimated his grasp of the subject and his powers of observation
and recall.
In the interregnum between his two terms as prime minister, Vajpayee was
the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on external relations.
The country faced many external challenges, like the negotiations on the
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the signing of the Chemical
Weapons Convention. There were many occasions when the BJP issued press
notes, and finally, there was the matter of writing the BJP election manifesto
and the particular language on India exercising its nuclear options. Mishra’s
interactions with Vajpayee went up considerably during this period. They
broadly held the same views, bonded well and developed a smooth working
relationship.
Since Mishra agreed with Vajpayee’s broader thrust on foreign policy and
with his clear intention to exercise the nuclear option, he became a natural
choice for principal secretary. I felt bad for Bishan Tandon, and when he
asked me why Vajpayee had not appointed him, I really had no answer. In
retrospect, it was clear that at the top, emotions must be kept in check and not
be allowed to come in the way of decision-making. And contrary to popular
impression, Vajpayee was an iron hand in a velvet glove.
Even before portfolio distribution and negotiations that took much of the
working day got underway, Prime Minister Vajpayee was on his way to the
National Stadium for an India–Pakistan hockey test. I can justifiably claim
credit for it. A couple of days before, journalist and sports administrator
Lokesh Sharma had approached us about Vajpayee inaugurating the hockey
test series. This was discussed with Vajpayee, Brajesh Mishra and others.
The general response was non-committal. I thought it would send the right
message, besides being good optics, and made the point that the invitation
should be pushed. A BJP prime minister’s first act in office: attending an
India–Pakistan match. What could be better!
When Vajpayee walked on to the turf, there was a roar from the crowd.
The spectators were in such a good mood that they cheered with gusto for the
Pakistan team. Arguably, the bilateral relations between the two countries
were not as bad as they are at present, but they weren’t good either. The 1993
bomb blasts in Mumbai, the terror in Kashmir, even the Khalistan mayhem
was not that far away, but on 19 March 1998, the people of Delhi had
forgiven and forgotten. India won the match 3–2.
The rest of the day passed in meetings at the prime minister’s office in
South Block, sorting out portfolios for the ministers who had been sworn in.
This was made infinitely more complicated by the occurrences of the past
two weeks, which suddenly empowered many political players into
bargaining better positions for themselves and their interests, even if it meant
a weak government. In fact, the elections to the Lok Sabha were not due until
May 2001, but the fractured verdict of 1996 meant that a stable government
could not be sustained. The developments of 1996–97 became an important
factor contributing to the results of the February 1998 midterm polls to
Parliament and to the process of government formation subsequently.
 2
A Hung Parliament

A new term entered the lexicon of Indian politics after the 1996 elections:
a hung parliament, which aptly described the ‘neither here nor there’ state of
affairs of our political system. The BJP emerged as the largest party in Lok
Sabha with 160 seats, and its pre-poll allies picked up another twenty-six,
including eighteen for the Shiv Sena and eight for the Samata Party. The
Congress (I) had 140 seats, down a hundred from its strength when
Parliament had been dissolved just before the elections. The National Front
(NF), a loose grouping of the Janata Dal and Samajwadi Dal, had sixty-three
members.1 The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Tamil Maanila
Congress combined took all thirty-nine seats of Tamil Nadu as well as the
lone seat of Pondicherry. The Left Front had fifty-two members. The Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) had eleven MPs, the Akalis had eight, the Asom Gana
Parishad (AGP) had five and the Tiwari Congress won in four seats.
Although the BJP was the largest party, it polled just over 20 per cent of
the votes, much less than the Congress (I), which was supported by over 28
per cent of the electorate. The BJP’s strike rate was better because its
support was not dispersed all over the country but concentrated in UP, Bihar,
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan.
 India had seen parliamentary elections before without a clear winner but
this one was different. Though the 1989 election is identified with V.P. Singh
and the after-effects of the Bofors scandal, it was actually the Congress (I),
led by Rajiv Gandhi, which won the most seats—194—in that year. The
Janata Dal won only 140 seats, but since Rajiv Gandhi had lost the
psychological battle, with the Congress’s tally having steeply fallen from 415
in 1984, he did not even attempt to form a government. In any case, he would
have found it difficult to get support from any party. V.P. Singh went on to
become the prime minister with outside support of the BJP and the left
parties. Similarly, the Congress (I) was the largest party in 1991, but even
after the sympathy wave occasioned by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in
Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, it was still fifty short of a majority. There were
no other claimants, and P.V. Narasimha Rao went on to form a minority
government. He liberalized the economy and gained a majority in Parliament
using sama, dana, bheda and danda.2 But the 1996 result was different in
that neither psychologically nor numerically was any side naturally
positioned to form or not form the government.
Narasimha Rao was smart enough to realize that with the kind of depletion
the Congress (I) had been subjected to, it would be better for it to not attempt
to form the government. This did not mean that the Congress was reconciled
to sitting it out. It just wanted to exercise power indirectly. The Jain hawala
scandal—which, with the Supreme Court intervening, came out in the open in
1993, purportedly exposing the bribes that had been paid to politicians and
recorded in diaries—had weakened both the BJP and Narasimha Rao’s
internal rivals, like Arjun Singh. L.K. Advani, the BJP party president, and
Madan Lal Khurana, Delhi’s chief minister, also had to step aside. Arjun
Singh, N.D. Tiwari and Madhavrao Scindia left the Congress (I) to fight
separately. The stalling of economic reforms and the cynicism bred by
perceived rampant political corruption went against the Congress (I) and
helped the BJP—but only up to a point.
The President’s invitation to Vajpayee to form the government was seen as
an act of constitutional propriety, since the BJP was the largest single party
and part of the largest pre-poll alliance. (It remains a matter of debate
whether the largest party, or pre-election alliance, should automatically be
called to form the government in the absence of a confirmed majority. This
principle was, in any case, given a go-by just two years later by a different
President.) The newly formed United Front (UF)—consisting of the NF
minus Lakshmi Parvathy’s TDP, N. Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, DMK–TMC,
AGP and the left parties backed by the Congress—emerged as a viable
alternative that had the numbers. However, it was still to get its act together
when the invitation to Vajpayee arrived. The wording of the letter from the
President was simple and direct. It read something like, ‘I shall swear you in
as Prime Minister tomorrow, 15 May, at 11 a.m. You should prove your
majority by 31 May.’ Fortunately for Vajpayee and the BJP, no letter from the
Congress (I) president and the outgoing prime minister, Narasimha Rao,
pledging support to the UF reached the President in time. Apparently,
Narasimha Rao was resting.
The UF’s delay in staking a claim to form the government was because it
could not decide on its prime ministerial candidate. This was partly because
the UF was itself a strange political creature. The leaders of the mainly one-
state parties—DMK, Samajwadi Party, TDP, AGP and Tamil Maanila
Congress—did not really want to move to Delhi. There were three national
parties, but these were basically limited to two or three states. The Janata
Dal had its presence in Karnataka and Bihar, where it ran the state
governments, and in Odisha. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) ruled
West Bengal and Tripura, with Kerala rotating between rival fronts led by
them and the Congress (I). The Communist Party of India was the junior
partner of the CPM in West Bengal and Kerala, and had residual presence in
Bihar. Both the communist parties had some presence in Andhra and Tamil
Nadu, but could only win seats in these states occasionally, and that too in
alliance with others.
The CPM leader and consummate backroom dealmaker Harkishan Singh
Surjeet was instrumental in stitching together the UF. He was on very good
terms with those Congress leaders who saw themselves as left of centre. The
UF agreed on Jyoti Basu, the long-serving West Bengal chief minister, as
their prime ministerial candidate once former prime minister V.P. Singh had
ruled himself out. However, though both Jyoti Basu and Surjeet were in
favour of the idea, the CPM as a party did not go along with it. Basu was
later to characterize this rejection as a ‘historical blunder’. Mulayam Singh
Yadav and Lalu Yadav were also interested but did not find enough takers. It
was only then that H.D. Deve Gowda, the Karnataka chief minister, was
chosen.

COMING BACK TO THE FORMATION of Vajpayee’s first government in 1996. I

reached his house at 6 Raisina Road early in the morning of 15 May. It was
not an ordinary day, and I obviously could not take my car in, so I parked it
next to the Press Club. When I left the house, close to midnight, as the private
secretary of the prime minister, my car was missing. It had been towed away
to the Parliament Road police station. An interesting way to begin a new job.
There were a lot of people. Everyone was happy. There was sloganeering;
there was crying. The enthusiasm was contagious, but the feeling that it
wouldn’t last did not leave me. However, for the ordinary BJP worker in me,
it was a dream come true, and I did not want to be woken up.
I had two credentials for the job: One, my track record as a bureaucrat
was decent. Two, there was no time to look around for another candidate,
and I was right there. But how come I was there to begin with? Mrs Kaul, my
mother-in-law’s elder sister, was the pillar of the Vajpayee household. She
was very fond of me and remained so till she passed away. Leaving personal
relations aside, rarely have I come across somebody who would strain so
much to help people who approached her. A legion of people could get
treatment at AIIMS because she had built up excellent relations with the
doctors there over the decades. Though Mrs Kaul had no role to play in my
selection as private secretary to the PM, it was because of her that my wife,
Surabhi, and I became regular visitors to 6 Raisina Road. That Vajpayee was
an Opposition politician did not deter me from openly visiting his place.
Since I was new to the job, particularly to the top levels of bureaucracy, I
was nervous—a greenhorn actually. More so, though I had known Vajpayee
for years, I was not on chatting terms with him. This, as I realized, was
because he was naturally a shy person, not at all a backslapping sort and
slow to open up. For a person who had achieved so much, without any
godfather in politics, and who resonated so well with the public at large, he
also seemed strangely very conscious of his limitations. Again, as I later
realized, this quality was what made him very successful. It was so easy to
underestimate him, for people never understood how observant he was, how
conscious of using the correct word at critical times and how much effort he
could put into things that he found important. His pauses while speaking were
not just for effect but for precision, even when scoring a debating point.
Vajpayee had an amazing sense of humour, which was self-deprecating and
came from a very high degree of self-confidence. He knew how to use words
to bring a smile on people’s faces. I am reminded of two incidents that best
illustrate this facet of his personality. The year was 1998. The BJP-led Delhi
government had invited him to be the chief guest at the inauguration of the
flyover at Yamuna Bazar. The master of ceremonies kept referring to him as
the ‘bhootpoorv pradhan mantri’. When it was his turn to speak, Vajpayee
said that he knew he was the poorv pradhan mantri but had no idea where
the bhoot came from.3
On another occasion, Vajpayee was on a trip to New York when he
experienced some inflammation in his gums. The dentist he went to started
asking questions about the infection, when it began, etc. As Vajpayee
described to an audience in Delhi, ‘Doctor itihas ki jankari lay raha tha aur
mera chehre ka bhugol badal raha tha (While the dentist was finding out
about history, the geography of my face was changing).’ As was typical of
him, he would never joke at somebody else’s expense; his jokes were mostly
directed at himself.
Even as the government was settling down, trying to find its feet and gather
support, minor crises kept cropping up. President Shankar Dayal Sharma sent
a draft of a short speech that he said he would deliver when Parliament
would meet for the first time. This was completely against constitutional and
parliamentary propriety as the President is not supposed to read his own
speech to Parliament but one that the Council of Ministers sends him. When
the President of India or the Queen of England says, ‘My government would
adopt such and such policy’, the policy in question is obviously that of the
elected government. In fact, until the budget speech became the primary
instrument of making policy announcements of the government, it was the
annual address of the President at the first sitting every year that was used for
such announcements. Pre-liberalization, the budget was limited to being the
annual statement of accounts and listing of taxation proposals. Many would
wish that it once again became just that.
Once this hurdle was behind us, and the Council of Ministers discussed
and finalized the speech and sent it to the President, he expressed his
unhappiness at the phrase ‘license-permit raj’ and sought its deletion.
Discretion being the better part of valour, this request was accepted and a
substitute phrase was put in its place. To me, it seemed like in both these
instances the President was asserting his position—though to what avail, I
wonder. The coming into office of the Vajpayee government was no doubt
due to Presidential discretion, but it did not seem that the government would
last. So what was the need for these actions?
There were many such legal or technical issues, but leaving those aside,
the one incident I remember best was the search for A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Vajpayee called on Narasimha Rao as propriety demands, a few days after
assuming office. The two had a history of getting along rather well. While
Vajpayee was away at 7 Race Course Road, Mother Teresa landed
unannounced at Vajpayee’s residence with a retinue. I ushered her in. When
Vajpayee returned, he spoke at length with her and after she left, he asked me
to invite Dr Kalam to meet him urgently.
It was a holiday, and Kalam’s home and office numbers went unanswered.
I put Venkat, one of the PMO staff attached to the residential office, on the
task of locating Kalam. This was early afternoon, and it was only after 9 p.m.
that Venkat located Kalam at a DRDO guest house in Kolkata. I spoke to him
and requested him to take the early-morning flight back to Delhi to meet the
PM. We only had Indian Airlines back then, and there were probably only
two flights a day between Delhi and Kolkata.
But Kalam did reach Delhi the next day, around noon, and met Vajpayee.
What transpired between the two can only be guessed, though people have
written about it, something we shall come back to later.
THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS was the convening of Parliament and the
swearing-in of the elected members. Parliament cannot meet without
somebody presiding over it, and since the speaker cannot be elected till
members are sworn in, the senior-most parliamentarian is sworn in as
speaker pro tem. The President swears in the speaker pro tem, who would
then administer the oath of office to all the newly elected members.
Indrajit Gupta, the veteran Communist Party of India parliamentarian, was
the senior-most MP, other than possibly Vajpayee. But before a formal
proposal could be sent to the President, Vajpayee desired to speak to Indrajit
Gupta and take his consent—a simple formality. When Gupta came on line,
and before the call could be transferred to Vajpayee, Gupta asked whether
the call was about asking for his support. He was assured that it was not.
Was his question a joke? Or did it reflect the tense, early stage when it was
still unclear whether the government would succeed in gathering enough
support to survive. It would be clear soon.
The Vajpayee government conceded defeat even before the battle started,
or so I thought. The Congress–UF put up Purno Sangma as their candidate for
speaker. The BJP, seeing the numbers stacked up against it, did not put up a
candidate. Should Vajpayee not have resigned then, after publicly
acknowledging that he did not have the numbers?
The two-day debate on 27–28 May was electrifying. Even though he did
not have the numbers on his side, Vajpayee got his moments of vindication.
Murasoli Maran, senior DMK leader and nephew of M. Karunanidhi,
informed Parliament that though the DMK was approached, the BJP did not
resort to money-bag politics. One could see Vajpayee’s face glow when this
compliment was paid.
Narasimha Rao pointed out that non-alignment was not mentioned in BJP’s
election manifesto. Somebody scanned through the Congress manifesto; it had
nothing on non-alignment as well. Vajpayee’s reply to the debate was
magisterial. He pointed to India’s inherent secularism and how the first
mosque was built in Kerala, very early in Islam’s history, when the Prophet
was still alive. A Hindu king had gifted the piece of land, to Arab traders
who frequented the Malabar Coast, on which this mosque was built. The
unnaturalness of the coalition that wanted to prevent the largest party from
taking office was his key message that day to Parliament, and to the nation.
For days after this debate, the speech was the talking point across the
country. The campaign for the next election had begun.
Deve Gowda was sworn in three days later, on 1 June. Lalu Yadav,
president of the Janata Dal, at once suspended Ramakrishna Hegde from the
Janata Party. Deve Gowda and Hegde were rivals in Karnataka but this was
unexpected. Unknown to Deve Gowda, the expulsion laid the seeds of his
own marginalization in less than two years. In the discussion on the vote of
confidence, Deve Gowda took on Vajpayee and said that oratory was no
substitute for governance. Obviously meant to cover up for his own lack of
felicity in English, Deve Gowda’s remark, as time would tell, was quite off
the mark. It is extremely unfair that Vajpayee is remembered for his public
speaking, which was outstanding but represented just a small part of his
persona.
Stuck as he was with many criminal cases that the CBI was either
investigating or prosecuting, Lalu Yadav hoped to get his favourites
appointed to important posts in the CBI—so Deve Gowda implied when he
called on Vajpayee some weeks into his term. He kept referring to Vajpayee
as ‘sahib’ throughout the conversation and was extremely deferential. I was
touched when Deve Gowda turned to me and said that in case I wanted any
posting, I should inform Mahendra Jain, his private secretary, who had come
along for the meeting. The offer was genuine but one I could not take up.
Deve Gowda came out as an old-style politician, who believed in good
relations outside the legislature, irrespective of all the name-calling inside.
The UF was a government of generally low-key ministers. To compensate
for the fact that they had no Sikhs on their side, a minor Akali politician,
Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, was inducted into the government as a full
cabinet minister. Similarly, most of the parties deputed relatively junior
members as their representatives in the Council of Ministers. This was not
incidental. The party leaders back home in their states did not want rival
power centres. Yet it did not always work out that way. Renuka Chowdhury
of the Telugu Desam Party was flamboyant and was noticed. The result was
that Chandrababu Naidu did not give her a ticket to contest the 1998 Lok
Sabha elections or the Rajya Sabha elections. Ultimately, she left the party
and joined the Congress. Naidu in turn was unwilling to nominate any
representative to the government in the Centre and did so reluctantly in 2014.
I had a small role to play in the selection of one of the ministers of the UF
government. Goa had elected two non-Congress MPs, both first-timers in
Parliament. Churchill Alemao was the South Goa MP. The Directorate of
Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the preventive arm of the customs department,
ended up shooting dead one of Alemao’s brothers, a former sailor, as part of
an anti-smuggling operation. Alemao had been chief minister of Goa for less
than a month in 1990 when the then Congress (I) government of long-time CM
Pratapsingh Rane was brought down through defections. The speaker of the
Goa Assembly, Luis Proto Barbosa, was to become the CM, but this had to
wait until the deputy speaker could be removed through a no-confidence
motion. The man who masterminded this toppling operation was Ramakant
Khalap, leader of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), who was to
be elected the north Goa MP in 1996. Though much senior to Alemao in
politics, he became the deputy chief minister in the former’s government. In
any case, the bulk of the MLAs propping up the government were from the
MGP.
One afternoon in late-May 1996, must have been a Sunday, as I was
relaxing at home with the artist Subodh Kerkar, Khalap dropped in. He told
me that he would be happy to support the Vajpayee government, but his one
vote would not make a difference. He felt, and I also admire politicians for
their ability to sense developments much better than the rest of us, that the
incoming UF government would make one of the Goa MPs a minister. His
fear was that if Alemao beat him to it, it would be a terrible loss of face back
home. I enjoyed the irony of the situation. Khalap had made Alemao Goa’s
chief minister for a short period and worked as his deputy, if only in the
formal sense.
An uncle of mine was a long-time Tata Steel employee based lately in
Patna with a mandate to keep relations with the Bihar government on an even
keel. He was reported to be close to Lalu Yadav, so on a lark, I gave him a
call. He spoke to Lalu Yadav. Khalap was summoned and when the UF
government was expanded, it had a law minister from Goa. Khalap is an
outstanding lawyer and, according to all accounts, acquitted himself very
credibly of his tasks as minister.
After Vajpayee’s government fell, and there was little for him to do, he
took off on a short holiday for Manali with his family. I, too, was relatively
idle. So taking advantage of the presence of my artist friend Subodh, we
decided to go off to the hills. It was not until we had left my home early next
morning that we decided where to go, and ended up driving to Manali. We
reached at around 8 p.m., and when he saw us, Vajpayee expressed his
surprise and said that he felt bad that I drove fifteen hours to reach Manali
when I could have flown with him. His concern was palpable. The next
evening, as we sat down for dinner in the lovely house that Namita and her
husband, Ranjan, built at Prini, just outside Manali, I got an excited call on
my mobile phone, a rarity in those days. It was from Khalap, thanking me. He
had been sworn in as minister of state with independent charge.
Khalap had to bear the brunt of Pramod Mahajan’s joke in Parliament,
which the latter used tellingly to demonstrate the strange creature that the UF
was. According to Mahajan, at one of his official visits to China, during
which Khalap too was present, the Chinese communists wanted to know how
India’s parliamentary democracy functioned. Mahajan said that he explained
to them that his party, the BJP, was the largest party but sat in the Opposition.
The Congress (I) was the second-largest party and also sat in the opposition
but supported the government. The third-largest party, the CPI (M), was in
the ruling front but not in the government. And Khalap, whose party had one
MP, was the government.

MY LEARNING CURVE WAS IN its nascent stage. Since Vajpayee’s family was
away to Manali for the summer holidays, I was the only constant company he
had at home from 8.30 in the morning to 6.30 in the evening. Fortunately,
there were enough people trying to meet him, but I had to otherwise handle
him all alone. This included fixing appointments, sorting out the mail
received, preparing replies and giving him company at lunch. The last was
the easiest—two people silently eating their meals. Fortunately, the food at
the Vajpayee–Kaul household has always been outstanding.
Running a small office without a hierarchy or files being ‘put up’ for
orders was a novel experience. The leader of Opposition was entitled to a
small office, equal to what a deputy minister had. There were three
incumbents who had all retired from Parliament, having reached levels of the
lower bureaucracy.4 They had been with Vajpayee ever since he had become
leader of Opposition in the previous Lok Sabha. I occupied the vacant post of
secretary to the leader of Opposition. In the residential office, I had a room
next to Vajpayee’s, while the others shared a larger room nearby. My room
also functioned as the waiting room for guests who had come to meet
Vajpayee.
Vajpayee soon moved house, back to 7 Safdarjung Road, the house he had
occupied as the external affairs minister in the Janata Party government
(1977–79). Here, the office block was small and compact, with three rooms
slung together. When Parliament was in session, a large room was given to
the leader of Opposition in Parliament House, and attached to it was another
small room (actually, a veranda turned into a room). The four of us sat here.
But the trouble with this room, which also functioned as the waiting room,
was that it could only be accessed through Vajpayee’s room, which opened
into the circular corridor running around the building. The whole setup could
not have been more different than what I’d been used to as a senior member
of the permanent civil services. There was no fancy office with attached
bathroom or an antechamber to relax, no staff car, no personal attendant to
handle phone calls, no peon to bring tea and files or run errands.
For me, the most difficult thing in that job was to deal with the letters
received. In the beginning, these ran into hundreds every day. Later, we
received several dozen daily. Most were requests for favours and
complaints, which we passed on to the relevant government departments ‘for
appropriate action’. Many people sent books, especially of poems, while
others sent their best wishes. They all received a reply, signed by Vajpayee,
thanking them. The real difficulty was with the letters sent by political and
other leaders. I used to place those in a folder, seen in all government
offices, called the ‘dak pad’. These are marked for the relevant officer by the
boss, sometimes with a message on what is to be done. I realized that the
letters mostly remained in the dak pad, though occasionally Vajpayee would
call one of the assistants and dictate a reply. Later, when my confidence
grew, I started writing out the replies myself, which he would generally sign
or make minor modifications to. I obviously could not do so when the letters
were on controversial topics or written by leaders of political parties.
Working for a political leader, who was not in the government, was
challenging for me, since bureaucrats naturally like to think and react
apolitically. Vajpayee also did not want it otherwise. Writing letters, sitting
in on meetings with foreign dignitaries or even Indian VVIPs, was fine. But
how do you help research a topic and prepare talking points on his reactions
to the budget presented? And when Vajpayee had to address the chambers of
commerce or make important policy pronouncements, how was one to go
about it? Without formal discussions, we came to an agreement that I was not
to attend the BJP parliamentary party meetings but to sit in the small room
nearby. Nor did I accompany him on his visits to the BJP office. I
accompanied him on his tours all over the country, except to his constituency,
Lucknow. This was the domain of Shiv Kumar, his long-term aide who had
acted as his secretary and driver for decades. Kumar was getting old, and his
full-time presence was not required in a more formal setting. He did come
regularly, though, bearing requests, from constituents and others, that he
wanted followed up.
Lacking bureaucratic paraphernalia and constant intellectual support, I had
to learn how to research and write speeches. R.V. Pandit, an East Indian
Catholic from Mumbai and the former publisher of the magazine Imprint,
was close to both Vajpayee and Advani. He was always full of ideas. Both
Sudheendra Kulkarni and Kanchan Gupta were occasionally drafted to write
speeches, sometimes the same speech—which I would then have to
reconcile. At times, Arun Shourie would be called upon to discuss and
prepare a speech (this was when Vajpayee was prime minister, 1998
onwards). It meant that for some speeches, we had a number of ideas, some
contradictory, and each with very different syntax. Blending them was a
nightmare.
It was much easier when I had to do it on my own, but Vajpayee was a
difficult man to satisfy in this respect. This was because, contrary to popular
impression, he used to work hard at his important speeches. His able ally in
these exercises was the Parliament House library. We used to ask them for
information on any topic. They would compile a short factual note and attach
photocopies of relevant newspaper and magazine articles. If Parliament had
ever discussed that particular issue, the package had it. Vajpayee would
devour all the material, then start writing notes in longhand. These notes
were not in the form of a speech or even an essay; they were neither
methodical nor comprehensive. They ran into pages, which he carried with
himself when he had to speak in Parliament, but he never referred to them
while speaking. Obviously, he had worked out the structure of speech in his
head, had mulled over the arguments, yet left himself open enough to react to
what would be said before he spoke.
The only time he looked at his notes was when he was quoting somebody
else. In fact, in the Indian parliamentary tradition, other than formal
statements, members cannot read out their speeches. Members have been
pulled up for doing so, but when Sonia Gandhi entered Parliament as a
member in 1999, she read out her speeches without any objection. I guess
Vajpayee and his team felt they would look petty and impolite if they raised
objections.
The first really important formal speech I had to prepare for him was when
he accepted an invitation from the environmentalist Anil Agarwal to release
a report on water prepared by the Centre for Science and Environment. This
was a field I was a bit aware of, and I was very excited. I wrote what I
thought was a well-argued piece. Vajpayee went over it very carefully. He
said that it read like an essay instead of a speech. So I went back to the
drawing board, determined to do better. It must have been the fourth or fifth
draft that finally satisfied him. I wonder if he was just tired.
The one speech I really loved working upon, one which Vajpayee used,
was delivered after Finance Minister P. Chidambaram presented what was
called a ‘dream’ budget in 1997. When Vajpayee asked for my instinctive
reactions to the budget, I told him I was not very impressed. Though he was
distinctly uncomfortable with the nitty-gritty of economic policy, he listened
very carefully and then said that he would like to speak on the budget. This
was unusual, so I went to work on the speech and managed to put one
together. He cut out some of the jargon, added his substantive points, like the
need for transparency in the budget process, and presented the speech in
Parliament. I could only watch it on television, as I had fallen sick. The hard
work had paid off. The speech was much appreciated, though it went against
the grain, as everybody was in awe of the Chidambaram budget. But by year
end it was clear that the 1997 budget was a lost opportunity. Ultimately, it
helped the BJP come to power in the 1998 elections.

VAJPAYEE, AS THE LEADER OF opposition, could show Parliament how the

nation must come together on security issues. Mulayam Singh, as defence
minister, made a statement in the Lok Sabha about the successful conclusion
of the Sukhoi deal in November 1996. Vajpayee got up immediately, broke
parliamentary tradition and praised the UF government for concluding the
deal, which was in the national interest. This praise took not just the
members but also the minister by surprise. I remember a senior BJP
parliamentarian expressing surprise, even bewilderment, in front of me later,
asking why Atalji had to praise Mulayam Singh’s actions. The answer, I
guess, was that some things were above party politics.
The full picture, as reported by Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express in
2005, was that initially, there had been doubts about the deal, since the
Narasimha Rao government, then in caretaker capacity, had given the
Russians an advance of $350 million, even though the price negotiations
were yet to be finalized. The Indian Express had broken the story, and
Vajpayee wanted to know more about the story from Gupta. The
circumstances were as usual, and it looked like a much bigger scam than
Bofors. At the same time, Vajpayee made it clear to Gupta that in case it was
not a scam, he would not like a controversy like this to scuttle an important
defence purchase. Though too many details were not known at the time,
Vajpayee did not use this point about the unusual advance in his election
campaign, for fear of compromising India’s security needs.
Later, Mulayam Singh as defence minister organized a detailed briefing for
Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh quietly. What emerged was that Boris Yeltsin,
the Russian president, was facing difficult times and wanted the advance to
prevent the Sukhoi manufacturing unit from going under. Narasimha Rao,
conscious of the need to keep Russia on the right side and to keep the Sukhoi
plant going, sanctioned the advance, presumably knowing that it could
compromise him during the elections. According to Lok Sabha rules, when a
minister makes what is called a suo-moto statement, no questions can be
asked. If members want, they can request for a discussion. This is unlike the
Rajya Sabha, where such statements lead to full-flowing debates. Though his
intervention went beyond the rules, Vajpayee was allowed to compliment the
government on that day in Parliament because of his four decades as an
outstanding parliamentarian. The message he sent was not just to Mulayam,
Deve Gowda, the Congress and the nation but also to Russia, India’s
dependant supplier of arms and ammunitions and its biggest political
supporter internationally at that moment. The message was that on national
security issues, there can be no politics.
Deve Gowda, or ‘the humble farmer’ as he liked to refer to himself, lost
office when the Congress (I), led by Sitaram Kesri, withdrew support in
March 1997. When I questioned a close associate of Kesri, he told me that
Kesri was convinced that the CBI, at Deve Gowda’s behest, was going to
arrest him. Kesri’s personal physician had been found dead mysteriously
some time back. No satisfactory explanation for his unnatural death was
available despite extensive investigations. With Kesri’s move, Deve Gowda
had to go. However, his speech in Parliament during the confidence vote was
a feisty one. He was defiant, showed no sign of remorse or any sense of loss.
Instead, he called Kesri an old man in a hurry, and he warned his putative
successor, I.K. Gujral, that the Congress would also play a trick on him. This
was prescient, but then this was also the Congress being true to form, pulling
down the government it had propped up.
 In private, Vajpayee was quite appreciative of various aspects of Deve
Gowda’s personality, especially his stubbornness and defiance. The UF
government had increased fertilizer prices in 1996. There was an uproar in
Parliament, with the BJP, the Congress and even constituents of the ruling UF
demanding a rollback. But Deve Gowda held firm. He would not buckle
under pressure. One, because he was stubborn; he had come to a decision
after a deliberate process and understood the rural issues better than the
others. Two, he saw this as a challenge to his authority as prime minister and
to the credibility of his government. His government depended on the
Congress for support, his party had only forty-four MPs in the Lok Sabha, of
which only sixteen at best would rally behind him. Yet, he held firm.
Kesri’s withdrawal of support from the UF government suddenly brought
life back into national politics. There had been no pressure building up. No
doubt the transition in the Congress (I) leadership, from Narasimha Rao to
Kesri, affected the Congress–UF relations. Kesri was simply not in the same
league as Narasimha Rao in terms of strategic planning and as someone who
commanded respect within the party.
I was at Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar market with my family when I got a call
informing that Kesri had pulled the plug. Another holiday gone, I thought and
rushed to 7 Safdarjung Road. There was excitement all around. The BJP
leadership, the parliamentary party and allies met often. By this time, a
formal political grouping, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which
now included the Akalis in addition to the Samata Party, had come up.
George Fernandes became its convenor. Since then, the NDA has been the
platform on which the BJP has worked with other parties, whose numbers
have gone up substantially, though the alliance has also seen many of the
BJP’s old partners leave.
The NDA did not see the fall of the Deve Gowda government as an
opportunity to try and form its own government, though the vulnerabilities in
the anti-BJP platform were becoming obvious. In fact, before the trust vote,
which brought down the Deve Gowda government, C.M. Ibrahim, the civil
aviation minister who was also Deve Gowda’s man Friday, sent a message to
Vajpayee through a third party, asking the BJP not to go along with the
Congress (I) in deposing the government. Though nobody asked for my
advice, I found the idea intriguing. However, Vajpayee and the BJP
leadership had their own ideas. Deve Gowda soon joined the ranks of
Charan Singh and Chandra Shekhar as PMs who had to quit when the
Congress pulled the rug from under their feet for undefined reasons.
The Congress found it easier to dislodge a prime minister than to find a
replacement. G.K. Moopanar was a senior Congress politician from the
Thanjavur delta in Tamil Nadu. He had quit the party just before the 1996
elections in protest against Narasimha Rao’s decision on forming an alliance
with Jayalalithaa and set up his own Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC). The
resultant DMK–TMC blitzkrieg swept through Tamil Nadu, leaving no seats
for the AIADMK. Moopanar was keen to become the prime minister once the
vacancy arose. While he spoke English, it was difficult to decipher what he
said. TV channels actually used subtitles with his sound bites so that viewers
could understand what he was saying. It was not just his language skills that
prevented him from becoming PM. There were many claimants besides
Moopanar, like S.R. Bommai, I.K. Gujral, Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad
Yadav from the Janata Dal, and Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi
Party. The DMK did not want Moopanar but didn’t say so in public. The
Congress was happy with him but did not agree on the others. Finally, Gujral
made it, though the decision had taken almost three weeks. The TMC stayed
out for some time, so India had no finance minister. The nation ran on
autopilot, it seemed.
India faced serious external challenges in the 1996–98 UF government
period. Some of it was because it was not seen as an important player in the
global governance architecture. The most important development insofar as
India was concerned was that the negotiations over the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) were being concluded. India was the lone
outlier, with Ambassador Arundhati Ghosh singlehandedly having to defend
the country’s interests before the international community. India’s stand was
clear: it was for universal disarmament but would never accept nuclear
apartheid. The parliamentary standing committee on external affairs
discussed the issue many times. Once, when Arundhati Ghosh was briefing
the committee, Vajpayee, in mock-seriousness, expressed his fears about her
safety in Geneva as the whole world was ranged against her. This
intervention brought a welcome relief to the grimness of the meeting.
Throughout this period, Vajpayee very effectively stood shoulder-to-shoulder
with the government. Never for a moment did it seem like he was the leader
of the Opposition who felt that he had been deprived of power by a nexus of
parties, whose only raison d’être for working together was to keep him out.

MANY FOREIGN VISITORS MET VAJPAYEE, for he was a potential prime minister,
the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and chairman of the parliamentary
standing committee on external affairs. These visits were all routed through
the Ministry of External Affairs. The standard drill was that the concerned
joint secretary (JS) would walk Vajpayee through the background of the visit
and the visitor, the issues that the visitor was expected to raise and the
position of the government. At the meeting itself, the JS would be present to
take notes but not to participate in the discussions. Vajpayee’s standard line
to each visitor was that in India, there was broad consensus on foreign
policy. He would also explain very gently how politics was practised in
India by saying, ‘The opposition must have its say, but the government must
have its way.’ When he said this to the then Commonwealth secretary-
general, a gentleman from Nigeria, the latter was very moved and explained
that in many African languages the word for ‘opposition’ and for ‘enemy’
was the same.
The Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited India in 1996, the first high-
level visit from China in decades. The time fixed for Vajpayee’s call was not
convenient, since he was travelling. But the Chinese refused to adjust the
timings. I thought this reflected their inability to appreciate a democracy
where the Opposition is very much a legitimate part of the state, even if not
in the government. Vajpayee did go for the dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan. A
few BJP members in Parliament told him that the BJP should boycott Jiang’s
visit, as the Chinese were squatting on 50,000 square kilometres of Indian
soil, referring to Aksai Chin in Ladakh. Vajpayee had to remind them that he
had visited China as foreign minister, the first ministerial visit to that country
in almost two decades, and that the way ahead in India–China bilateral
relations lay in negotiations.
During Nelson Mandela’s visit to India in 1997, Vajpayee called on him at
Rashtrapati Bhavan. The conversation between the two leaders was
convivial. But Vajpayee’s next meeting with Mandela was quite the opposite.
This was at the Durban Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in
September 1998, by when Vajpayee was the prime minister. Mandela, as
chair, in his inaugural speech referred to everyone’s concern about the
situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the need for its peaceful resolution. This
was against the backdrop of India’s nuclear tests and the fact that the
Gandhian L.C. Jain, India’s high commissioner to South Africa, and the new
government hadn’t hit it off.
Jain was a political appointee of the previous government and not a
professional diplomat, and many in the current government believed that a
Gandhian would not, or could not, defend India’s nuclear tests effectively.
There was considerable discussion on this in the Ministry of External
Affairs. I knew Jain slightly. I had visited him in his Barakhamba Road
consultancy office sometime before and had a high regard for him, but I could
not figure out why he did not quit on his own since it was clear that he was
not on the same page as the Vajpayee government, differences aggravated by
the conduct of the nuclear tests.
At the NAM meeting, Vajpayee was livid at the Kashmir reference and
expressed himself to Mandela very bluntly at the banquet hosted by the latter
that same evening. The next day, Thabo Mbeki, then South Africa’s vice
president, called on Vajpayee at his hotel and sought to reduce the
temperature.
As foreign minister, Gujral had negotiated the India–Bangladesh Ganges
River Treaty quite satisfactorily, ending a longstanding grievance of
Bangladesh. No treaty is perfect, since it entails give and take, but at no stage
did I see Vajpayee try to find fault with the treaty or try and make political
capital by criticizing the government for allegedly ‘selling out India’s
interests’. In fact, I accompanied him to the Gulf in late 1997, when he led a
delegation of the parliamentary standing committee. There were members of
Parliament from different political parties, both from the Rajya Sabha and
Lok Sabha. The Ministry of External Affairs had prepared detailed country
‘briefs’, which, ironically, ran into hundreds of pages. I was still amazed to
see that Vajpayee had devoured these documents.
Consequently, when Indian ambassadors met him to brief him and his
delegations, the meetings were friendly but business-like. The easy
camaraderie among the members and the uniform sense of respect they
showed to Vajpayee was remarkable. One member, adhering to an ideology
totally different from the BJP’s, confided in me that he hoped to see Vajpayee
as the prime minister. We visited Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, but before the
visit was over, Vajpayee had to rush back to India due to political crisis in
UP. All these countries have parliaments with varying degrees of functional
autonomy. Meetings with their speakers, committee members, ministers and
rulers went very well. Vajpayee requested the Sultan of Oman for a piece of
land for a Hindu temple, the second in Muscat. In Kuwait, he wanted land for
a crematorium. Both requests were accepted.

THE ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS IN UP in October 1996 were inconclusive. The BJP

won the most seats but were still forty short of a majority. Mulayam Singh’s
Samajwadi Party had 110 seats. The BSP–Congress alliance won a hundred
seats, with Congress gaining an extra five seats but the BSP at sixty-seven,
the same as in the previous assembly. Romesh Bhandari, the controversial
diplomat-turned-politician, decided against inviting Kalyan Singh to take the
first shot at proving his majority, a reversal of what President Shankar Dayal
Sharma had done just months ago. Instead, UP saw President’s rule, which
ended only in March 1997, when the BJP and BSP were able to stitch
together an alliance. As per the agreement, Mayawati would be chief
minister for six months, to be followed by Kalyan Singh.
This was the second time that Mayawati had become the chief minister of
UP, both times with the help of the BJP. After six months, when Mayawati
had to step down, she raised different issues that made life difficult for
Kalyan Singh. She said that since BJP was holding the post of chief minister,
the speaker should be from her party. This was despite the fact that the
agreement was clear—the speaker would be from the BJP, the larger party.
With the enactment of the anti-defection legislation, the speaker of the
legislature had suddenly become important and was given the power of
adjudicating on the disqualification of legislators held to be defectors.
With Kalyan Singh holding firm, Mayawati pulled the rug from under his
feet, or so she thought. In retaliation, Singh engineered a split in the Congress
and a new group was formed—the Akhil Bharatiya Loktantrik Congress
party, led by Naresh Agarwal, which supported the BJP government. The
BSP, too, lost members of the legislature, with seventeen of them joining
Kalyan Singh. Earlier, Mayawati had forcibly kept all BSP legislators at one
place, but unlike in the past, cell phones allowed people to plan their escape
from confinement and their route to power. When the assembly met to take up
the vote of confidence, the BSP and Congress legislators resorted to
violence, which led the BJP and its supporters to respond in kind. Ultimately,
the Opposition walked out, and the BJP government proved its majority
convincingly. Romesh Bhandari, at this stage, sent his report to the union
government, recommending President’s rule on the grounds that the
constitutional majority had broken down.
The delegation in Kuwait was attending a dinner hosted by the Indian
ambassador at his house when the news of impending President’s rule in UP
reached us. Vajpayee decided to fly back to India immediately, dropping out
of the United Arab Emirates stage of the visit. We flew to Mumbai and spent
half the night in the VVIP lounge of the airport, where a bed had been hastily
arranged. In the meantime, President K.R. Narayanan returned the cabinet’s
recommendation for imposing President’s rule for reconsideration, saying
that the government had established its majority in the legislature. If the
cabinet were to send it back to him, the President would have had no option
but to sign the order. The state parties in the UF (DMK, TDP and AGP), with
a better appreciation of the federal balance of powers, having been subject to
its whims, now forced the issue and killed the proposal. As it later emerged,
the whole exercise had been a Kesri–Kanshi Ram bid to come to power, with
Mulayam a late but aggressive participant. They were backed in this by the
CPI (M), who wanted to see the BJP out of office in UP. Sadly, Gujral came
out of this looking diminished—not because the President had returned the
recommendation but for going along with the plan to impose President’s rule
in the first place. Arguably, the President saved the day for Gujral and the
UF.
The result of this sordid episode was that Kalyan Singh had to
accommodate all the defectors and some of his own party’s men as ministers.
The size of the council of ministers went up from twenty-three to ninety-
three. Kalyan Singh’s desperation and compromise meant that he lost his
reputation of being a straightforward disciplinarian. His relationship with
Vajpayee deteriorated slowly, becoming almost non-existent by the time of
the 1999 elections. Meanwhile Romesh Bhandari was not going to fade away
quietly.
The Gujral government’s and the Congress’s loss of credibility arguably
helped the BJP, negating the effect of the compromises Kalyan Singh had to
make to retain power. Gujral himself was unable to run his government, as he
lacked any popular political base. Analysts appreciated his opposition to the
Emergency, which had led Indira Gandhi to move him out of her council of
ministers and make him India’s ambassador to the Soviet Union. Post-
Emergency, the Morarji government allowed him to continue in office, itself
an acknowledgement of his mistreatment by Indira Gandhi and of his capable
handling of India–Soviet relations.
However, Gujral was a political lightweight and his ministers knew it. As
prime minister, he once called an all-party meeting to develop a common
approach to dealing with a Supreme Court decision that made all
discretionary allotment of government housing illegal. Sheila Kaul had been
the urban development minister in the Narasimha Rao government; and
Narasimha Rao’s style of governance was that so long as he was not
challenged, he let people work independently. For years in the urban
development ministry, no regular allotment of government housing was made.
There was only discretionary allotment by the minister of state (P.K.
Thungon) up to a certain level and by the urban development minister for the
higher categories.
 I was pitchforked into the job as Sheila Kaul’s private secretary, though I
did not know her personally. Ultimately, the scandal was exposed in the
papers, and a public interest litigation case came up before the Supreme
Court. Later, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a case against
Sheila Kaul and some junior officials in her staff. The Supreme Court
quashed all these discretionary allotments. If carried out, this would have
meant thousands of families thrown out of their government housing. The
affected went around knocking on the doors of all political parties. Though
elections were not imminent, thousands of disaffected government servants
and their families translated to a sizeable number of votes that couldn’t be
ignored. No political party could allow this to happen, even accepting that
the allotments themselves were wrongly done.
At the all-party meeting, as the conversation moved into Hindi, two
ministers, Kinjarapu Yerran Naidu (TDP) and another one from the DMK,
sharply told Gujral to speak in English. Gujral remained polite, but the
message was clear—the PM counted for little in their eyes. There were
limits to Gujral’s patience, and at one point, Gujral told Naidu that he was
quitting. Naidu rushed to Delhi and apologized to Gujral.
What made Gujral’s position even more difficult was the split in the Janata
Dal, to which he belonged. Lalu Yadav had lost his job as party president to
Sharad Yadav. Facing increasing pressure to quit as the chief minister of
Bihar, on account of the criminal charges against him, Lalu split the Janata
Dal. He became the president of the newly formed Rashtriya Janata Dal
(RJD), whose numbers included the two Janata Dal ministers in the Gujral
government. Reluctantly, Lalu Yadav quit as the chief minister of Bihar after
an arrest warrant was issued against him in the fodder scam, installing his
wife, Rabri Devi, in his place. Interestingly, while the RJD angrily left the
United Front, its ministers continued in the UF government.
Gujral’s government lasted until the end of November 1997, when the
Congress (I), after paralysing the winter session of Parliament on the issue of
the continuation of DMK ministers in the UF government, withdrew support.
In its interim report, the Jain Commission of Inquiry, probing into the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, had indicted the DMK and its chief minister,
Karunanidhi, for colluding with the LTTE and allowing them to work
unchecked in Tamil Nadu. Once the report came, the Congress (I) demanded
the dismissal of the DMK ministers, with Mamata Banerjee leading the
charge in the Lok Sabha. Once the government fell, quite unexpectedly—as
until then there had been no serious disagreements between the UF and the
Congress and no alternative government could be formed—Parliament was
dissolved and new elections were announced, with the Gujral government
continuing in a caretaker capacity.
The weak bench strength of the United Front meant that the government
lacked the credibility needed to push decision-making. In addition to
lightweight politicians, from small, often single-member parties, holding
important portfolios, the UF tried to induct people based on either their
professional skills or for representational purposes. Yogendra K. Alagh, an
outstanding economist, became the minister of state for planning. Reportedly,
he was also used for his grasp of public policy. Balwant Singh Ramoowalia,
a minor Akali figure, became a cabinet minister because otherwise there
would have been no Sikh representation.
What made the position of the government even weaker was that the
economy was tanking. Chidambaram’s 1997 ‘dream budget’ had run its
course. India was now linked much more closely with the global economy
and could not insulate itself from the aftershocks of the Asian crisis. That
year, 1997–98, India’s GDP growth fell to 5 per cent, from 7.5 per cent the
previous year. The economic legacy that the UF government was leaving to
its successor could not have been worse. The last thing a slowing economy
needed was a massive outflow on account of salary hike of government
employees.
The fifth pay commission had made generous recommendations for the
revision of government pay scales, with the provision that staff numbers be
reduced by 30 per cent. The government not only accepted the first part, it
actually went beyond the recommendations and completely ignored the
second part regarding the reduction in numbers. When the cabinet committee
met to decide on this, Finance Minister Chidambaram, most unusually,
absented himself. This was an issue with very major fiscal consequences.
Possibly, he knew that the other two ministers in the cabinet committee,
Indrajit Gupta and Ram Vilas Paswan, wanted to be extra generous, and he
could not stop them. This hike in pay and pensions, and the need to pay
arrears, knocked the bottom out of India’s fiscal position. Soon, the states
were forced to follow. The end result was that the economy took 3–4 years to
recover from this extravaganza.
Towards the end of 1997, when the Congress plenary session was being
held in Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee quit the Congress (I) and set up the All
India Trinamool Congress. She had never got along with the party
establishment, specifically Pranab Mukherjee and his supporters like Somen
Mitra. When the Pradesh Congress Committee was reconstituted, Mamata
found herself totally sidelined. Kesri went along with the state party
establishment. In protest, she organized a massive public meeting, which
drew lakhs of people, to show her strength. But the party leadership was not
impressed, leaving Mamata with no choice but to leave the party. Her feisty
personality and street-fighting abilities made her a force to reckon with.
Fortunately for the BJP, she tied up with them for the parliamentary elections.
West Bengal was not the only state where new political parties were being
born or new alignments emerging. In Odisha, Naveen Patnaik had entered
politics after his father Biju Patnaik’s death and had been made a minister in
the UF government. He was not only an unknown entity but also considered
apolitical. When Vajpayee went to Delhi’s Apollo Hospital to pay his last
respects to Biju Babu, it was Naveen’s businessman brother, Prem Patnaik,
who was receiving guests. Naveen Patnaik, with the help of businessman-
politician Dilip Ray, left the Janata Dal and formed the Biju Janata Dal
(BJD). It, too, entered into an alliance with the BJP. The assumption was that
Naveen Patnaik would be a figurehead, for in addition to his social and
literary interests, he did not speak Odia comfortably.
To quote Pramod Mahajan, it was unlikely that the BJD would last too
long and quite likely that it would land up inside the BJP. Ironically, then,
Patnaik has not only won four successive terms in Odisha but has been far
more successful electorally than his father. What is even more creditable is
that in each instance, his numbers actually went up. Two of his victories have
been in alliance with the BJP and two without. In 1997–98, nobody could
have predicted that the Congress would lose Odisha. It was assumed that at
best, the BJD–BJP alliance would put up a good fight, competing with JD for
the second position.
Alliance with the AIADMK cost the Congress (I) dearly in 1996, leading
to the establishment of the Tamil Maanila Congress and the sweep by the
DMK–AIADMK. So political alignments changed in Tamil Nadu. The
AIADMK and its junior partners—the MDMK, led by Vaiko, and the PMK,
led by S. Ramadoss—became allies of the BJP. The DMK–TMC alliance
continued while the Congress (I) was left to fend for itself.
Even as these political developments were taking place all over the
country, there was no shortage of drama and farce during the three months of
the Gujral caretaker government. UP, with its eighty-five seats, was, as
always, the key state for the BJP, as it was for the others. Vajpayee had been
an MP from Lucknow since 1991. In fact, there has been a long-standing
connect between Vajpayee and India’s largest state. Vajpayee had first
contested for Parliament from Lucknow in a bye-election in 1953, which he
lost. He lost again from Lucknow, this time narrowly, in 1957, but finally
made his debut into the Parliament from Balrampur that same year. He lost
from Balrampur in 1962 and won the seat back in 1967.
In the 1996 elections, the BJP won fifty-four seats in UP alone, out of its
total of 161 MPs. As related earlier, they formed, and retained, their
government in the state with great difficulty, with a considerable loss of
credibility. The Congress was losing its touch, down to five seats only in the
1996 parliamentary elections, but it had seen a little bounce in the previous
assembly elections, thanks to its alliance with the BSP. Mulayam Singh,
shedding the baggage of being a member of a national party, was the one to
watch, with twenty Lok Sabha MPs and 110 legislators. Romesh Bhandari
was there to trip the BJP whenever the opportunity presented itself or
seemed to present itself.
Three rounds of voting were scheduled in the 1998 elections. Every
politician was out campaigning. On 21 February, just a day before the second
round of voting, there was drama in Lucknow. Some legislators belonging to
the newly formed Loktantrik Congress party announced that they had
withdrawn from the Kalyan Singh government and were staking a claim to
form one of their own under the leadership of Jagdambika Pal, the transport
minister. Pal was supported by Mayawati, Congress (I), Samajwadi Party
and other smaller parties. It seemed Mayawati had had her revenge; the
Samajwadi Party and Congress were back in power. Kalyan Singh dropped
his campaign and rushed to Lucknow and asked to prove his majority on the
floor of the legislature. But Romesh Bhandari dismissed Kalyan Singh’s
request and swore in Jagdambika Pal instead, in complete violation of
constitutional propriety and settled law.
The next day, polling was peaceful, including in Sambhal, where Mulayam
was contesting from. The Allahabad High Court set aside the governor’s
action in dismissing the Kalyan Singh government in total, as if it had not
happened. Vajpayee cancelled his campaigning and sat on a hunger strike
outside his home in Delhi. With the High Court restoring Kalyan Singh,
Vajpayee broke his fast on the second day by accepting lime juice from
Niharika, his granddaughter, in the presence of former President R.
Venkataraman. But the drama was not over yet.
Pal went to the Supreme Court, which, without staying the High Court
decision, ordered a ‘composite floor test’. In other words, the legislators
could choose one or the other. This was an innovation because in the
constitutional scheme of things, only an elected government can convene a
meeting of the legislature. Legally speaking, there can be only one
chief/prime minister at a time, not two. It is the government which calls for a
meeting of the legislature. In other words, when the legislature meets, a
person must be the chief minister. If neither was the chief minister at that
moment, the legislature could not meet.
There has not been a repeat of this judicial innovation. Fortunately for the
BJP, it increased its presence from UP in that parliamentary election. The
Samajwadi Party’s numbers remained constant at twenty, and the Congress
was wiped out, losing even Amethi and Raebareli. Ironically, Jagdambika
Pal, who had rebelled because the BJP refused to give both his wife and son
tickets for the parliamentary elections, ended up years later as a BJP member
of Parliament, and Naresh Agarwal has been an important leader of the
Samajwadi Party.
The drama now shifted to Delhi.
 3
The Incomplete Mandate

The March 1998 election results started coming in. Though the NDA was
much ahead of its rivals, it did not look at getting a majority on its own. In the
pre-EVM days, counting was a tedious and time-consuming task, spread over
days. Initially, when it looked as if the BJP would form the government, the
stock market rallied behind the party, but as the situation turned uncertain, it
lost its gains.
Once Parliament was dissolved, the office of the leader of Opposition had
been wound up in a month. Accordingly, I was sent to work with the Delhi
government, where I was posted with the Delhi Vidyut Board. The local
government felt that since it was only a matter of time before I was called
back home to the Government of India, there was no point in making me the
head of a department. Even as part of this new job, I would drop in regularly
to 7 Safdarjung Road but did not undertake any formal work, not that there
was much work to do. Even though I was following the election campaign
mostly through newspapers, I was present during some crucial moments. I
was there, for example, when Vajpayee broke his fast after the Allahabad
High Court quashed Romesh Bhandari’s orders. The presence of former
President R. Venkataraman, sitting with Vajpayee, was a sign of how serious
this attack on democracy was.
 Later, at 7 Safdarjung Road, we watched the election results on the
television. It was exciting but tiring, stretching on for hours and days. Since
the initial returns were from areas that the BJP was not strong in—but there
was every indication that it would do well there—on one of the channels,
Jairam Ramesh rebuked other panellists on their acceptance of the
inevitability of the NDA coming in first.
The NDA campaign’s focus was on providing the nation with a stable
government under Vajpayee’s leadership. It was, therefore, probably the first
‘presidential-style’ election campaign in the history of Indian politics. Their
slogan was catchy: ‘Ab Ki Bari, Atal Bihari, Atal Bihari’ (this time, it will
be Atal Bihari, which rhymes beautifully in Hindi). In fact, Vajpayee’s
chances of winning were so evident that during the proceedings of a
parliamentary debate, when the UF was in power, Nitish Kumar (Samata
Party) mockingly assured his arch-rival and fellow native of Bihar, Lalu
Yadav, that the next prime minister would be a Bihari, and then, with utmost
confidence, added teasingly, ‘It would be Atal Bihari.’
This confidence was probably because up until mid-January, there had
been no rival candidate from any other party or front. But by early February,
Sonia Gandhi entered active politics as the main campaigner of the Congress
(I) to mobilize the party state units, which had been unwilling to rally behind
Sitaram Kesri, the party president. As the Congress found its star
campaigner, media reports started pouring in, declaring the Congress
campaign a success and anticipating the party to be drawing wider gains by
rapidly closing in the gap with the BJP.
But when the final results were declared, the mandate remained
indecisive. No pre-election alliance got an absolute majority. The NDA
alone came closest to the 272 mark, having won 250 seats. Since none of the
other parties could stake a claim to form the government, it was assumed that
some of them would soon fall in line with the NDA, whose numbers would
eventually increase. Hence, in everyone’s calculation, it was just a matter of
time before Vajpayee formed the government. However, no one could
anticipate the difficulty of this task. The long day had just begun . . .
THE BJP’S PERFORMANCE IN THOSE elections was exceptional. It remained
unparalleled for the next sixteen years, until the Modi wave emerged in the
2014 and, subsequently, 2019 elections. The party did exceedingly well in
UP, where it picked up fifty-nine seats, marking an increase of five seats over
the 1996 figures, and its total vote share went up to 36 per cent, again
remaining unmatched for the next sixteen years. Vajpayee, too, won his seat
comfortably. One of the only UF constituents to have performed better in the
1996 elections was the Samajwadi Party, which in UP witnessed an increase
in its vote share from 20 per cent to 28 per cent, but the number of seats that
it won increased by just four seats. The BSP, on the other hand, lost both
votes and seats.
But what really took everyone by surprise was that despite Sonia Gandhi’s
extensive campaigning, the Congress (I) hit rock bottom in UP, with a
performance worse than 1977. This time, seventy-seven of the eighty-five
Congress (I) candidates lost their security deposits, i.e., polled less than one-
sixth of the votes in their constituencies. Like in 1977, it won no seats and
lost both Raebareli and Amethi, the Nehru–Gandhi family’s bailiwick. The
party has not performed worse since then in these two seats. Incidentally,
four of the BJP winners in UP were ochre-wearing sanyasis, including a
first-timer named Yogi Adityanath, who succeeded his guru, Mahant
Avaidyanath, in Gorakhpur and was just twenty-six years old at the time.
Bihar saw the NDA surge to twenty-nine seats, with BJP’s tally remaining
unchanged at eighteen wins out of the thirty-two seats contested. Samata
Party won ten seats out of the twenty-two contested, up by four seats. The
Lalu–Congress alliance also did well, winning twenty-two seats, with the
Congress going up from two to five seats. The Janata Dal, post the RJD split,
was decimated.
The NDA performed miserably in Maharashtra, where Sharad Pawar
stitched up a powerful anti-NDA alliance. The consolidation of the vote
banks of the Congress (I), various factions of the Republican Party of India
(RPI) and the Samajwadi Party was formidable. I remember Pramod
Mahajan telling Vajpayee that his own seat was in doubt—prophetic words
as he lost the election. The NDA in Maharashtra was formed by the BJP and
the Shiv Sena, and was already in power, having won thirty-three seats (BJP:
eighteen; SS: fifteen) in the 1996 elections. This tally fell to ten seats in
1998, with the BJP’s share falling to merely four seats. There was much
handwringing and the chief minister of Maharashtra, Manohar Joshi from
Shiv Sena, was publicly pulled up by his party chief, Bal Thackeray.1
In fact, the idiosyncrasies of the first-past-the-post system that India
follows were very visibly reflected in the Maharashtra results. The NDA’s
vote share had actually gone up, but the consolidation of the votes of the non-
NDA parties and the collapse of the ‘wasted’ votes proved fatal for them.
The BJP polled a total of 84 lakh votes as against 61 lakh in 1996 but saw its
seats tumble. The independents polled only 5 per cent votes, considerably
less than the 20 per cent polled by them the previous time around.
In Tamil Nadu, the NDA received a massive boost, winning twenty-nine
seats, with the AIADMK in the lead with eighteen wins. The BJP made its
debut in the state, winning three seats, while the other NDA partners won
eight seats. Besides other factors that led to the collapse of the DMK–TMC
combine, one was the series of bomb blasts at the BJP rally in Coimbatore
which was to be addressed by L.K. Advani; the attack killed sixty-one
persons and shook the entire state. The local government was seen to have
failed, due to its tardiness and lethargy, these being the most generous
explanations. The resultant revulsion and anger worked in favour of the
AIADMK–BJP alliance.
In Rajasthan, where the BJP was already in power, the party suffered a
debacle. This loss was, however, compensated with the strong comeback it
made in Gujarat, where it had suffered internal spilt and was later prevented
from forming the government. As in UP, where the BJP had won five more
seats, in Madhya Pradesh too, and despite Sonia Gandhi’s campaign, the
party won three more seats to end up with thirty. The NDA also swept the
elections in Odisha, winning sixteen out of the twenty-one seats, with the
BJD, having won twelve of these, dominating the tally.
The other states worth noting for the impact they made on government
formation (and its efficient working) at the Centre were West Bengal and
Andhra Pradesh. Though the Left Front retained West Bengal comfortably,
Mamata demonstrated that the Trinamool was seen as the real Congress. It
won seven seats to the Congress’s one win. The BJP made its debut in the
state as well, winning the Dum Dum seat. In Andhra Pradesh, the TDP under
Chandrababu Naidu, the convenor of the UF, lost four seats and ended up
with just twelve. The Congress (I) remained unchanged at twenty-two seats,
while surprisingly, the BJP won four seats and around 18 per cent of the
vote. While the BJP was supposed to be relatively stronger in the Telangana
region, it won only one seat here.
The NDA’s numbers went up even before the final results were in. The
Haryana Lok Dal (B) of Om Prakash Chautala, which had won four seats in
Haryana, pledged support. This was despite the fact that Haryana’s
government was a coalition between Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party (HVP)
and the BJP. However, the alliance partners won just one seat each, so
Chautala’s unconditional support was a shot in the arm for the NDA. Others
like Maneka Gandhi, who won as an independent from Pilibhit (UP), and
Buta Singh, again an independent from Jalore (Rajasthan), also came on
board. Three of the six members of the Janata Party announced that they
would not support a Congress-led government. This would marginally reduce
the numbers that the NDA was going to require to form a government.
As Vajpayee and the NDA leadership were still assessing the results
coming in, a section of the Congress (I), led by Sharad Pawar, fresh from his
triumph in Maharashtra, started a ‘Stop BJP’ campaign. Newspapers
reported that the campaigners were hopeful of being successful in their
agenda of preventing the NDA from crossing the 240-seat mark. It seemed as
if different people had read the Romesh Bhandari–Jagdambika Pal episode in
different ways!
Reports from the Congress and the UF were mixed and confusing. There
were three reasons for that. One, Sharad Pawar had mended fences with
Sonia Gandhi and, having delivered Maharashtra, expected political support
for his bid to form the government. Two, Delhi was full of rumours that Sonia
Gandhi was apprehensive of a BJP-led government that would not only
pursue Bofors but also re-open controversial deals of the Indira Gandhi and
Rajiv Gandhi regimes. These included the famous pipeline laying and
fertilizer import cases, through which the Italian energy major Snamprogetti
and its India representative, Quattrocchi, first made their appearance in the
country. Unexpectedly, Sonia Gandhi had called Vajpayee a ‘liar’ during the
campaign, marking one of the first breaches of the tradition of no name-
calling. Three, all political journalists who dropped in to 7 Safdarjung Road
were unanimous that Sonia Gandhi would never allow Sharad Pawar to
become prime minister, come what may. He was simply too independent,
with a strong base of his own; but for Maharashtra, the Congress (I) would
have actually cut a sorry figure in the parliamentary elections.
Unexpectedly, the Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP turned out to be the joker
in the pack. This was despite the fact that the TDP saw its numbers in the Lok
Sabha reduce from sixteen to twelve. Ironically, Naidu was the convenor of
the United Front and considered to be the fulcrum which leveraged support
for the grouping that enabled the UF to keep going. The BJP reached out to
Naidu, but he was coy. Newspaper reports and local gossip was that the TDP
MPs wanted to be a part of the government. But would Naidu bite? That
question kept Vajpayee and the BJP leadership on tenterhooks. The only
public message that Naidu sent out was that the TDP would not support a
Congress government. This was in the context of Mulayam Singh’s position
that, since the UF did not have a mandate, they were open to supporting a
Congress government. Political jockeying in Delhi was gaining speed, with
rumours travelling faster than the negotiating ability of political leaders, but
the developments in Himachal Pradesh went relatively unnoticed.
Even though the BJP won two out of the three Lok Sabha seats in Himachal
Pradesh for which elections had been completed, the state assembly elections
held at the same time produced a deadlock. The Congress had won thirty-one
seats out of the sixty-five for which elections had been held; voting would
take place in three snow-bound constituencies later on. The BJP won twenty-
nine seats, but one of the winners died almost immediately after. The
Himachal Vikas Party of the former Union communications minister Sukh
Ram, disgraced after the telecom scandal of 1996, won four seats, with one
independent, to complete the numbers.
 Post-elections, the BJP sent its party prabhari (in-charge) for Himachal,
Narendra Modi, to Shimla to try and form the government. This choice was
driven by the fact that Modi had played a major role in reviving the faction-
ridden BJP in Himachal and had also contributed to the party’s spectacular
performance in Gujarat. The media did not notice him much at the time, but in
party circles, he was marked out for the future. Vajpayee had very close links
with Himachal and visited Manali often; that gave me an opportunity to
notice Modi’s command of the situation and detailed knowledge of the state.
Even before the TDP revealed its hand, there was a near-unanimous
understanding that the new prime minister would be Vajpayee, a bit
prematurely since the numbers had not stacked up. The issue under
discussion instead was who the next finance minister would be. Jaswant
Singh’s loss at Chittorgarh was a more severe shock to Vajpayee than
Pramod Mahajan’s loss. Jaswant Singh’s counsel was always valued, and
even though he was seen as pro-America, his basic inclination towards
freeing up the economy was evident. Having seen them from up close many
times, I knew that Vajpayee and Jaswant shared a high comfort level. Neither
of them was given to too much chatter and both were comfortable in each
other’s silence.
For many, Murli Manohar Joshi was a natural choice for finance minister,
since he had expressed himself often on economic nationalism. It was
expected that the Swadeshi lobby would back this choice. But the
newspapers speculated that the governor of Andhra Pradesh, the economist
C. Rangarajan, could also be inducted as the finance minister. A former
governor of the Reserve Bank of India, he was said to be close to Naidu, and
with the BJP cosying up to the latter, his nomination seemed probable. There
was Ramakrishna Hegde, who was seen to be very close to Vajpayee and the
BJP, and though his party had won only three seats, the alliance had
delivered Karnataka to the NDA.
Vajpayee was duly elected the BJP Parliamentary Party leader after the
results, in a meeting held at the Central Hall of Parliament. Normally,
Parliamentary Party meetings were held in the Parliament Annexe, but I guess
this meeting was special. A sense of drama was necessary since the BJP
wanted to signal that it had arrived. Vajpayee’s speech was much
appreciated. I had noticed that he had a great sense of the moment. His
speeches were thought through and not off the cuff. At this moment, there was
a need to calm fears about any hidden agenda and to allow the TDP and other
potential allies to justify coming over to his side.
Among the many things that he said on this occasion, two stood out. The
first was that the Opposition in politics is not necessarily an antagonist, but
just someone holding different perceptions. This was to negate the messages
being sent out by the Congress (I) and the left about the BJP being ‘beyond
the pale’, so to say. Secondly, Vajpayee also addressed the fears among the
minorities that BJP rule would create difficulties for them. He said that ‘we
should not consider different religions as obstacles but as symbols of our
cultural richness which represent unity in diversity’.
Even while the assumption that Vajpayee would be prime minister was
broadly accepted, the terms of engagement were yet to be discussed.
Jayalalithaa was due to come to Delhi and meet Vajpayee on 9 March. Her
arrival was awaited with bated breath, rather trepidation, at 7 Safdarjung
Road.
‘Does she drink tea?’
‘No, she should be offered coconut water.’
R.K. Kumar, her Delhi representative, had started life as a stenographer in
Delhi before rising to become a chartered accountant. He was a Rajya Sabha
MP, spoke Hindi well and knew how Delhi functioned. Our conversations
with Kumar made clear that Jayalalithaa would be a difficult person to
handle. From all accounts, she was a deeply insecure person who trusted no
one. Her difficult childhood, the insults and harassment which she had to
face, could explain some of her personality traits. Apparently, she had
retained every piece of clothing and pair of shoes that she had ever worn
since she became the sole breadwinner of her family at the age of six. These
were kept in different bungalows in Chennai. The thought was chilling.
Before leaving Chennai for Delhi, ‘Amma’, as she was referred to, spoke
to the media. She predicted that the Vajpayee government would last its full
term of five years. After all, she had campaigned vigorously for this to
happen. Almost in passing, she mentioned that the AIADMK would support
the government from outside. Little did anyone know that the storm was yet to
begin . . .

EVEN AS VAJPAYEE AND HIS colleagues were in constant conversation on how

to balance the various strands of the NDA, the Congress (I) was creating a
sideshow of its own. ‘Chacha’ Kesri was under pressure to quit, but his self-
respect would not allow him to do that. Even before he could spell out his
terms, senior Congress leaders asked him to resign immediately. Kesri
wanted to call a meeting of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), where
he could resign and ask the AICC to elect a new president. A year ago, the
then prime minister, Deve Gowda, had called him ‘an old man in a hurry’,
but for now he did not exhibit any urgency to quit. Therefore, he was literally
turfed out of office at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
Then, completely unmindful of the rules, the CWC asked Sonia Gandhi to
become the president of the Congress (I). Besides the usual Nehru–Gandhi
family loyalists, the person pushing the most to throw out Kesri and install
Sonia Gandhi was Sharad Pawar. ‘Barkis was clearly willing’, but where
were the numbers? And would Pawar’s own party and leadership allow him
to become the prime minister?
Amma came calling finally. I was most impressed when I first saw her.
The humongous SUV stopped, a security man rushed to the front door and
placed a stool next to the door. She got down regally, her broad frame
crowned by the cape she wore around her neck. As she walked into the
house, she perfunctorily acknowledged the presence of her greeters, with an
almost imperceptible nod. I have no idea what she and Vajpayee talked
about, but she did thank her hosts for the consideration shown in offering her
tender coconut water. Later, she publicly announced her support to Vajpayee
and denounced Sonia Gandhi in fairly strong language. Soon, a broader NDA
meeting was held, and it was decided that an overarching agenda that the
NDA government would pursue be drafted.
I had a minor role to play in the choice of the name: the National Agenda
for Governance (NAG). The initial idea was to call it ‘Common Minimum
Programme’, or CMP, along the lines of what the UF government had. I felt
that CMP was an inefficient nomenclature for any common programme. Was
it a common programme, or was it a minimum programme? Since it was a
case of different parties and ideologies coming together, one would assume
that it was a common programme. Why would disparate elements come
together otherwise? Its correct nomenclature should have been the Minimum
Common Programme, with a stress on the commonality of the points agreed
upon.
The UF government had decided that since many companies were trying to
escape the tax net, a certain minimum tax should be collected from them. This
was done with the introduction of the Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT).
Instead, it should have been the Alternative Minimum Tax, the stress being on
the minimum amount of tax payable through an alternative process, i.e. no
processing of returns, etc. The names CMP and MAT point to a common
author, presumably P. Chidambaram, who wrote the CMP and brought in the
MAT. But I have no proof of it!
My NAG suggestion was accepted by Jaswant Singh in Vajpayee’s
presence. However, in retrospect I realize that I clearly slipped, since NAG
makes for a horrible acronym. My role in NAG was not over yet. When a
few days later, it was finally written, I was the scribe as Vajpayee dictated
the entire document at his dining table. My not-so-perfect Hindi was a
challenge, but I managed. Fortunately, I sat next to the typist when he got to
work at the computer, and he knew the correct words that I had misspelt. The
Agenda was a classic coalition document, reflecting the reality that since the
BJP did not have the numbers, it would have to put on the back burner key
issues like the abolition of Article 370, the legislation of uniform civil code
and the reconstruction of a temple at the Ram Janmabhoomi. But that is
jumping the gun, as the draft was not finalized until after Vajpayee finally
received the call from Rashtrapati Bhavan.
With support of the parties from the north-east and Naidu’s open position
that he would not support a Congress government and was inclined to be
neutral in a confidence vote that a Vajpayee government would move, the
stage seemed clear for an NDA government to take office. President K.R.
Narayanan wrote to Vajpayee, but it was not the letter that was expected.
Departing from past practice, Narayanan did not invite Vajpayee to form the
government; instead, he asked whether Vajpayee ‘was willing and able to
form a stable government’. The wording was most unusual, since nobody had
staked a claim to form a government, not even Vajpayee, after the 1996
experience. Unlike in states where the temporary alternative is President’s
rule, at the Union level, there always has to be a government, so that
Parliament can be convened within a constitutionally mandated period.
The President’s letter conceded that not only was the BJP the largest single
party in the Lok Sabha but also that the political formation it headed was the
largest combination of pre-poll allies. The same day (10 March), the Times
of India carried an edit-page article by retired jurist and peace activist
Rajindar Sachar, arguing that pre-poll alliance had a meaning only when it
had adequate numbers, which, admittedly, the NDA did not have. He did,
however, point out that India had had a minority government at the Centre in
the past.
Even as Vajpayee met the President and staked his claim, some of the
NDA parties implicitly started negotiations over their place in the sun.
George Fernandes said that while the Samata Party would be in the
government, he would remain outside it. Jayalalithaa and Vaiko, the MDMK
leader, said that their parties would not join the government. The general
assumption was that Vajpayee would be sworn in shortly, so there was not
much time for jockeying. The NDA’s count was now around 267 seats, and
with Naidu’s stated position, the assumption seemed natural.
But then President Narayanan bowled his googly. He asked Vajpayee for
written letters of support from all those backing his government, inclusive of
the pre-poll alliance partners. The reason cited for this demand was that the
President was keen on a stable government and was against horse-trading.
No doubt a fine sentiment, but neither history nor the subsequent
developments would support this requirement. In 1990, President R.
Venkataraman had required Rajiv Gandhi to give him written commitment
that he would support Chandra Shekhar’s government for the term of the Lok
Sabha; Rajiv Gandhi would renege on his assurance within four months.
Narayanan’s letter, on the other hand, would trigger feverish negotiations,
with Jayalalithaa claiming her pound of flesh, fatally weakening Vajpayee’s
government and leading to its fall in thirteen months.
To me, then and now, it was clear that Narayanan’s requirement was
beyond his constitutional mandate. The President or governor has to be
generally satisfied that the prime/chief minister being appointed has a
majority, but Rashtrapati/Raj Bhavan cannot be the site for counting heads.
Majority has to be established on the floor of the legislature. As Sachar had
argued in his TOI piece, discretion of the President was ‘bad in law’. In this
case, nobody else had staked a claim, so it was logical for Vajpayee, with his
near-majority, to be called upon first. It was not 1996, when the BJP and its
allies were more than eighty short. When Indira Gandhi lost majority in 1969
after the Congress split, she continued in office, as nobody else staked a
claim. Similarly, after the 1991 elections, the Congress was fifty short of a
majority, but with no one else staking a claim, Narasimha Rao was sworn in.
Narayanan’s letter hurt Vajpayee’s position and weakened his ability to
form a government in a straightforward manner. By now, it was not a secret
that Jayalalithaa had been rebuffed by Vajpayee and the BJP. Her main
demands were that Subramanian Swamy should be finance minister; that the
revenue department be separated from the finance ministry and be given to
her candidate; but most importantly, that Article 356 be used to dismiss the
DMK state government in Tamil Nadu. Back in Chennai, she claimed that she
was given no respect in Delhi. She indirectly blamed Vajpayee and Advani
for these leaks, saying that she had only met these two in Delhi. According to
her, her demands were actually Tamil Nadu-specific—acceptance of interim
arbitral award of the Cauvery Tribunal; nationalization of inter-state rivers;
constitutional amendment to allow states to fix their own limit of
reservations; Tamil and other regional tongues as official languages; raising
the height of the Periyar dam—and not about dismissing the TN government
or saving her from the many cases against her. Not only did she refuse to give
Vajpayee a written letter of support, but Vaiko, who had already given his
letter, was also forced to retract.
 The Congress, which had been floundering, suddenly got active.
Newspapers reported that Congress leaders were contacting Jayalalithaa and
expressing hope that she would walk over to their side. With Vajpayee’s
failure to produce sufficient letters of support, the President gave him time
till 14 March, that is, another two days. This, too, was unusual, because then,
without waiting for the fourteenth, the President started meeting leaders of
other political parties. To say the least, Vajpayee seemed to have lost the
bounce in his personality and, to quote a news report, he looked ‘jaded’. But
he was very stern and refused to compromise any more than what the BJP
had already done to accommodate its partners. The joy of victory had not
been replaced by depression yet. In fact, he looked and felt almost stoic,
which in retrospect was most helpful in moving forward.
Jayalalithaa eventually relented and sent her letter of support, as did her
local partners. She campaigned on the slogan of a stable government under
the able leadership of Vajpayee and realized that she could not push any
more. Her pique was obvious when she said that she would support the
government but not participate in it. With her letter, the NDA had obtained
the formal support of 267 MPs, just four short of an absolute majority. The
President did not immediately send out his letter of invitation to Vajpayee but
continued with the consultations that he had scheduled.
Once Jayalalithaa’s letter of support had been received, Vajpayee, for his
part, sent Jaswant Singh to talk to Jayalalithaa and finalize the terms of her
participation in the government. He also spoke to her on phone. She came
round and also agreed to fly down to Delhi for not just the swearing-in but
also for the NDA meeting to finalize the National Agenda of Governance.
She revealed to the press that the AIADMK and its allies would be part of
the government. Later, a number of stories appeared saying that she relented
when she received a fax from the President—‘Are you in the government or
not?’—demanding a reply by return fax.
The fact was that while her allies like the PMK and Vazhappady K.
Ramamurthy were keen on joining the government, she herself was not a
reluctant participant. She extracted considerable concessions because she
had delivered thirty seats. Her representative would be the minister of state
in charge of revenue, but he would not be independent of the finance minister.
A one-person party (Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress) and the three-person PMK
got cabinet berths. Her representative would be law minister, a portfolio
which included company affairs. R.K. Laxman had a cartoon in the Times of
India which showed Vajpayee nervously sitting on a chair, with the rug under
his chair held aloft by Jayalalithaa. Laxman was spot on!

ONLY WHEN SONIA GANDHI MET the President, and said that she did not have
the numbers, was Vajpayee invited to form the government. The pace
suddenly picked up at 7 Safdarjung Road. The composition of the government
and portfolio distribution had to be finalized, both with allies and within the
government. The NDA had also to finalize the NAG. While the NAG, once
released, was criticized for being a ‘motherhood and apple pie’ statement, a
closer look at it revealed what the Vajpayee government would exactly be
like, or at least what it would try to be. Unfortunately, analysts frequently
ignore political manifestos for their lack of specifics or for being unrealistic.
This is generally when election manifestos becoming irrelevant, but NAG
was different—it was a post-election negotiated compact between parties
having quite disparate world views and geographical priorities.
Indeed, the National Agenda for Governance did have its share of
promises and goals that were unrealistic. The NDA had very rightly realized
that it was not just the inability of the UF to deliver on political stability that
was responsible for the 1998 election results. The UF’s failure on the
economic front was possibly a more relevant contributing factor in the
NDA’s march to power.
Echoing the almost similar points being raised by many economic
commentators in the media at the time of writing this chapter (February
2019), the NAG talked about the phenomenon of ‘jobless growth’. The NAG
very aptly recognized that agriculture, forestry and food processing could be
game changers, but in pledging to allocate 60 per cent of development (plan)
funds to them, it was unrealistic. The BJP, facing the pressure of ‘Swadeshi’
economics, while recognizing the need for foreign direct investment to kick-
start the economy, sought to balance between empowering domestic
industries and not putting up hurdles for foreign investors. Well before
governments started assessing and improving the ‘ease-of-doing-business
indices’, the NAG talked about freeing industries from bureaucratic control
and encouraging voluntary compliance of tax laws. No economic agenda of
India is complete without the mandatory references to investments in
infrastructure and self-employment, and the NAG stayed true to form.
What made the NAG different from run-of-the-mill documents were those
portions of it that were dear to Vajpayee and which he painstakingly dictated
to me. The NAG mentioned setting up ‘a commission to review the
constitution in light of the country’s experience over the past 50 years’. This
idea, which drew a lot of flak when suggested in the NAG and implemented
by the next Vajpayee government, stemmed from the special session of
Parliament convened in August 1997, on the occasion of fifty years of India’s
independence. This special session was the brainchild of the then speaker,
Purno Sangma, and saw a fair amount of introspection by Indian
parliamentarians.
It is also true that the BJP, particularly Vajpayee and Advani, had
expressed themselves in favour of decisive governance which they felt India
was deficient in. Critics alleged that Vajpayee and Advani meant a
presidential form of government when they talked about the pitfalls of
political instability and expressed a desire for decisive governance. And the
critics were probably right.
Vajpayee was often referred to as the right man in the wrong party, which
meant that his approach was broader than that of his party’s. This was also
taken to mean that Vajpayee’s personal popularity was far greater than that of
the BJP, and that in a direct contest for power, he would come out on top. The
argument was simplistic but had acceptance. The BJP, in turn, argued that if
the constitution could be amended so often and so easily—a hundred times in
sixty-nine years at the time of writing—setting up a commission to look at it
systemically should not raise hackles. This was an equally valid argument.
The other set of Agenda items related to national security. Vajpayee was
an old advocate of India exercising the nuclear option, which is why he
welcomed the 1974 tests. Nuclearization was necessary as an act of
deterrence against China and Pakistan, as a means to prevent adventurism.
Most importantly, it was necessary for this country to be recognized as a
great power, which according to him, was India’s destiny. It was galling to
him that China was a legitimate nuclear power courtesy of the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, a status India could not aspire to since it had missed the
bus by not testing before NPT came into force. This nuclear apartheid was
unacceptable, which is why he strongly backed the UF government on the
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty negotiations.
Thus the NAG clearly stated that the NDA government would re-evaluate
the nuclear policy and exercise the options to induct nuclear weapons.
Vajpayee meant this, but analysts assumed that such a line was mere
posturing. Vajpayee had been arguing for years that the Government of India
needed a national security council to analyse military, economic and political
threats to the country. V.P. Singh had indeed taken some baby steps in this
direction, but then the initiative lapsed.
Vajpayee, Advani and the BJP had been trying for a while to put electoral
reforms on the nation’s to-do list. The NAG mentioned that the government
would implement the recommendations of the Goswami Committee to this
end. Vajpayee had long been in favour of having an anti-corruption
ombudsman (Lok Pal) that would cover the office of the prime minister.
When this was discussed, senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi strongly
opposed the idea of including the prime minister within the ombudsman’s
ambit, arguing that the government’s functioning would be paralysed if this
was done. He explained that a minister being investigated by the Lok Pal
would, in effect, cease to function as a minister; it would hence result in
disaster if the prime minister were to cease to function, because nothing
would prevent the Opposition from levelling one allegation after another
against the prime minister. This argument made sense to me, but I was not
required or expected to speak. Ultimately, Vajpayee’s wish prevailed, but the
NDA government was unable to make headway on this due to lack of
political consensus.
The issue of appointments to the higher judiciary troubled politicians and
public policy practitioners. The system had moved from politicians
appointing judges to judges appointing themselves. There was consensus that
the system should not be a self-perpetuating one and that the involvement of
some outsiders would lend greater credibility and help improve standards.
The NAG set for itself the task of bringing in legislation to set up a national
judicial commission that would recommend appointments to the different
high courts and the Supreme Court. The proposed national judicial
commission would also frame an ethical code of conduct for the judiciary.
Vajpayee’s NDA, however, could not get this legislation through in its six-
year tenure. The Modi government did succeed in passing the legislation in
2014, but the Supreme Court quashed it.
The UF government had also proposed a legislation providing for 33 per
cent reservation for women in state legislatures and in Parliament. Vajpayee
was a big supporter of this idea, and the NAG promised to legislate on it.
During the UF government, the proposal was cleared by the Rajya Sabha but
was held up in the Lok Sabha. But Sharad Yadav, the president of the Janata
Dal, the largest constituent of the UF government, bitterly attacked the idea,
calling it a ‘game’ devised by women who cut their hair and wore it short.
The ostensible reason cited by this proposal’s opponents was that there
should be reservation for women belonging to the other backward classes
(OBCs) within this 33 per cent quota. Considering that there was no
reservation for OBCs in the electoral system, the reason cited was not
logical. Yet the primary fear had to do with its implementation. The
reservation for scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) in state
legislatures and in Parliament is based on identifying constituencies where
there is a preponderance of SCs/STs. This principle could not apply to seats
reserved for women.
So there were two systems being discussed. One, like in local bodies, the
women’s seats could be rotated, so that once in three election cycles each
seat would mandatorily send a women representative. Two, just reserve one-
third of all seats for women. The first would not work since there would be
no incentive for an MP to deliver knowing that she/he may not be around the
next time. While a woman MP elected from a reserved seat could try again
even if the seat was no longer reserved, this would not hold for a male MP,
whose seat would become reserved for women. The second option would be
patently unjust.
Vajpayee had a third option, which was to increase the strength of the Lok
Sabha/state assemblies by a third. He argued that if the United Kingdom, a
country much smaller than India, could have over 600 MPs in their lower
house, why did India have only 541 MPs. Our constituencies are simply too
big for MPs to be in touch with their constituents. Vajpayee argued that the
broad outlines of his system could be fleshed out to allow for incumbency
and yet ensure women’s representation. More than twenty years down the
line, the issue remains unresolved.
The BJP, and its earlier incarnation, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, always
stood for smaller states, which they felt was better from the governance point
of view. The NAG promised new states of Uttaranchal (Uttarakhand),
Vananchal (Jharkhand) and Chhattisgarh, besides promising statehood for
Delhi. The Jana Sangh first came to power in 1967, when it won elections to
the Delhi Metropolitan Council and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
When Delhi held its first assembly elections in 1993, the BJP won, and when
the NDA came to power in 1998, Delhi had a BJP chief minister. Realizing
the limitations of running the local government in Delhi and seeing Delhi as
their stronghold, the BJP was keen on statehood for the city. But reality hit
home a few months later, when Home Minister Advani tried to convince the
cabinet to go along with the idea.
Union ministers were uncomfortable with having to live and operate in a
city with a state government. Advani then offered to keep the New Delhi
Municipal Council (NDMC) out of the jurisdiction of the proposed Delhi
state, since most Government of India offices and all ministers’ houses were
within NDMC limits. Somebody pointed out that the airport would still be
outside the area, where the writ of the Union government would run. The
proposal had to be withdrawn. Another attempt was made years later but did
not go through.
Those promising or asking for statehood for Delhi ought to look elsewhere
too. Washington, D.C. was established as a city that would be the capital of
the USA precisely because the government officials and legislators refused
to live in a city where some other government was in charge. Similar logic
applies to Paris, Canberra, London, Tokyo and Paris. As an Indian
Administrative Service officer of the erstwhile Union Territories cadre,
whose officers work in the Delhi government, I cannot see Delhi becoming a
state of the union. So while greater delegation of powers to the elected
government of Delhi makes sense, and should be pursued, statehood is a
chimera that politicians can promise till eternity.

WHEN THE NATIONAL AGENDA OF Governance was launched, it was Vajpayee

who did the honours. All the top leaders of the NDA were there, but it was
Vajpayee alone who was the star of the occasion—a public
acknowledgement that the election was fought around the theme of Vajpayee
for PM. This public anointing, indicating almost a presidential style of
government, masked another aspect of democracy, which is that, you need to
build and sustain alliances, and that negotiations are not limited to short
periods before or after elections.
If the NAG was poetry, the discussions on ministry-making were earthy
prose. George Fernandes took potshots at multinational companies which
were being cultivated by every government in India since Narasimha Rao
became PM. Naveen Patnaik’s BJD, the third-largest component of the NDA
then with nine MPs, publicly demanded four ministers. Fortunately for the
NDA, attention was somewhat deflected from the nitty-gritty of their efforts
at government-making by the bloodletting and jockeying for positions in the
Congress (I). Recriminations among losers is a common phenomenon, but
this new version of India’s Grand Old Party was unique in that there were
brisk manoeuvres for party posts after the significant loss they suffered in the
parliamentary elections. It was amusing to follow these developments from
the sidelines, actually a welcome break.
In retrospect, these events must be located within the context of broader
developments that were happening in the Opposition ranks. The 1998
elections delivered a very different mandate than the 1996 elections, though
superficially they looked alike. The BJP saw its numbers swell from 160 to
178, though it contested fewer seats. Its own vote share went up nonetheless,
from 20.3 per cent to 25.5 per cent, marking the first time when it won more
votes than the Congress (I). The pre-poll NDA won 36 per cent votes, with
an increase of 12 per cent over the 1996 figures. The Congress and its allies
polled just over 27 per cent of the votes, a loss of over 3 per cent.
The state of the parties of the United Front has already been touched upon.
Except for the Samajwadi Party, they all lost support. The emergence of new
parties like the RJD, BJD and the Lok Shakti could only be partly
responsible for the near collapse of the Janata Dal. The BJD, for example,
won far more votes in 1998 (27.8 per cent), when it contested just twelve
seats, than the JD had won in 1996 (13 per cent), even with Biju Patnaik in
their ranks. This time around, the Janata Dal was reduced to 5 per cent only.
Though the Lok Shakti was an offshoot of the JD, formed by Ramakrishna
Hegde after he was thrown out of the JD, it contested the elections like the
BJD, as part of its alliance with the BJP. The synergies of working together
cannot always be treated as given in every case. Contrary to received
wisdom about voter fatigue, the final polling figures in 1998 (62 per cent)
were higher than in 1996 (58 per cent). There was a message in this.
The primary reason why the 1998 election was very different from the
1996 election was that this time it was virtually impossible for a third-front
government to come to office, supported from outside by one of the two
national parties. This time around, it was a certainty that the smaller regional
parties would have a supportive role. The reality was that the pre-poll NDA
had won 252 seats, and it was expected that they would form the government.
With the post-poll support, it had reached a figure of 267, not counting the
TDP, which had twelve seats. Since Naidu had announced that he would not
support the Congress in forming the government but would remain neutral
were the BJP to form a government, it was obvious that a government without
the BJP was a non-starter. Unless, of course, the NDA could be broken.
The President’s requirement of written letters of support provided
precisely this opportunity. The ‘Stop BJP’ campaign, now spearheaded by
CPM’s Harkishan Singh Surjeet—more of a backroom dealer than a mass
leader—suddenly got oxygen. Along with Mulayam Singh, the campaigners
declared that since the UF lacked a mandate, they should all support a
Congress-led government. Surjeet’s fellow backroom boy, Sitaram Yechury,
was sent to persuade Naidu to join them. It was these developments and the
possibility of power that suddenly brought the Congress (I) to life. The party
saw a major erosion in its voter base, which showed up in terms of the seats
won, 116—a loss of twenty-four seats. Its position would have been much
worse but for its ability to completely outflank the BJP in Maharashtra and in
Rajasthan. In Rajasthan, the Congress was able to best the BJP, taking its
tally from twelve to eighteen. The BJP saw its numbers fall from twelve to
five.
Sharad Pawar was the man of the match in so far as Maharashtra was
concerned. The NDA (BJP–Shiv Sena) actually won more votes, 41.6 per
cent in 1998, up from 38.6 per cent in 1996, but its numbers in terms of the
seats won fell calamitously. In fact, it was almost wiped out. Thanks to its
alliance with the different factions of the Republican Party, the Samajwadi
Party and other minor parties, the vote share of the Congress (plus allies)
reached 43.5 per cent, a huge jump over the Congress’s own figure of 34.9
per cent in 1996. Had Pawar not stitched its alliance, the Congress would not
have been able to sweep the state; it would conceivably have won even
lesser seats than in 1996. Pawar was clearly ready for higher responsibilities
than he felt he deserved.
Pawar also played a major role in having Kesri replaced by Sonia Gandhi
as party chief. Since she was not a member of Parliament, Pawar could
envision himself as the party leader in the Lok Sabha and a potential prime
minister of a non-BJP government. All this was not so obvious in March
1998, but the public manoeuvring for leadership positions seemed a
combination of building castles in the air and political brinkmanship. Pawar
publicly announced that he was hopeful of obtaining a letter of support from
Jayalalithaa. The denouement was swift. Jayalalithaa, as noted earlier, sent
her letter of support for the Vajpayee government.
The Congress (I), choosing to not reveal its hand till a BJP government
became a certainty, opted for Sonia Gandhi as the chairperson of the
Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP), in addition to her newly acquired
position of party president. The CPP constitution had to be amended to
provide for such a position. She joined Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and
Rajiv Gandhi as only the fourth person to be both party president and the
CPP chairperson. Safely ensconced, she then nominated party leaders for
both houses of Parliament—Sharad Pawar for the Lok Sabha and Manmohan
Singh for the Rajya Sabha. Pawar therefore retained his position as party
leader in the Lok Sabha but was severely diminished since he had been
completely out manoeuvred, having a separate party leader in Parliament.
The only solace, if it can be called that, was that he became the official
leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha once the Vajpayee government was
sworn in.
By late evening on 18 March 1998, the contours of the government were
more or less clear. The top leaders of the BJP and its allies gathered at
Vajpayee’s house. I too, for the first time, was called in for the gathering, but
with my laptop. Kanchan Gupta was around to assist me; in any case he typed
faster than me. I had listed out the various ministries so that nothing slipped
between the cracks, or worse, two persons getting the same job!
There was discussion that the NDA should rationalize ministries. For
example, did the government need a separate textile ministry? Rajiv Gandhi
was the last prime minister to have attempted such an exercise inasmuch as
he tried to create an overarching transport ministry, bringing within its fold
the railways, roads and highways, and civil aviation. He did, however, shift
the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes’ welfare unit out of the home
ministry into a separate entity. However, on that evening of 18 March, the
textile ministry survived all efforts to subsume it into the industry ministry. A
year and a half later, when the DMK had to be accommodated, commerce and
industry ministries were brought together, but then the industry ministry was
itself cannibalized into three components. Rationalization exercises in
government often end up having perverse consequences.
The meeting at 7 Safdarjung Road was fairly smooth and ended up well
before dinner. Once the letter to the Rashtrapati had been sent, my entire
focus changed to organizing the logistics. Advani, as the party president, took
it upon himself to inform the BJP appointees. I had to have the invitations
collected from Rashtrapati Bhavan and set about meeting the demands of the
newly appointed ministries for additional cards for the function. That
exercise did not end until after 2.30 a.m.
At some moment in the evening, we got a message that K.S. Sudarshan, the
general secretary of the RSS, would be dropping in for dinner. Ranjan,
Namita’s husband and a professional in the hotel industry, immediately
ensured that there were no tomatoes in any of the dishes as the guest was
allergic to them. The dinner itself was pleasant and uneventful, so much so
that I remember very little of it. There is much conjecture about the later
conversation between Vajpayee and Sudarshan. The two protagonists never
mentioned the conversation to the best of my knowledge, but Jaswant Singh
must have figured in it.
Earlier that evening, after the list of persons to be sworn in as ministers
had been sent to the Rashtrapati Bhavan and most people had dispersed, I
had quietly congratulated Jaswant Singh on his impending appointment as
finance minister, and we’d exchanged some words. Though no formal order
or even a press note had gone out, it was common knowledge that Jaswant
Singh would be sworn in as minister on the morning of 19 March. But it was
not to be. Kanchan Gupta has written a detailed piece on the developments at
Vajpayee’s house that evening, but he got some trivia wrong.2 He writes that I
had gone home by 9 p.m. and that I had to be called back; that we rode to
Rashtrapati Bhavan to deliver the letter. Actually, I did not leave until 3 a.m.,
and I did not go Rashtrapati Bhavan to deliver the letter. But these are
quibbles. The important thing is that Jaswant Singh did not become the
minister the next morning, though he did become the deputy chairman of the
Planning Commission two days later. He was given the rank of a cabinet
minister and was a permanent invitee to cabinet meetings.
The standard explanation for this was that the RSS was uncomfortable
with his economic ideas. It was said that he would push for greater
liberalization and the opening of the economy. Another point against him was
that he was too pro-America. The alternative explanation, which I find more
credible, was that it would have looked bad if those who’d just lost elections
were made ministers. There are many reasons why the alternative
explanations look credible. One, while Jaswant Singh did not became
finance minister or even a minister on 19 March, he got a cabinet rank on 21
March and, as deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, was very much
a part of the Vajpayee government’s economic management team. Two, after
a decent interval, when both he and Pramod Mahajan became Rajya Sabha
MPs, they indeed joined the government as ministers. Three, after the
Pokhran tests, when Indo–USA relations had hit rock bottom, both countries
entered into quiet diplomacy over many rounds that helped normalize the
relations. Unsurprisingly, Jaswant Singh was the Indian interlocutor on behalf
of Vajpayee, while Strobe Talbott was his American counterpart. Lastly, in
another three years, Jaswant Singh was India’s finance minister.
The RSS–BJP relationship is a complex one, with most BJP leaders,
including Vajpayee, Advani, Pramod Mahajan, Narendra Modi and Manohar
Parrikar, having had RSS backgrounds. Vajpayee publicly declared that the
RSS was his soul, and in a play of words, he told a questioner in the US that
he remained a ‘swayam sewak’. What’s often forgotten is that the RSS
doesn’t run the BJP, and that not everybody in these two outfits has the same
view on everything. Further, with time, the RSS has evolved, and its position
must be seen in context.
However, the Vajpayee–Sudarshan relationship was a tense one, so it
allowed many to speculate on the RSS running the BJP government by
stealth, and the Jaswant Singh episode gave credence to this point of view. In
fact, Vajpayee had to publicly dispel this rumour when he replied during the
confidence motion in parliament, saying that there was no remote control that
was manipulating him or his government.

AFTER THE SWEARING-IN CEREMONY THE next morning, 19 March, we went to

the South Block, and, later in the day, post the India–Pakistan hockey match,
the last-minute glitches in portfolio distribution became our focus.
Ultimately, it boiled down to the defence ministry. Hegde was to get it, but
his three-member presence in the Lok Sabha was outvoted by George
Fernandes’s ten members; his case was also weakened probably by the
relative importance of Bihar. Hegde was generally calm, waiting outside my
room, while Fernandes was inside with Vajpayee and Advani, making his
own case. Though Fernandes had publicly stated that he did not want to be a
minister, he bargained hard enough to land up with defence.
Hegde meanwhile made for a fine commerce minister. Because of strong
rumours, rather news, about these tensions over portfolio negotiations, an
official press note had to be issued to justify Hegde’s appointment as the
commerce minister. The note mentioned the challenges of globalization, the
critical WTO negotiations pending and the need to make India a formidable
export powerhouse. Somehow, it did not look like a good way to begin
governing a country.
Winning the confidence vote was the next challenge facing Vajpayee. The
subtext was that though the government would survive, how exactly would
the mechanics play out was anybody’s guess. The next few days saw mind
games at their best. Someday hopefully, a game theorist would study the
subtle and not-so-subtle moves which had been designed by each side to
push Vajpayee into a corner.
The first obstacle to be overcome before the confidence vote itself was the
election of the speaker.3 Purno Sangma, whose election as speaker in May
1996 was an indication that the Vajpayee government did not have the
numbers, was keen on being re-elected to that post. It was also a move to
check Vajpayee’s vulnerabilities. Sangma called on Vajpayee formally a day
or so after the swearing-in. They’d known each other for decades, so Sangma
came to the point soon after congratulating Vajpayee and wishing him well.
Sangma’s opinion was that he had been a fair presiding officer, which is
why the BJP had no complaints then, and so they should not have any
problems this time as well. Vajpayee was non-committal, but Sangma did not
look disappointed when he left. What was left unsaid was that in the previous
Parliament, the BJP did not really matter—the UF–Congress combination
was much stronger. In fact, all power politics was confined to the two
partners. Could a government expect to function in Parliament with the
speaker being from its principal political rival? To me this was unthinkable,
particularly after the critical role of the speaker in anti-defection cases.
At that time, various news stories appeared in papers, suggesting that there
was wide acceptance of Sangma across the political spectrum and that the
BJP would not object to his candidature. Advani was cited as saying that it
was not necessary for the next speaker to be from the BJP. This was seen as
the BJP signalling distress. Sangma’s candidature, unlike Pawar’s aborted
bid for becoming prime minister, seemed to be fully backed by the Congress
and the non-NDA parties. Sangma made it clear that he would like to be
elected unanimously and would not take part in a contest. Vajpayee did not
seem comfortable, far from confident.
But the BJP had been talking to Naidu. The prolonged period of
government formation helped the BJP–Naidu dialogue evolve into a zone of
familiarity. Separately, the left parties had kept the public pressure high on
Naidu to not support the NDA government or even remain neutral. They said
that he was supposed to coordinate with the left and the UF on the speaker’s
election, even though the latter was hobnobbing with the Congress.
A day before the elections, I recall Vajpayee telling Naidu on the phone
that the TDP could have its candidate as deputy speaker. In the British
tradition, once a person is elected as the speaker, she resigns from her party,
is elected unopposed in parliamentary elections and stays in office
indefinitely. In the Indian Parliament, the speaker does not quit her party but,
while in office, stays away from party politics. A healthy tradition that has
emerged since 1977 is that a person from the Opposition becomes the deputy
speaker.
Naidu played hard to get, and succeeded in his desire to have his person
elected as speaker. On the morning of the day the Speaker’s election was
supposed to take place, he conveyed that his choice for speaker was G.M.
Balayogi, a two-term MP. Unfortunately, Balayogi was somewhere in Andhra
and nominations could only be filed till twelve noon. His flight got delayed
and he made it to Parliament House literally at the eleventh hour. I remember
waiting with a few others at the closest gate of Parliament House, and
running with him so that the nomination could be filed. He made it just about
a minute or two before the deadline. Meanwhile, Sangma had apparently
been informed by Madan Lal Khurana, the parliamentary affairs minister, that
the BJP would have no objection to his candidature. Assured of his
unanimous election, Sangma too had filed his nomination.
 Sangma looked quite peeved when the Parliament convened but was polite
and correct when the election took place and Balayogi was elected by voice
vote. Normally, when the two sides are more or less evenly matched, a
division is asked for and actual voting takes place. However, the Congress
and the other Opposition parties did not ask for a vote. The fact that Sangma
was upset was obvious when he lambasted Vajpayee during the confidence
vote a few days later. He said that while Vajpayee’s reputation had won the
nation’s confidence in May 1996 without winning the confidence of the house
(Lok Sabha), this time around Vajpayee would eventually establish his
majority in Parliament but would lose the confidence of the nation.
Vajpayee looked distinctly uncomfortable listening to Sangma, but I
thought the latter was being unfair. To even expect that the Opposition
candidate could be the speaker, particularly when the numbers separating the
two sides were almost insignificant, was unrealistic. It is unlikely that the
government could have lasted if it had extended support to Sangma, as
smaller parties and individuals would have come to the conclusion that the
government lacked confidence. It would have been a self-fulfilling prophecy
of no confidence.
To be fair to Sangma, he had obviously been led to believe that he was
going to be elected speaker. The people responsible for pushing Sangma’s
candidature, which had the unintended consequence of forcing Naidu to
choose sides, had certainly miscalculated. Their expectation was that if
Vajpayee, and the NDA, blinked, Naidu would not go along with Vajpayee,
and a non-BJP government would emerge as a distinct possibility. What
makes this scenario credible was that Naidu did not come out saying he was
voting in favour of the government in the confidence motion, just that he was
considering the option. This was because the left parties were still pursuing
him.
However, once Vajpayee’s position looked strong, the United Front had
begun cracking up. The National Conference (NC) and the Asom Gana
Parishad (AGP) decided to throw in their lot with the TDP, and half the Janta
Dal had openly said that they would not go with the Congress. This
implosion was not without its complications. The NC had two members in
the Lok Sabha, of which Saifuddin Soz, their senior leader, objected strongly
to his party supporting the Vajpayee government. A year later, he would help
bring down the Vajpayee government. He has since emerged as a top leader
of the Congress in Kashmir. The AGP, the ruling party in Assam, failed to
win even one seat in the parliamentary elections. However, the overall effect
of these developments was positive, and Vajpayee seemed to have got back
some of his old aplomb as he prepared to face the confidence vote.

A LOT WAS HAPPENING AROUND the country at that time. A cyclone had hit the
Midnapore district of West Bengal and neighbouring areas of Odisha. At
NDA’s new ally Mamata Bannerjee’s insistence, it was decided that an aerial
survey of the affected areas will be organized. I had just about figured out a
way to arrange for the Indian Air Force for the task. We knew Indrajit
Gupta’s constituency fell in Midnapore, but he refused to go along. Not only
did Mamata Bannerjee go to Midnapore on that flight, though her own
constituency was in Kolkata, she took along the entire contingent of
Trinamool Congress MPs, with possibly no representative of the actual
affected areas. All hell broke loose when Parliament convened next. The Left
Front MPs were livid at having been left out even as their local rivals had all
participated in the survey. Though Vajpayee apologized, what saved the day
was the fact that Indrajit Gupta had been contacted.
The government got two opportunities to present its vision to the people.
Once directly, on March 22, when Vajpayee spoke to the nation, with all TV
and radio stations carrying the speech live. The other one was through the
President’s address to both houses of Parliament, when the eleventh Lok
Sabha was formally constituted and its speaker elected. Till then, I did not
pay much attention to such speeches, full of generalities and platitudes, other
than one or two that were delivered on special occasions, like Narasimha
Rao’s first speech, when he talked about freeing the economy. But I soon
realized that a lot of effort went into them, even into the negotiations over
language. This was particularly the case with the President’s speech, which
the cabinet approves. Vajpayee worked really hard at his own speech, which
was the more substantive one, and which came earlier, than the President’s.
 While a lot of what Vajpayee told the nation came from the NAG, he went
beyond it on a number of issues. He said that the productive potential of the
people would be unleashed and India would abolish hunger within ten years.
He spoke of doubling women’s literacy in ten years, of vastly improving
health care and of political reservation for women. Vajpayee announced
specific delegation of powers to states in respect of foreign direct investment
in the power sector. In view of the apprehensions being made public, he
committed his government unequivocally to secularism and appealed to the
country to ‘give up the harmful path of confrontation’.
On the issue of India’s relations with Pakistan, he used the phrase that
contributed to enhancing the India’s reputation worldwide. He said that he
was prepared to go the ‘extra mile’ to improve relations with Islamabad. He
committed his government to ‘strain every nerve’ to work with neighbours,
and being the bigger country, India would be more sensitive to their
aspirations. At the end of the day, ‘our lives are intertwined’.
Not only did Vajpayee revise the draft many times, but he was also
extremely patient during the recording session of his TV address to the
nation. I saw this in all future recordings. He would happily submit to re-
recording many times without a trace of annoyance. Like most upper-middle
class, English-speaking Indians, I too tended to underrate politicians.
Vajpayee’s ability to work hard at his speeches, handwrite pages and pages
of notes, remember contents of parliamentary debates and patiently record
speeches was so different from what I’d expected. This was in addition to
the hours spent in political work, attending meetings and delivering speeches
on the stump. What needs to be also considered here is that in the process of
conducting free and fair elections, the Election Commission has stretched the
process to almost absurd lengths. While the actual campaigning period has
been limited to only two weeks, the whole voting process is now spread
over more than one and a half months. This makes the election a long and
exhausting journey for politicians, like sprinting through a marathon.
Vajpayee, the consummate politician, had mastered the art of his calling.
Parallel developments in Himachal Pradesh reflected the advantages and
limitations of coalition politics. Though the Congress and the BJP (plus
allies) were equal, the governor, Rama Devi, appointed Virbhadra Singh, the
incumbent Congress chief minister, to form the government. However,
Virbhadra Singh resigned on the day the assembly was to meet since he was
short of numbers. The governor recommended President’s rule, and when this
item was put up before the Vajpayee government’s first cabinet meeting, I
thought it was a done deal. However, the cabinet returned this
recommendation to the governor, who was asked to explore all possibilities.
The official spin put on this decision was that the government did not want its
first decision to be about using Article 356 of the Constitution to run a state
government. Sukh Ram, the disgraced communications minister in the
Narasimha Rao government, had formed his own party (HVC) in Himachal
Pradesh, which picked up four seats in the assembly elections. Ultimately, a
BJP–HVC coalition took office, with Sukh Ram as the deputy chief minister.
The debate on the confidence vote in many ways mirrors contemporary
times. The Opposition accused the BJP of having a hidden agenda. The party
was accused of hypocrisy, as they had pressed hard for dropping Sukh Ram
as minister in the Narasimha Rao government in 1996—when currency notes
worth a few crores were found in his house—and were now teaming up with
him. The Vajpayee government had also got two Anglo–Indians nominated to
the Lok Sabha, as allowed by the Constitution, but before the government
could win the confidence of the house. Even I was surprised that President
Narayanan had gone along with this step, since it effectively added two MPs
to the ruling side.
The quality of the debate in parliament on the confidence vote seemed
pedestrian. Somnath Chatterjee sarcastically said that the Vajpayee
government had not won the hearts of the country but Jaswant Singh had won
the heart of Jayalalithaa. Sangma’s outburst has already been referred to.
At the end of day one of the debate, Vajpayee appeared calm, assured of
winning the vote. In his reply on day two, he went out of the way to praise
Nehru and rejected the insinuation that the BJP had a hidden agenda. Just
before the elections, Frontline magazine had published a series of articles on
Vajpayee’s role in the 1942 Quit India Movement. To cut a long story short,
the articles claimed that after he and his elder brother were arrested from
their village post a Quit India meeting, Vajpayee had begged forgiveness and
in fact helped the British by giving them information and testimonies against
some nationalists. He rejected this allegation forcefully.
Politically, Vajpayee said that he believed in consensus, and that the
National Agenda of Governance was a negotiated document. The no-
confidence motion was won by a margin of thirteen votes, 274–261, with the
Telugu Desam voting with the government. The NC abstained. The UF had
already removed Naidu from being their convenor, and the TDP was
expelled. Naidu, in turn, accused the UF and left parties for being insincere
and negotiating with the Congress to support a government led by the latter
behind his back. In any case, the BJP was a distant enemy, while the
Congress was an enemy close by, as Naidu saw it.
There was near unanimous agreement among political commentators and
even politicians that it was Vajpayee who needed Naidu more than Naidu
needing Vajpayee. In fact, the situation was far more nuanced, and I was
convinced that it was the BJP which paid the higher price of the partnership.
In the 1998 elections, the BJP had not only won four seats on its own, of
which three were in coastal Andhra, it polled over 18 per cent of the votes.
By becoming the junior partner of the TDP, it sacrificed its presence in the
state. The TDP won the state assembly polls of late 1999 only because of
these 18 per cent votes, else the Congress would have won the elections.
The 1998 parliamentary elections showed the TDP’s limitations—its seats
went down from sixteen to twelve, with the Congress winning twenty-two,
same as the previous elections. The TDP could reverse this in the 1999
assembly elections only because the BJP transferred its votes. Worse, the
Vajpayee government could not move on Telangana because of Naidu’s
pressure. The demand for a new state of Telangana was revived by K.
Chandrasekhar Rao in 2001, when he quit the TDP to form the Telangana
Rashtra Samithi (TRS). Though the BJP was sympathetic to this demand, it
held back from either endorsing it or moving ahead on it.
The TRS teamed up with the Congress in the 2004 general election and
became a partner in the UPA government. The TDP was rejected by the
people and lost power in the state of Andhra Pradesh, leaving the BJP as the
hollow shell of a party it was in 1998. Worse, when Telangana was finally
created in 2014, the BJP could not claim any credit for championing its
cause, though its revived alliance with the TDP meant that it saw a contingent
in the Andhra assembly, but one without an independent existence.
In the end, as the Vajpayee government demonstrated its majority in the
Lok Sabha, the seeds of its limited lifespan had already been sown.
Subramanian Swamy, the newly elected member of Parliament from Madurai,
who had ironically emerged as Jayalalithaa’s close adviser, did not attend
Parliament to vote in the confidence motion. Swamy, who had filed many
cases of corruption against Jayalalithaa in the past and who had lately
become her candidate to be the finance minister in the Vajpayee government,
was known for his targeting of Vajpayee over the years. Swamy’s one vote
was not missed that day, but he was only biding his time to strike.
 4
The Ground Moves

‘Today at 1545 hours, India conducted three underground nuclear tests in the
Pokhran range. These tests conducted today were one with a fission device, a low-
yield device and a thermonuclear device. The measured yields are in line with
expected values. Measurements have also confirmed that there was no release of
radioactivity into the atmosphere.’

—Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 11 May 1998

The most interesting aspect of the Pokhran II tests, conducted on 11 and 13

May 1998, was that even though intense speculations already existed that the
Vajpayee government was soon to test India’s capacity to go nuclear, when
the tests did happen, the event took everyone by surprise. I went back to
some of the newspaper reports of that period, specifically just the month or
so before the tests, to refresh my memory. I was looking particularly for
articles, analyses and statements of commentators and political leaders,
national and international, which could have explained this paradox.
Senior journalist and peace activist Kuldip Nayar wrote in an article that
the feeling in Pakistan was that the BJP would declare India a nuclear state;
in short, that India would conduct a nuclear test. This was as early as 3
March, when it became clear that the BJP-led NDA was the frontrunner to
form the government, but over two weeks before Vajpayee actually became
the prime minister. Just a little over a week later, as Vajpayee’s efforts at
forming a government ran into the ‘Jaya wall’, Pakistan’s foreign minister,
Gohar Ayub, was quoted in the Indian Express (12 March), saying that
‘South Asia was facing the growing rush of a new arms race with a BJP
government about to take over’. This was in reference to Vajpayee’s call for
a nuclear option.
The US, with a view to understanding the thinking of the new government
and to prepare the ground for a proposed visit of President Bill Clinton to
India later that year, sent a delegation to New Delhi, led by Bill Richardson,
the secretary for energy and the former US Ambassador to the United
Nations. Richardson had been the main US negotiator in the nuclear deal with
North Korea, and his department ran the US nuclear programme, including all
the research laboratories. The nuclear component of the trip was clear from
its composition, with Karl Inderfurth and Robert Einhorn completing the
team. The obvious purpose was to persuade India to sign the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), with the threat that if it did not, aid would
be cut off. It was also to make it clear to India that it simply could not afford
these nuclear tests, since such a move would definitely lead to global
opprobrium. Their reasoning was that as an aspiring member of the UN
Security Council, India could not run the risk of going nuclear, despite the
fact that all the existing UNSC members were nuclear states.
During the President’s address in the Rajya Sabha, senior Congress leader
Pranab Mukherjee, citing the BJP manifesto and the National Agenda of
Governance, criticized the government’s intention to review the nuclear
option. President Clinton, while asking the US Congress to ratify the CTBT,
also publicly asked India to sign the treaty and keep the thought of exercising
the nuclear option at bay. The Washington Post carried an article on 5 April,
pointedly referring to the US law that mandated sanctions in case of nuclear
tests. To further bring the point home, it told its readers that international
banks, public and private, were bound to penalize any country that was using
its resources to pursue its ‘nuclear ambitions’.
Meanwhile, Pakistan muddied the waters on 6 April by announcing that it
had tested the Ghauri missile. This was supposed to be an improved version
of Hatf, with a range of 1500 km, capable of striking key Indian cities like
Kolkata and Chennai; the announced payload was 700 kg, which made it
apparent that the new missile was meant to carry a nuclear warhead. The
veteran security analyst Jasjit Singh, in his piece in the Times of India (7
April 1998), was unequivocal in his belief that Ghauri was a product of
Sino–Pakistan collaboration. In his own words, ‘Obviously Pakistan is
legitimising its missile programme as indigenous.’
For many reasons, there was a fair amount of scepticism about the Ghauri
test. The first of these was born of an observation of Ghauri’s test path,
which covered some of Pakistan’s most densely populated areas. This meant
that the missile was clearly not being tested for its capability but was
demonstrating its already proven technology. Second, doubts about Pakistan’s
claim of having tested Ghauri were further strengthened because Pakistan did
not issue a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), despite the missile’s flight path
covering a busy part of the Arabian Sea.1 George Fernandes openly
speculated about the possibility of Chinese involvement in Pakistan’s arms
development and even went on to declare Ghauri as a Chinese missile.
A very interesting and challenging four-nation conundrum now emerged on
the Indian subcontinent, involving India, Pakistan, China and the US. Though
the Cold War was long over, it was clear, going by the reactions coming from
Washington, D.C., that the US had a lingering soft corner for Pakistan. The
US called upon India and Pakistan to exercise restraint, but since the latter
had already carried out its provocative act, the message was effectively
targeted only at India.
The US was deliberately ignoring China’s key role in nuclear proliferation
in the South Asian region; it continuously maintained that it could not with
certainty ‘assume’ a Chinese role in the provision of arms components to its
neighbouring countries, since there could have been a number of suppliers to
the region concerned. This seemed to be a hypocritical stand on the part of
the US, since by then there was enough evidence that Sino–Pak cooperation
was deep, and that China had in the past supplied M-11 missiles to Pakistan.
Still, the US chose to remain silent on these blatant acts of proliferation on
India’s borders. In fact, it accepted the Chinese commitment to follow the
Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and went out of its way to
declare the Ghauri test a success. Pakistan maintained that Ghauri was
indigenous, so there was no case for the imposition of sanctions, and the US
bought this argument.
Almost every day, the ‘N question’ was in the news. The UK and France
ratified the CTBT. However, this could not come into force till India,
Pakistan and Israel signed it. On the one hand, the US administration was not
making headway on ratifying the CTBT; yet, on the other hand, it was
pressuring India to sign the CTBT and move even further away from the
nuclear option. Bill Richardson’s meeting with Vajpayee was short and full
of generalities, but his message to India was clear—not only should India
maintain restraint on the nuclear issue, it should rather unequivocally give up
the nuclear option. India’s point to the Americans in the context of the CTBT
was that it faced threats not only from Pakistan but also from China. This was
emphasized repeatedly, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
A couple of weeks later, still before Pokhran II, the US ambassador to
India, Dick Celeste, advised India to ‘cap, roll-back and eliminate’, so that
the proposed visit of President Clinton that year could be successful.
Richardson and Celeste’s private conversations with senior Indian officials,
particularly with Jaswant Singh, became the cause of much misunderstanding
and bad blood between India and the US. This was in the context of the
common understanding that India would decide to test only after its National
Security Council had carried out a comprehensive Strategic Defence Review,
a position Defence Minister George Fernandes often took publicly. Since
India was yet to establish a National Security Council, this meant in effect
that there was going to be no nuclear test in a hurry.
On a completely different level, I found Richardson’s visit very instructive
as I picked up another aspect of the India–US relations at the time.
Richardson calling on Vajpayee with his team was the first high-level
international visitor engagement that I was witness to. The meeting itself was
formal, but Vajpayee stressed on India’s refusal to move on the CTBT and its
discomfort at the impunity of its neighbours in threatening India’s security.
 The standard operating procedure for such meetings is that the first 4–5
minutes are devoted to photo ops.2 Photographers, still and video, were
brought in batches, so that they could take their photos and move out,
allowing another lot to come in. On this particular occasion, there was a
large gathering of photographers, so it was taking time and there was much
jostling. I went out to see what was happening and was shocked to witness
that even though we were in South Block, it was the American security men
who were lining up the photographers and sending them inside in batches. I
lost my temper and asked the Special Protection Group (SPG) to take over
the job.3 Seeing that on an average, American security personnel were over
six feet tall and four feet across (or so it seemed), our guys felt intimidated.
Years later, when US Secretary of State John Kerry visited India, I
remember seeing a photograph of American security personnel with their
sniffer dogs, carrying out sanitization exercises in the Palam Technical Area,
used as a terminal for VIP planes. I cannot imagine the US, or even any of the
middle powers, allowing security personnel of a foreign country such liberty.
In fact, later in 1998, when Vajpayee went to Colombo for the SAARC
summit, the Sri Lankans objected (rightly) to our plan to fly in bulletproof
cars for use in road journeys during the visit.
Vajpayee was unfailingly polite and straight in his conversations with
visitors in formal settings. He played by the book and never minced words,
with no double-speak. At his meeting with Richardson, Vajpayee specifically
mentioned India’s unease with China’s role, but it did not get the attention it
deserved.
I imagine Richardson’s ire had more to do with the fact that he completely
misunderstood the Indian position and carried in his mind a picture which
reinforced what they thought India ought to do and not what it was going to
do. The resultant loss of face when India tested had to be blamed on the
Indians, and not on their own incompetence. They refused to acknowledge
that American thinking was still stuck in the old groove, given their
adherence to the old hyphenated approach to the subcontinent, clearly visible
from the fact that Richardson went to Pakistan after his Delhi visit. Further,
the US turning a blind eye to Pakistani proliferation efforts and support to
terrorism was public knowledge throughout this period.
Pakistan kept up its tirade against India, and sabre-rattling became their
way to attract attention. The loudest and shrillest voice belonged to hard-line
foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan, who seemed to be picking from where his
father Ayub Khan had left off in 1965.4 Not to be outdone, was the Bhopal-
born metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear
programme. He said that Pakistan was ready to conduct a nuclear test any
time. If this was not enough, he said that Pakistan was developing a long-
range (2000 km) Ghaznavi missile.

ANOTHER INTERESTING EARLY VISITOR TO Delhi during Vajpayee’s term was,

General Fu Quanyou, the head of the People’s Liberation Army of China. A
word about the PLA: it is not the army of the People’s Republic of China but
the army of the Communist Party of China. Consequently, the party is deeply
embedded in the PLA. Also, the PLA is an integrated military with the PLA
Navy and PLA Air Force forming a part of it. These aspects make the head of
the PLA a very important person.
My only impression of the meeting was that General Fu looked distinctly
uncomfortable throughout the meeting, as if expecting a dressing down.
Vajpayee followed the script of the meeting as suggested, which unfortunately
did not make for anything beyond a formal conversation, with both sides
agreeing to take into account the concerns of the other side. The briefing was
that in meetings with the defence minister, India’s specific concerns about the
Sino–Pak nuclear and missile cooperation would be raised.
With President Clinton elevating the US–China relationship to one that
defined the new world, there were misgivings not just in Delhi but also in
Washington, D.C. A news item appeared that said Congressional sources did
not think that either North Korea or Pakistan was the main culprit in so far as
proliferation was concerned; they directly blamed China. Unfortunately, US
sanctions on China, for transfer of technology and equipment, were no more
than a slap on the wrist, which did nothing to deter China from pursuing its
policy of support for the North Korean and Pakistani programmes. These
Congressional sources were also convinced that the North Korean missile
Nodong was actually made using a Chinese platform, which meant Ghauri, a
derivation of the Nodong, was also a Chinese missile after all. George
Fernandes had effectively said the same thing but was not taken seriously.
Later, he would be pilloried for attempting to project China as an enemy.
Not unexpectedly, Clinton lifted the ban on dual-use items (which can be
used for civilian as well as military purposes) available for sale to China.
That Clinton was determined to make his China trip, scheduled for end-June,
a success could not have been clearer, since this step was taken disregarding
all evidence about the latter’s undermining of the non-proliferation regime.
The step was taken regardless of the alarm bells that rang loudly in countries
that shared borders with China. India definitely felt its security was
compromised, something that the US and the West refused to notice time and
again.
Such fears were most vividly expressed by George Fernandes with
increasing regularity, as it was becoming clearer with each passing day that
India’s security was being compromised because of China’s violation of non-
proliferation. What was discussed between the prime minister and his
defence minister stayed between them, so it is best to not make conjectures or
controversial statements that cannot be either substantiated or refuted. It
would rather be more suitable to present the relevant statements and actions,
and let readers form their own opinions.
For over a period of one week in early May, either while delivering
formal speeches—like the V.K. Krishna Menon Memorial Lecture—or
speaking to journalists who wanted to probe him further, Fernandes only had
one story to tell: that potentially, India faced the greatest threat from China.
What he did not say, but which critics nonetheless denounced him for, was
that China was the immediate threat or that India needed to engage China
more thoroughly. Far from it. But in a controversy, facts often become the
first casualty.
The reason for Fernandes’s assertion was obvious to all of us—China
wanted the transfer of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and the
activation of airfields in Tibet. That he was not alone in his assessment
seemed implicit from his announcement that in response to these
developments, the stalled Agni missile programme was being resuscitated
and would be developed further. He was prescient in his warning that though
the PLA Navy was weak at the time, it would eventually be strengthened
enough to operate in the India Ocean. Interestingly, he said one thing that
seemed to have escaped the attention of analysts. The Hindustan Times of 4
May 1998 quotes him as saying, ‘Earlier, nuclear weapons were not ruled
out, now they are ruled in.’ In the heat of the controversy, nobody was
listening to what was being said fairly explicitly.
The Chinese backlash was expected; what wasn’t expected was the
domestic opposition. In hindsight, this too should not have been a surprise,
but those were early days, and we were not aware of how much anger the
emergence of a BJP-led government had generated in many people, not just in
the political opposition but also in the media.
The Chinese lashed out at Fernandes, calling his statements ‘absolutely
ridiculous and not worthy of refutation’. Then, with an irony that was too
obvious to ignore, they promptly went on to refute his assertions. On the
specific allegation of its nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan, China
termed it ‘utterly fictitious and entirely baseless’. On Fernandes’s
understanding of China as ‘potentially’ the biggest security threat to India,
China’s reply was that ‘his comments had seriously sabotaged the
atmosphere of improving relations between the two countries’.
Fernandes’s clarifications—that what he had said were not his personal
views but were based on what the defence ministry had been publicly saying
in its annual report for years—did not get any serious attention. Instead,
former prime minister I.K. Gujral said that Fernandes was ‘temperamentally
an adventurist’, and that this proclivity in ‘his present incarnation could very
dangerously affect India’s security’. The left parties went even further—they
wanted Fernandes to be sacked for upsetting China. Editorial writers and
analysts were almost universally critical of Fernandes, advising him to avoid
commenting on strategic matters. A number of them reminded Vajpayee that
India could only have one foreign minister and that Fernandes should be
reined in.
 The resultant pressure had to be defused. The Ministry of External Affairs
went into damage-control mode, stressing that only ‘minor differences’ with
China existed. The ministry’s spokesperson said that the Government of India
had resolved to improve its ties with China, specifically committing ‘to
develop a friendly, cooperative, good neighbourly and mutually beneficial
relationship’. It reminded the media that it was when Vajpayee was foreign
minister that ‘the first understanding regarding maintenance of peace and
tranquillity along the India–China border was reached’. Fernandes himself
explained that his intention was to promote dialogue and understanding. But
far from being pulled up, Fernandes went on to confirm that troop
deployment levels on the border with China would ‘not be lessened’.
A few days before the tests, the chiefs of army, navy and airforce were
briefed, followed by another briefing for the key members of the government,
who constituted the cabinet committee on security. The morning of the test, 11
May, was pregnant with possibilities. Vajpayee had just shifted to 3 Race
Course Road from 7 Safdarjung Road. Army units had installed special,
direct lines from the Pokhran site, to avoid tapping, delays in
communications or the non-availability of lines. The wind direction was
adverse, and it delayed the tests. Books, by Raj Chengappa (Weapons of
Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a Nuclear Power) and
Jaswant Singh (A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India), carry
graphic details of what happened that day, so it is best not to repeat those
details.
The control room was set up at 5 Race Course Road, which was a
bungalow between the office (7 RCR) and the residence (3 RCR), and was
mostly used as a guest house (though prime ministers have occasionally
stayed in this bungalow, preferring to use No. 3 as the guest house).5 Besides
Vajpayee, other key figures present during those crucial hours were L.K.
Advani, George Fernandes, Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha. The team of
officials was led by Brajesh Mishra, supported by Prabhat Kumar (cabinet
secretary), K. Raghunath (foreign secretary) and me.
All of them sat at the dining table. They were very quiet. It was a long
wait. Nobody said anything to each other. Maybe because of the old Indian
habit that you don’t talk about something until it happens for fear of jinxing it.
When the news finally came, the effect was electric. The atmosphere was
completely surreal, full of joy, yet there was no jumping or backslapping.
Instead, there was a visible sense of relief, almost as if the unreal had
become real. There were a lot of tears in that room that day—all of us felt the
rush of the ‘we have done it’ confidence.
But Vajpayee’s face reflected a feeling of sombre responsibility. The
pressure of taking such a momentous decision, and the realization that the
consequences would have to be met, had taken a toll on him. He had done
well to hide the fear of the unknown, though the mask occasionally slipped
when people questioned his lack of assertion of prime ministerial
responsibility, of his being strangely silent and inarticulate. Now he allowed
himself to smile, even laugh.
He had been arguing for India to conduct a nuclear test for the past forty-
five years, since China had first tested. This arose from two lines of thinking.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki had deeply affected him. He wrote a poem,
‘Hiroshima Ki Peeda’, where he talked of waking up in the middle of the
night and wondering how the scientists who had made those powerful atomic
weapons slept after hearing about the destruction caused by their creations.
Did they not for a moment regret what they had done? If they had a sense of
remorse, then time would not judge them. But if they did not, then history
would never forgive them. Vajpayee’s poem and his decision to go ahead
with the test are not contradictory. He came to the conclusion that if India had
to live in peace in its neighbourhood, credible nuclear deterrence was
essential. Nuclear weapons prevent wars, was his constant refrain.
The second, seemingly contradictory, line of thinking behind the tests was
his deeply held view that India was destined to be a great power. Possession
of nuclear weapons, in the world we inhabited, was the minimum entry
criterion for that club. Japan and Germany, whose recent economic successes
did not guarantee them the status of a great power, underscored this idea.
Vajpayee’s belief in India was immeasurable, and while he did not say it, his
body language that day seemed to indicate that he was happy to be an
important instrument in that quest. An insecure nation could not be a great
power—this was the powerful motivation that drove this decision to test. In
all his discussions and speeches afterwards, Vajpayee highlighted that there
was a price to be paid for becoming a nuclear power, and the country must
be ready to pay it.
Coming back to 11 May, immediately after the test, I got down to typing the
statement dictated by Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra. Vajpayee was clear
that it should be a short and factual one, which it was. This was to be read
out to the press. But how to go about it? Pramod Mahajan, who had joined us
by then, ever the master of the dramatic, suggested that the press briefing be
held on the lawns of 7 RCR. Only a single podium was placed, with the
national flag next to it. Vajpayee, Mahajan and I walked out of the side door
of 7 RCR and on to the lawns (actual footage of those moments can be seen
in the movie Parmanu at the very end). The rest of us stopped well short, and
Vajpayee walked alone to the podium.
He read out the brief statement in Hindi and English. We stood away from
the podium, so that all the frontal shots captured only Vajpayee in the frame.
However, some photographers were standing on the sides and a few papers
carried the shot that had Mahajan and me standing in the corner of the frame,
laughing. None of the ministers were present there. Vajpayee left as abruptly
as he came; there were no questions and no chit-chat. The full weight of what
had happened had not sunk in, not for me and not for the others I imagine.
The same day, 11 May, which happens to be my birthday, India also tested
the Trishul, a short-range (50 km) missile. Later that evening, Brajesh Mishra
met the press and gave a detailed briefing. What he said could be described
as a mixture of hope, bravado and naivety. Basically, he said that we hoped
there would be no sanctions and that the government had taken the effect of
sanctions into consideration. The last was difficult to believe, since nobody
in the know could have carried out an econometric analysis using scenario
planning to assess the effect of sanctions on the economy. Not that such an
analysis is infallible, or was possible to resort to, given the compulsions of
maintaining secrecy. While some sanctions could be predicted, it was
impossible to know how different countries would actually react, as the
following narrative would explain.
 The initial American reactions seemed too understated, but not for long.
Suddenly, the appreciation for India—based on the idea that it had conducted
the tests because of a threat perception from China, its own security concerns
and the feeling that the NPT was discriminatory—was gone. Clinton reacted
angrily in public. He said that India’s action ‘not only threatens the stability
of the region, it directly challenges the firm international consensus to stop
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction’.
Clinton drew attention to US laws that mandated tough sanctions, which he
said he would implement in full measure. These did not amount to much on
their own. The US would withhold aid and there would be no defence sales.
Further, there would be no guarantees issued by the US Export–Import Bank
or its overseas investment protection agency (OPIC). The US Congress also
criticized the tests, while US analysts were quick to point out that US
companies would probably suffer more than India. On a lighter note, we
heard that Clinton’s first reaction was of dismay because he would no longer
be able to visit the Taj Mahal.
The Japanese reaction was expected, as it was the only country to have
been at the receiving end of nuclear weapons. It froze all aid, which, unlike
in the case of the US, was a substantial amount, in excess of US$1 billion.
Their subsequent statements and efforts, under Prime Minister Ryutaro
Hashimoto, were less appreciated. It was only with his removal from office
that Indo–Japanese relations began to move forward again.
The Germans also announced a moratorium on aid, which, at US$300
million, was far above American levels. China’s initial reaction was
subdued, probably because they were aware of Indian ire at the Sino–Pak
cooperation. In fact, to our surprise, Russia’s language was stronger; Boris
Yeltsin said that he was disappointed and felt let down.
The Canadian statement was a mixture of hypocrisy, racism and realism.
They condemned the tests in strong language, but more interestingly, their
foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, was quoted as saying they would ‘have to
take the tough nationalism represented by the Hindu party much more
seriously because they are clearly up to what they would do’. I remember
there was genuine puzzlement at Canada’s reaction. The Canadians had lived
under the American nuclear umbrella, so it was hypocritical to talk down to
India. Their reference to the BJP as a Hindu party was condescension of the
lowest level, even though the Canadian opinion in the international scenario
did not really matter.
Denmark also got into the act and announced the holding up of its US$28
million aid programme. An Australian Labor Party spokesperson, mistaking
the real world for a cricket match, used language more appropriate to the
locker room. She called India’s tests ‘an outrageous act of nuclear bastardy’.
Australia was to go further when it offered to divert its minuscule aid
programme to Pakistan, so that the latter was persuaded not to test! It all
seemed quite unreal.
After the initial domestic euphoria, which forced the Opposition to keep
mum, domestic criticism gained force. The left parties criticized the
Vajpayee government for deciding to change national policies unilaterally.
They felt that the other political parties should have been consulted. The
Congress was confused as to how they ought to react. Should the tests be
celebrated as a programme begun by Indira Gandhi, which received a major
fillip during Rajiv Gandhi’s regime? Or would such a stand make Vajpayee
look good, hinting at the Congress’s implicit acceptance that this was the
right thing to do? Their initial reaction was, ‘Why now?’
Essentially, the Opposition did not know how to react, as was soon
illustrated by I.K. Gujral.6 His remedy was that India should sign the CTBT,
like France and China did after conducting tests. This ignored the fact that
both these countries were recognized nuclear weapons states under the NPT,
and the CTBT allowed them to test if they felt that their national security was
imperilled, a luxury denied to India. Another Opposition leader, Mulayam
Singh Yadav, had a simpler criticism—that the tests should have been kept a
secret.
Even as reactions to the initial tests, conducted on 13 May, were coming
in, two days later, India conducted two more tests. These ‘were required to
demonstrate our capacity to miniaturise, at sub-kilo yields, and with that
India concluded its planned series of tests’, as the media was informed by the
government. The next step taken was possibly the best thing to have been
done as a follow-up to the tests, though it received a lot of flak at that time.
This was to write to world leaders explaining the circumstances which had
made testing a compulsion for India. Unlike normal diplomatic
correspondence, which is all sweet and cloying, this one was direct but
polite. A great deal of effort went into the writing of these letters.
No sooner had Vajpayee’s letter reached the White House than it appeared
in the New York Times. This caused considerable embarrassment for us, since
we had pointed to the ‘China factor’ as the primary reason for our decision
to test. It was said that the compulsion to go nuclear was driven by, to quote
from the letter, ‘. . . overt nuclear tests on our borders, [conducted by] a state
which committed armed aggression against India in 1962, [and] although
relations had improved in the last decade or so, an atmosphere of distrust
prevails mainly due to unresolved border problem. That country has
materially helped another neighbour of ours to become a covert nuclear
weapons state, [due to which, we] have suffered aggression from that
neighbour, [making us] victim of relentless terrorism and militancy.’
Factually, the statement was correct, but all hell broke loose. The Chinese
were livid and made their outrage known. Domestically, too, a lot of people
criticized the government for having spoilt relations with China; Chinese
perfidy in supplying nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan which
undermined India’s security was conveniently ignored.
The international reaction to Vajpayee’s letter was subdued, almost
bordering on disbelief. The American analysts only picked up the 1962 part,
ignoring the rather nuanced reference to India–China relations in the letter. I
remember reading an American comment that India could not expect to be
taken seriously if it used the 1962 war as justification for the tests. Clearly,
the commentator either did not read the statement, or if he did, its meaning
escaped him.7
In the letter, Vajpayee had conceded that despite the lingering border
dispute, relations with China had been improving. It was the Chinese nuclear
and missile assistance to Pakistan that had resulted in India facing two
nuclear-armed neighbours. What made it worse was that such Sino–Pak
cooperation allowed Pakistan to use jihad as an instrument of state policy to
destabilize its neighbours. But this was three years too early. In any case, it
seems doubtful that Vajpayee’s prescient reference in this letter to the use of
jihadi terrorism was taken seriously. Nor did anyone pay much mind to his
speech before the UN General Assembly in 2000, where he specifically
pointed out the dangers of jihadi terrorism.
The international reaction after the second series of tests and the letters
was several degrees ‘hotter’ than what had followed the initial tests of 11
May. And yet, there were some realistic voices who singly agreed with
India’s need to move ahead but in group-speak went along with
condemnatory statements. Clinton said that India had made a terrible mistake.
He even moved on removing the hurdle of the Pressler Amendment so that
arms sanctions on Pakistan could be lifted.8 Nelson Mandela condemned the
tests. The United Nations Security Council expressed its dismay.
On the other hand, France said that sanctions made no sense. They were
joined by the UK and Russia, who also said that they would not impose
sanctions. Within the US itself, different voices now started speaking up.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that Clinton was being one-sided, blind
to China’s doings, and was in fact selling nuclear technology to them, which
was adding to India’s security concerns and making the latter more worried
about China than about Pakistan. Congressman Frank Pallone, co-founder of
the India Caucus (a group within Congress, sympathetic towards India),
opposed the tests but asked Clinton to consider the situation India was in and
put it in perspective.
India had a long and contested border with China and faced a large PLA
presence on its border. The Chinese presence in Burma was of concern to
India as well, and there was Chinese support for hostile groups operating
against the Indian state. Pallone’s recommendation was that the US should
take the threat India faces from China more seriously and consequently work
in closer coordination with India. A few years later, as India’s position as a
rising but responsible power was being recognized, Henry Kissinger backed
the tests. Despite his long ties with the Chinese regime and an old history of
rubbing India the wrong way, he conceded that India had a case for a
deterrent against China. Like many others, he felt that the American sanctions
were probably a mistake.
The Dalai Lama sent a personal letter to Vajpayee, in effect supporting the
decision to test by alluding to the point that the possession of nuclear
weapons would deter any offensive actions and would therefore ensure
peace. Vajpayee was very touched when he read the letter. Later, the Dalai
Lama went on record saying that India should not be pressured into giving up
nuclear weapons; it should have the same rights as developed countries. His
basic point was that he thought ‘nuclear weapons are too dangerous.
Therefore we should make every effort for the elimination of nuclear
weapons.’ However, he disagreed with the assumption that it was all right
for a few nations to possess nuclear weapons when the rest of the world did
not; it was undemocratic.
Western news reports also indirectly supported our stand by pointing out
that Ghauri was derived from a North Korean missile and was in fact closer
to Nodong-I than to Hatf. There were also reports that the CIA was probing
its intelligence failure in detecting India’s test preparations. Vajpayee’s
reactions to these developments were manifold. Within a day or so of the
tests, he invited Sonia Gandhi for a briefing, where he told her that what he
had done was in continuation of what Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had
started. He specifically told her that weaponization was initiated by Rajiv
Gandhi in 1988, and that what was needed now was to validate the designs
of nuclear devices, based as they were on the results of the 1974 test. He
later told us that her reply was that the 1988 decision had been kept a secret.
Later on, before the Parliament session, a number of briefing meetings were
held with representatives of various political parties. As a concession to the
Congress, a separate briefing was kept only for the two leaders of
Opposition in both houses, Sharad Pawar and Manmohan Singh.
For the rest of the month, as the pressure built up internationally, and
domestically, Vajpayee gave interviews to a number of foreign journalists.
His basic message was that though India was now a nuclear weapons state
(NWS), ‘ours will not be weapons of aggression’. He said that India would
not be cowed down by sanctions, and that it was prepared to sign the CTBT
but only as an NWS. We had announced a moratorium on testing, so we had
agreed substantially to adhere to the conditions of the CTBT. Significantly,
we also announced a ‘no-first-use’ policy to demonstrate that India’s interest
was deterrence, not using nuclear weapons as instruments of offence or
coercion. China’s allegations against India were also dismissed. As
Vajpayee made clear, ‘After all, the Chinese themselves went for nuclear
weapons, claiming that these were necessary for their security.’ China had
conducted its last, and forty-fifth test, as late as 1996, just before the
finalization of the CTBT, but was not willing to extend the same logic to
India. Vajpayee hoped that the US would develop a ‘better understanding of
India’s security interests’.
Far from abating, the pressure on India actually started increasing. In
hindsight, it seems that there were two mutually reinforcing factors driving
the US. One, for fear that Pakistan would follow suit and conduct its own
nuclear tests, the US was pressurizing India to deter Pakistani ambitions.
Two, the ire caused by the fact that India had managed to test without being
stopped had to be taken out on somebody. Narasimha Rao had given the go-
ahead to the tests in late 1995, but the Americans had found out about this and
had warned India of the consequences. How did they fail this time?
Since the Americans could never be wrong, the fault obviously lay with
the Indians. Karl Inderfurth, who had come to India with Bill Richardson,
said that the latter and Bruce Riedel had been told by senior Indian officials
that ‘India would continue to show restraint in the non-proliferation field,
and would do nothing to surprise us’. But then they went further. In his
testimony to a senate committee, Inderfurth said, ‘We were assured privately
and publicly, that India would continue to show restraint in the non-
proliferation field, and would do nothing to surprise us.’ No such assurance
was asked for, nor was it given, at the meeting that Vajpayee had with
Richardson and his delegation.
Jaswant Singh, in his book A Call to Honour, gives an entirely different,
and more plausible, explanation. There had been talks about India conducting
a Strategic Defence Review before deciding on whether to go ahead and test
or not. When asked about this specifically, Jaswant Singh writes that he told
the American delegation that ‘India’s overall security concerns would be
central to any decision that the Government would take’.9 This, he says, the
Americans took to mean that India would not test till it first conducted the
Review. Later on, US Ambassador Dick Celeste, who was going home for a
holiday, told Jaswant Singh that he hoped India would not surprise him as he
wanted to enjoy his time at home.
Since Pakistan had just tested the Ghauri, Jaswant Singh assumed that he
was being asked whether India would basically go ahead with a tit-for-tat
test, which he sincerely denied. These meetings were held in mid-April, days
after Vajpayee had given the go-ahead to Dr R. Chidambaram and Dr A.P.J.
Abdul Kalam, and it is most probable that Jaswant Singh was not aware of
this momentous decision. A few years after, when living in the US, I had it on
good authority that the US State Department had done detailed discussions
about whether Vajpayee really meant it when he said that India would test,
and in a clear error of judgement, their conclusion was that he would not go
ahead.
What would have been much more galling was that the US satellites had
not detected the preparations in the Pokhran range. Again, I have it on good
authority that the satellites had captured these images, but in the pre-artificial
intelligence days, manual examination was necessary to detect and analyse
changes shown in satellite images. Remember that this was 1998, and even
the cell phone was in its earliest, primitive 1G days, with internet speeds
measured in kilobytes.
The Indians had to be officially painted as perfidious villains, even though
the US diplomats conceded in private that the situation was quite different.
The US State Department’s official spokesperson, James Rubin, told the
media that India could say bye-bye to its UN Security Council ambitions. The
G8, a group comprising eight of the leading economic powers of the world,
met in Birmingham and condemned the tests. The US also strongly
condemned Advani’s statement that Pakistan must stop its interference in
India and specifically its use of jihadi terrorism, else it should be prepared
for a proactive response from India, something that would actually have to
wait for almost two decades. The US saw Advani’s statement as
provocative.
Even though Pakistan had publicly rejected America’s plea to not test, they
gave their word that they ‘would not act in haste’. The US was more or less
convinced that it had managed to get officials in Pakistan to postpone their
tests. This was despite the public Sino–Pakistan consultations being held in
Beijing, after which came Pakistan’s foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmad’s
statement highlighting China’s promise not to retaliate with sanctions on
Pakistan should they go ahead with their test. He added to good effect that,
‘China will not ask us to do anything which is not in our national interests.’
During his visit to Beijing, Ahmad had met the Chinese foreign minister, Tang
Jiaxuan.
The spin that the US gave to it was—or maybe they actually believed in
the idea—that they had asked China to pressurize Pakistan. This led to fears
that if Pakistan was not going ahead with the tests, it could mean that China
had given Pakistan a nuclear umbrella. The US was quick to dispel this
notion, with James Rubin stating, ‘We are not aware that China is about to
extend a nuclear umbrella to any country, nor would it.’10 If this certificate to
China was not enough, he added that China had played a very restrained and
helpful role in this situation.
Such statements added to the pressure on Vajpayee. I remember that on 17
May, less than one week after the tests, while Vajpayee was at the dais
inaugurating the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) near
Kozhikode, Kerala, I received a message, false as it turned out, that Pakistan
had tested. I passed on a slip to Vajpayee, and he turned grim, for even
though such a move had been expected, it meant that our worst fears about
Pakistan’s nuclear programme were true.
The one-day visit to Kerala proved to a blessing, a welcome change from
the tensions of Delhi’s politics and pressures. On the flight to Kochi from
Delhi, Vajpayee was told that the Kerala chief minister, E.K. Nayanar, had
made scathing remarks against the Vajpayee government. Vajpayee wondered
about the reception he would get in Kerala. I pointed out that Nayanar’s
criticism was in the form of an article in a CPM party paper, not a public
statement, and hence should be seen differently. Nayanar received Vajpayee
warmly and they got along very well. When in Delhi, he would often drop in
and have long conversations with Vajpayee, despite the language hurdle.
Besides AIMS, Vajpayee also inaugurated Kerala government’s
Kudumbashree scheme at Malappuram, later the same day. Kudumbashree
sought to abolish poverty by empowering women through neighbourhood
associations under the larger umbrella of local governments (panchayats).
Though NABARD, a Government of India body, was also involved in the
scheme, it was nonetheless unusual that a CPM-led state government had
invited a BJP prime minister to inaugurate a project in a district carved out to
ensure Muslim majority. Nayanar had obviously not heard of political
untouchability, or if he had, he did not believe in it!
The drive through Malappuram was an eye-opener, with thousands of
Moplah women lining the roads and waving to Vajpayee. This was a
spontaneous gesture and an insight into the fact that these women were
sending a message of hope and expectation. Two people, besides Nayanar,
who played a part in ensuring that there was goodwill generated through the
visit, were the Muslim League leader (and later Union minister of state) E.
Ahamed, and the journalist T.V.R. Shenoy, both sadly not around any more. I
still treasure the gold-bordered mundu that E. Ahamed gifted me at the
Kozhikode Circuit House, where we spent the night.

Amid the turmoil, the visit to Pokhran took place. We left Delhi on the
evening of 19 May and landed a little while later in the furnace that Jaisalmer
becomes at that time of the year. In addition to George Fernandes and
Jaswant Singh, the other political figure with us was Farooq Abdullah, the
chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, whose presence would unsettle
Pakistan. Rajasthan’s chief minister, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, joined us in
Jaisalmer, along with Col Sonaram Choudhary, the then Congress MP who, in
the 2014 elections, contested as a BJP candidate, defeating Jaswant Singh,
who had himself rebelled and fought as an independent. One person Vajpayee
wanted to take along, but somehow we’d slipped and could not coordinate,
was K.C. Pant. He was then head of the taskforce on national security and as
the minister of state (defence) had accompanied Indira Gandhi to Pokhran in
1974 after the first tests. It was an unforgivable lapse on my part.
I had been to Jaisalmer before, but that was in December 1996, when the
city’s climate is salubrious and inviting. My son and I had hired cycles and
went all over. Little did I realize at the time that within a year and a half, I
would be back in totally different circumstances. Now, Jaisalmer was
sizzling and almost completely unbearable. After the boss settled in, Jaswant
Singh very graciously invited Brajesh Mishra and myself to the hotel built by
his son on the outskirts of the city. A quiet drink or two, wine for the host and
whisky for us, sitting on the veranda overlooking the central courtyard—it
was almost ethereal. The hotel was unoccupied, except for a few attendants
and us, and was very quiet. Back at the defence mess, I thought, rashly, of
having a shower before going to sleep. The tap water was hot enough to boil
eggs in or make tea with. I escaped being scalded, so I did the next best thing,
which was to fill up two buckets and to have my bath in the morning. The air
conditioning tried its best but at 45 degrees, it was no match for the Thar
winds.
Despite the name, the actual testing range is not near Pokhran; the nearest
village is actually Khetolai, which suffered some cracks in its walls as a
result of Operation Shakti. The scene at the testing range was jubilant and
chaotic, more like a Sunday school picnic of a bunch of unruly
schoolchildren than the solemn visit of the prime minister. This was
excusable since the tests were to become a momentous event in Indian
history. In 1974, Pokhran-I had caught the world, and India, by surprise, but
we had to fudge it by calling it a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’. The world did
not believe us and promptly took steps to isolate us from the nuclear supply
network. Fuel supplies stopped and the Nuclear Suppliers Group was set up
to block India’s, and other potential nuclear aspirants’, access to necessary
supplies.
It was amusing to see the heroes, Dr Chidambaram, Dr A.P.J. Abdul
Kalam, Dr K. Santhanam and Dr Anil Kakodkar, in army uniforms, though
none of them resembled a fauji, especially not Dr Kalam, with his long hair.
The men of the Engineer’s Regiment mobbed the PM and his team at the site,
and the photos show their enthusiasm and camaraderie. Farooq Abdullah led
the cheering brigade, whose ‘josh’ made all of us forget the unbearable heat.
Meanwhile, back in Delhi, reality hit us. The kid-glove treatment of
Pakistan continued. US Secretary of State Madeline Albright declared that
Pakistan, by not testing, had avoided sanctions. She then certified that
Pakistan had ‘shown a level of maturity and responsibility India’s current
leaders have not’. Her advice to Pakistan was that it would ‘earn [the]
international respect that India yearns for, [its] people deserve but which its
leaders have thrown away’. India, according to her, had been ‘reckless, rash,
unjustified, wrong-headed, unwise’, and had committed ‘a great historical
error’. The torrent of adjectives was simply amazing.
In an article a few days later, the New York Times called it an intelligence
failure on the part of the USA, which it partly blamed for what it called
‘India’s sophisticated misinformation’. As we saw a few years later, in 2003,
at the time of the Iraq War, this paper generally buys the US administration’s
point of view uncritically and then tries to sell it to the world. Vajpayee’s
letter appeared in the NYT. The article drew attention to Bill Richardson’s
meetings in Delhi, referred to earlier, where he heard what he wanted to
hear, not what was being said to him. It also referred to Foreign Secretary K.
Raghunath’s visit to Washington, D.C. and his meeting with Clinton’s national
security adviser, Sandy Berger. To be fair, the article also mentioned that
India was expected to respond to Pakistan’s Ghauri test.
The Vajpayee government tried to defuse the tension while maintaining its
priorities. Advani called upon Pakistan to roll back its anti-India policies
and stop sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir. Pakistan was advised to join India
in the common pursuit of peace and development. The warning attached to
this message was that anything else would be costly. This message apparently
did not land, neither with Pakistan nor with the USA. This was clear a few
days later when President Clinton called Nawaz Sharif for the third time. The
latter asked Clinton to pressure India to not provoke Pakistan. Clinton
assured him that the US was monitoring the situation and ‘would ensure that
the peace and stability of South Asia was not disturbed’. Further, the US said
that it recognized that ‘the Indian tests had not only dealt a severe blow to the
non-proliferation regime, but more importantly, they had created a serious
security threat to Pakistan’. Just before Pakistan actually conducted the test,
Gohar Ayub attacked India for indulging in what he called ‘brinkmanship’.
He then went on to directly threaten India, saying that it would not be able to
absorb the strike of Ghauri.
Building on what we said was India’s responsible behaviour, especially
our lack of interest in taking an aggressive pose, we announced a moratorium
on tests, and said that we were ready to convert the announcement into a
legal obligation, which would be possible if the CTBT was opened and
renegotiated. Our spokesperson quietly chided the US for James Rubin’s use
of intemperate language against Advani’s statement.
In the US itself, there began a re-evaluation of the efficacy of their
policies. A leaked White House assessment was that the sanctions hurt the
US more than anybody else. It said that in the execution of such policies, the
US was ‘shooting ourselves in the foot’. The White House also expressed
frustration that Congressional sanctions impeded foreign policy. This was as
much a salve to Pakistan, which stood to face sanctions in case it tested, and
its economy was in a far worse condition than India’s. Contrary to the hopes
of the White House, which wanted an extremely successful summit with
China, the US Congress voted to block satellite sales to China, on the
grounds that Clinton’s decision to allow the sale was not in national interest.
This, as we in Delhi hoped, would somewhat dampen Clinton’s attempt to
form a G2 with China.
Even as Pakistani preparations at ground zero were progressing, we were
trying to figure out how the US sanctions would impact the US$11 billion
India–US bilateral trade. In present-day terms, this does not look like a big
enough amount, but in 1998 this was a significant figure. As the Pokhran
‘hawa’ was subsiding, the political temperature in Delhi was rising in direct
proportion to the proximity of the first full-fledged budget session of
Parliament since the Vajpayee government took office. Veteran
parliamentarian Purno Sangma, apparently still smarting from having lost the
speaker’s election, attacked the government. He mentioned that both the BJP
manifesto and the National Agenda on Governance had talked about
exercising the nuclear option, but that this did not find a place in the
President’s address. His conclusion was that the omission was due to
pressure from the US. This was just the beginning.
The new Congress (I) president, Sonia Gandhi, said there were no
credible reasons for the government to have carried out the tests. Like many
others, she shared the fear that India’s relations with Pakistan and China
would worsen as a consequence. Then, she mentioned the secrecy with
which this decision had been taken and executed, and concluded that there
was lack of transparency. Carrying on, she said that there was no evidence
that the tests were conducted for security reasons; instead, she felt that the
nuclear issue had been thrust upon India. Her logic was that India had
acquired nuclear-weapons capability in 1974 itself, and not after the 1998
tests. Why was no Strategic Defence Review carried out? How had the
security environment deteriorated? How had our security been enhanced by
carrying out the tests?
As Parliament met for its regular session, Vajpayee read out a detailed
statement in the Lok Sabha on 27 May 1998. This statement had been
prepared with great care, and a lot of research, done by officers of the MEA
and PMO, went into it. Vajpayee’s own memory of earlier events, including
those of the parliamentary debates, was very useful, particularly when
deciding what to prise out from where.
Essentially, Vajpayee traced India’s nuclear journey to the decisions taken
by India’s leaders in 1947 and in the years that followed. They, he recalled,
chose self-reliance and freedom of thought and of action, refusing to take
sides in the Cold War and adopting the difficult but correct path of non-
alignment. India, Vajpayee explained, realized that a nuclear-free world
would not only enhance its own security but also the security of all nations.
Remembering Nehru, whose death anniversary fell on that day, Vajpayee said
that disarmament had always been a major plank of India’s foreign policy.
But India’s many attempts to push for disarmament over the decades did not
result in anything tangible; instead, the current situation was a nuclear
apartheid, where five countries had a legal monopoly over possessing
nuclear weapons. Hence India did not, very consciously, sign the Non-
Proliferation Treaty (1967) nor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
(1996).
India had demonstrated its nuclear capability in 1974, and Vajpayee
reminded the members of Parliament that Indira Gandhi, speaking on the
nuclear issue, had told Parliament in 1968 that ‘we shall be guided entirely
by self-enlightenment and considerations of our national security’. He
complimented all governments since 1974 for safeguarding India’s nuclear
option by not signing the CTBT, despite the mounting international pressure.
Having established a continuity in policy, running from Nehru to Indira
Gandhi to her successors, Vajpayee was being true to the facts, even if it
meant underplaying the huge courage that he’d exhibited in deciding to carry
out the tests. Despite demonstrating its capability in 1974, India had
exercised restraint for twenty-four years, since it believed in a nuclear-free
world. But India’s different proposals to that effect did not get any positive
response. Vajpayee alluded to Rajiv Gandhi’s 1988 grand proposal for
nuclear disarmament. Restraint, Vajpayee said, can only come from strength,
not from indecision or doubt.
He situated his decision to test in the context of the India’s deteriorating
security environment due to missile and nuclear proliferation in its
neighbourhood. The increase in the number of nuclear weapons and the
deployment of sophisticated delivery systems could not be ignored. Worse,
India faced terrorism, militancy and clandestine war. In the absence of any
movement towards disarmament, and keeping in mind the needs of national
security, the difficult decision to test had to be taken. Again, implicitly
linking it to Nehru, Vajpayee said that with this decision, India’s policy of
self-reliance could be continued.
Taking his argument further, Vajpayee made it clear that India did not seek
the status of a Nuclear Weapons State from anybody because it was already
one. This was a reality, and with this added strength came added
responsibilities. India’s nuclear weapons were not to be used for aggression
or for mounting threats to other countries. Rather, Vajpayee explained, they
were weapons of self-defence, which would prevent India from being
subject to nuclear threats or coercion in the future. India did not intend to
engage in an arms race. Vajpayee announced that India had declared a
voluntary moratorium on underground nuclear testing and was taking steps to
convert this into a de jure obligation.
As if he was anticipating the 2019 Balakot attack, Vajpayee drew attention
to the requirement of ‘focused leadership which attends to security needs’
and pledged that he would do so ‘as a sacred duty’. He ended by again
emphasizing the continuity of policies of the previous five decades and
speaking about the sense of responsibility and obligations that came with
being an ancient civilization.
Sitting in the officers’ gallery, barely ten feet away from Vajpayee, I
thought the performance was masterful. It was neither triumphal nor self-
congratulatory. Rather, it was understated, conciliatory, factual and
appreciative of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and all past governments. Even an
impartial observer would have concluded that it answered all the domestic
doubts raised about the rationale behind the tests. But the vintage Vajpayee,
so much missed in the present times by those who opposed him politically
then, failed to convince his critics in May 1998, not because of what he’d
said, but for who he was and what he stood for.
Speaking for the Congress (I), veteran diplomat, sometime minister and
author Natwar Singh sought to pick holes in Vajpayee’s arguments. Singh said
that while there was consensus in keeping the nuclear option open, there was
no consensus on exercising that option. Singh added that Vajpayee had ‘taken
the profound step of reorienting our foreign policy without taking us into
confidence’. It did not occur to those who supported this line of reasoning
that an option that is never supposed to be exercised is not an option at all.
Or, that in the international climate that had increasingly delegitimized
nuclear weapons for all except the P5—the five permanent members of
UNSC—it wasn’t feasible to have an open debate on whether India should
test.
The common theme of the Opposition, first articulated by Natwar Singh
and then by members of the left parties among others, was that the BJP
government was essentially guided by its political compulsions, rather than
by the reasons cited, in reversing the nuclear policy followed since 1974.
They probably failed to notice that internal cohesion within the NDA, or the
lack of it, was not affected by the Pokhran tests. In fact, while this debate
was on, Mamata Banerjee announced that her Trinamool Congress would
boycott the Parliament session in protest against Vajpayee government’s
‘indifferent attitude’ towards West Bengal.
Advani’s statement asking Pakistan to join India in the common struggle
for poverty abolition and warning it to desist from sponsoring terrorism in
India, failing which India would be forced to take proactive measures—a
statement which had so upset the Americans—was also questioned. What did
‘proactive’ mean? Singh specifically asked if it involved hot pursuit. In his
reply, a day or so later, Advani clarified that he never said ‘hot pursuit’.
Would a country wanting to carry out hot-pursuit campaigns into areas
administered by another country first publicly debate or even announce it?
Even as the Indian parliament was debating the nuclear tests, Pakistan’s
preparations for carrying out their own tests were almost complete. In a last-
minute effort to dissuade Pakistan from proceeding, Clinton called Nawaz
Sharif for their fourth conversation in just over two weeks. His argument was
simple—if Pakistan tests, it would walk into the trap that India had set for it.
Clinton tried to persuade Sharif that India would welcome Pakistan’s tests,
as it would defuse the pressure on them. But Clinton’s expectations were
unrealistic, and as Sharif informed him, the decision was out of his hands.
The Americans record Sharif telling them, ‘I don’t think that I will last in
office for more than 2–3 days if I don’t test.’
More and more reports emerged, establishing that Pakistan actually did not
need to test at all and that its nuclear programme had been built clandestinely,
in violation of international law, in collaboration with China. According to
the respected defence journal Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Pakistani nuclear
arsenal was basically of Chinese design. China had been ‘extraordinarily’
generous because Pakistani nuclear scientists had shared with them secrets
about the process to enrich uranium to weapons-grade using high-speed
centrifuges. In turn, China shared nuclear bomb designs from its 1966 Lop
Nor test. Pakistan had to modify these so that the missiles could be carried by
the American-built F-16s.
 China had, in fact, test-fired the Pakistani-modified designs, so there was
no need for Pakistan to test. The Pakistani delay in testing (May 1998) was
on account of problems with the trigger. The Jane’s report also confirmed
that Ghauri’s range was only 600 km, and not 1500 km as it was claimed.
The report said that, on the other hand, India’s nuclear and missile
programme was largely home-grown and far more advanced. Critically, India
had a command structure, so that while it was producing nuclear warheads,
political clearance was needed to fit them on to missiles.
It was on the second day of the debate on the nuclear issue that we got
confirmed news that Pakistan had tested. Many Opposition members
pilloried the government for napping; this was despite the fact that the tests
were widely expected. Pakistan claimed that it had carried out five tests,
even though the signals only picked up one. Pakistan also announced it had
mated the nuclear warhead to the Ghauri missile, taking China into
confidence. Sharif thanked China for appreciating Pakistan’s concerns. Later
that evening, as Vajpayee left Parliament House, the media accosted him. He
strongly denied that Pakistan’s tests were in reaction to ours; instead, he said
that we pre-empted their preparations. One could detect a hint of anger in his
reply.
To go back a bit, earlier in the day, during the parliamentary debate,
representatives of the Congress had blamed the Indian government for
Pakistan’s tests and for initiating a nuclear arms race. Somebody reminded
the Congress that their 1991 manifesto mentioned the need for carrying out a
nuclear test. What was left unsaid was the fact that this manifesto was
prepared when Rajiv Gandhi was the Congress president and contender for
prime ministership. Replying to the debate in the Lok Sabha, Vajpayee again
made the point that unless Pakistan had already been ready, it could not have
organized everything and carried out the tests within sixteen days. He said
that Pakistan was using the design of China’s old medium-range ballistic
missile, tested in 1961. He was clear that Pakistan’s back-to-back tests
showed the limitations of the United States’ non-proliferation policy, which
had special provisions targeted against Pakistan. Unfortunately, the US did
not agree with India that China’s support of Pakistan placed India in a
disadvantaged position.
The international reaction to Pakistan’s test was rather interesting. The US
imposed sanctions on Pakistan, which was expected, since they were legally
bound to do so, but its statements were quite soft on the latter. The White
House spokesperson, Mike McCurry, almost justified the tests. He said, ‘It
would be accurate to say that the Prime Minister clearly struggled with what
was, for him, a very difficult decision . . . He sounded, in short, like someone
who is very pained by a very difficult decision.’ McCurry pointed out that
the Glenn Amendment sanctions to be imposed on Pakistan were automatic.
However, he added, ‘there was a qualitative difference to India’s
disadvantage’. According to him, Nawaz Sharif was straightforward, while
India was manifestly not. These statements sidestepped years of US
apprehension about China–Pak nuclear cooperation, which had led to the
adoption of the Pressler Amendment.
The European Union was caught by surprise, having just condemned India
and praised Pakistan for its restraint. The British foreign secretary, Robin
Cook, who had been admonished by Prime Minister Gujral less than a year
ago, expressed his dismay.11 Japan imposed sanctions on Pakistan again, as
expected. The Australians, who had dangled a bait of US$6 million, by
diverting the moneys intended for India, withdrew their offer (did Pakistan
even notice?). China, who was on board with the tests, as revealed by the
Pakistani prime minister, expressed deep regret initially but was quick to
balance this mild statement by blaming India instead. It further rescued
Pakistan at the UN Security Council, whose statement of condemnation
included not just Pakistan but also India.
Even as Pakistan said that it had conducted another test, the focus
remained on India. As if nothing had happened and as if an Indian prime
minister’s statement in Parliament had no meaning, the US State Department’s
spokesperson, James Rubin, rejected Vajpayee’s statement on a moratorium
and his offer on no-first-use. Instead, India was told to sign the CTBT, to not
nuclearize and to join the negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty
(FMCT). The US was not done. Rubin linked the nuclear test to Kashmir and
therefore expressed the need ‘to take steps to reduce the possibility of
escalation, to reduce the possibilities of conflict in Kashmir, and to deal with
the underlying dispute in Kashmir’. Clearly, Rubin was reflecting the views
of his boss, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, whose links, and
disappointment, with the Indian case on Kashmir were said to go back to the
time of her father, Josef Korbel, who, in his heyday, was the chairman of the
United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan.
The beauty of US democracy, and this is something that must be
appreciated, was on full view in this debate on the tests. CIA director, James
Woolsey, publicly said that China had a ‘major hand’ in Pakistan’s nuclear
and missile programme. US media reports said that in relaxing export
controls in respect of China, the US further allowed China to help Pakistan.
In fact, the state department had acknowledged in 1996 that the ‘the entire
Pakistan strategic weapons programme should be styled “made in China”’.
Such assistance and collaboration covered a whole gamut of issues. For
example, nuclear-weapons design, ring magnets, M-11 short-range missiles,
special furnaces, nuclear material, etc. In effect, the CIA had also said the
same thing. The much-respected Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI) confirmed that China had given short-range missiles to
Pakistan, which the latter did not deny.
In passing, we noticed that after conducting its tests, Pakistan rejected the
idea of a moratorium on future testing but said that it was amenable to
dialogue with India. There was much scepticism about the actual number of
tests that Pakistan had carried out. Reliable reports state that the first series
comprised only four tests, not five, of which three failed. There was a single
test on 30 May. Which is possibly why there was so little international
attention given to Pakistan, while Vajpayee had his hands full in this regard.
Clinton’s determined bonhomie did not help. The US and China were
coordinating their stands on the nuclear tests. Spokesperson Rubin, ‘We all
have to bear in mind the evolution that has occurred in China’s policies,
including a commitment that we believe they are honouring not to assist
unsafeguarded nuclear facilities, especially those in Pakistan.’ As history
bears out, this statement was as far from the truth as possible, but it is
important to mention it as an illustration of the kind of pressures being
exerted on Vajpayee, since his actions had upset the geopolitical calculations
of the US and China.
It was with these two countries that India faced the most challenges, and it
was fascinating to see how Vajpayee coped with them. The results were
visible within the year, when the subcontinent faced a crisis that threatened
power dynamics the world over. There was a clear difference between the
attitudes of India and Pakistan. Our meticulous preparations, sensible
decision-making and some luck averted disaster, but at the end of May 1998,
all this seemed unlikely, with no sign of any light at the end of the tunnel.
Domestically and internationally, the Vajpayee government appeared wobbly,
but it was only our faith in India’s manifest destiny, and our belief that the
decision to test was in the national interest, that kept us going.

THE SRI LANKAN FOREIGN MINISTER, Lakshman Kadirgamar, visited Beijing a

few days after our tests and said words to the effect that his country felt
threatened by the situation in the subcontinent and wanted to help rescue
Sino–Indian relations, as he argued Sri Lanka had done after the 1962 war.
This was in reply to the Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan’s request for
Sri Lankan help in smoothening ‘ruffled feathers’. About ten days after his
Beijing visit, Kadirgamar visited Delhi and a meeting was fixed with
Vajpayee, who was also the foreign minister at the time. Kadirgamar’s
statements in Beijing had been noted in Delhi but ignored. The general belief
was that his visit was likely triggered by some rather strong statements made
by a politician in Chennai on the Lankan Tamil issue. It was simply
inconceivable that Sri Lanka, or anybody else, could act as a mediator to
resolve tensions between India and China. Moreover, it was not as if India
and China were not talking to each other, or their tensions had degenerated
into a dispute threatening peace in the region.
Unfortunately, Kadirgamar took his self-appointed task rather seriously,
something he would regret doing. Vajpayee was polite but firm; his message
to Kadirgamar was direct. Vajpayee did not raise his voice or use strong
language; in fact, he was absolutely polite. But the message was hard and
direct. Vajpayee told Kadirgamar that if he felt unease about the situation, he
should have come to Delhi instead of going to Beijing and making public
statements. Over the fifteen minutes or so that the meeting lasted, the message
that India had never favoured third-party mediation was hammered home, as
was the point that Sri Lanka, as a friend, should frankly share its fears with
India. It was a lesson in diplomacy that is not taught in diplomatic academies.
It was also a lesson in management—how to pull up somebody, effectively
and without any drama.
The only other time, I saw this aspect of Vajpayee was just before the
break with Jayalalithaa that brought down his government in April 1999.
This must have been a few weeks before the final collapse. AIADMK’s K.R.
Janarthanan, a minister of state in Vajpayee’s government, with important
responsibilities in finance and personnel, made some public statements that
challenged Vajpayee’s authority as PM. Janarthanan was summoned and
Vajpayee expressed his displeasure. Inside the soft exterior, Vajpayee was
far more a person of steel than was apparent.
But China was not going away anytime soon. Vajpayee reacted strongly
against the statement of the UN Security Council on the Pakistan test, which
had unnecessarily included India. He advised the permanent members, the
P5, to work on disarmament, and rejected all references to third-party
mediation. It was at this moment that the new Chinese ambassador formally
presented his credentials to the Indian President.12 In his speech, President
Narayanan extended an olive branch and tried to de-hyphenate Pakistan from
the India–China equation. He said, ‘The bonds that united India and China
did not impinge upon the interests of any other country in Asia or in the
world . . . the common bonds between the two countries actually contributed
to friendship and co-operation and peace and security in the region and in the
world.’
The message did not resonate in Beijing, which, a few days later, blamed
India for initiating an ‘arms race’ and threatened to resume testing, as
allowed under special circumstances by the CTBT. The hypocrisy of the
CTBT as a deterrent policy has already been highlighted in Chapter 2, ‘A
Hung Parliament’. President Jiang Zemin himself accused India of ‘targeting
China since it aspired for a long period of time to be the main power in South
Asia’. However, he ruled out testing. The Chinese spokesperson, echoing the
earlier statement of Canada, said that the bomb would not get ‘you into the
Security Council’. According to the Chinese, this time echoing a number of
statements of the Indian Opposition parties, the Indian test was a case of a
coalition government trying to win public support by acting tough. It added
that these tests had been ‘condemned by far-sighted peace-loving Indians’.
The Sino–American efforts led to the Security Council calling upon both
India and Pakistan to refrain from further tests and suggested that the two
countries should instead hold talks on the ‘root causes of tensions, including
Kashmir’. This was strong language and could not be ignored. Vajpayee
publicly stated that India was ready to talk to Pakistan on all issues,
including Kashmir. However, he was upset with the language of the UNSC
resolution and called it ‘unhelpful’. The Ministry of External Affairs went
further and called the resolution grotesque for asking India to end testing,
which the government had already announced.
Realizing that India had to make its case heard, Vajpayee sent Brajesh
Mishra, the principal secretary to the PM, as his special envoy to Russia,
France and Britain. In France, whose reaction to the test was the most
realistic, Mishra met Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister, Hubert
Védrine. In Britain, he met Tony Blair and Robin Cook. The Russian
establishment was generally with India, but Yeltsin was not very inclined to
go against the American line.
Sending a special envoy was necessary, as in the absence of a full-time
foreign minister, the government was constrained in its ability to engage
foreign governments at high levels, often outside the purely formal
diplomatic frameworks. Essentially, a special envoy must have political
clout, the ability to bypass normal bureaucratic channels, enable an informal
exchange of views and help narrow differences. Jaswant Singh was the
natural interlocutor as far as the Americans were concerned; in fact, they
reached out to him. However, unlike with the countries Brajesh Mishra was
reaching out to, the conversation with America was going to be long and
difficult. Ultimately, it would be the USA that would determine when and
how India was to be brought in from the nuclear ‘cold’.
However, even before the dialogue with the Americans could begin, they
were already shifting the goalposts. Accordingly, they seemed ready to wipe
the Chinese slate clean of all past nuclear, missile, chemical and other
transgressions. To quote Rubin, ‘. . . reality dictates that we focus on what
co-operation we can get now, and it has been significant.’ On the Pentagon’s
report that Pakistan had mated nuclear warheads with its M-11, also obtained
from China, Rubin justified American inaction by saying, ‘We have not
determined that Pakistan has received M-11 missiles from China.’ Further, on
proliferation, something well-established, he said that ‘the Chinese
government behaves in a way that would have been unthinkable ten years ago
. . . our cooperative responsibility with them enhances the security of the
United States, making it easier for us to fight the battle against proliferation’.
If this was not enough, China’s past proliferation was explained away by him
as something that happened due to the inexperience of the Chinese in export
control regime.
Keeping up the pressure on India, State Department official Karl Inderfurth
told a US congressional committee that, ‘We are only recognizing the
international fact of life that Kashmir is the fundamental dispute between the
two countries . . . At the same time, we do believe that China will be the key
to addressing the security concerns of the sub-continent. We will encourage
China to play a constructive role in South Asia.’ This was a double blow to
India. First, by making Kashmir central to the nuclear tests, the entire logic of
Chinese nuclear proliferation posing a threat to India was sought to be
sidestepped. The Kashmir question was picked up by all—the UNSC, G8,
EU, etc. Second, by seeking to make China the arbiter, the US gave India a
tough pill to swallow. The fact that Clinton was about to go to China and
make his visit a success was written all over these two propositions of
Inderfurth. Interestingly, newspapers reported that the US was keen that the
US–China joint military exercises be announced during the Clinton visit to
China, while the Chinese were still non-committal on the timing. Later,
Inderfurth somewhat toned down his stand and clarified that though Kashmir
was a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan, it was ‘an international
reality that cannot be wished away’. He tried to dispel the notion that there
was a tilt in the United States’ attitude towards the tests.
The tests had thoroughly discredited the non-proliferation regime, which
was essentially unequal, since it gave a monopoly over possession of nuclear
weapons to five countries based on an arbitrary date and made it illegal for
others to join the nuclear club. The whole idea of disarmament behind the
NPT was distorted, and it led to a ‘nuclear power apartheid’. There was
widespread criticism. But Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, did
not agree that the non-proliferation regime had failed. Clearly, the Indian
tests had unnerved her. In her speech at the Stimson Centre, an institution
dedicated to upholding the non-proliferation regime, she said that the ‘India–
Pakistan blasts do not, as some suggest, discredit the NPT regime. To the
contrary, they illustrate its logic and its necessity. India’s leaders predicted
that the tests would make India more secure, more respected . . . the leaders
are wrong.’ She added that till just the previous month, India and Pakistan
could look forward to better relations with the US and other powers, to push
their Security Council ambitions, but for the time being those hopes had been
demolished. Later, asked about China’s role in the Pakistani tests, Albright
diverted attention and said that India’s test did not enhance its security,
instead ‘it lowered respect for India and its people’.
The hardball shadow negotiations that Vajpayee had entered into continued
to increase in pitch. The G8 announced that they would block all fresh loans
to India and Pakistan. They also set up a task force on disarmament. In
response, India said that any criticism would be short-sighted and
counterproductive. To queer the pitch, Pakistan also declared a moratorium
after having repeatedly ruled it out. They said that they wanted to initiate
talks with India, with the issue of concluding a ‘no nuclear test agreement’ on
the agenda. Signing such an agreement would have effectively reduced the
Indian tests to being solely Pakistan focused, which they most decidedly
were not. The MEA replied that such a no-nuclear-test agreement was not
necessary, as a moratorium was in place already. India offered dates for talks
with Pakistan, but the latter, in turn, offered a different set of dates.
 It was against this backdrop that Jaswant Singh met his US counterpart,
Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state and an old friend of Clinton’s. In
fact, it was said that when the two of them were Rhodes scholars in the UK
in the 1960s, it was Talbott who was seen as more cerebral, whose lead
others followed. A scholar who specialized in Russia and a journalist of
long standing, Talbott had acquired the kind of political capital that made him
an effective negotiator.
The United Nations General Assembly had convened in a special session
to discuss drug trafficking. Jaswant Singh was sent to represent India, so that
he could meet Talbott and begin the conversation. The meeting lasted two
and a half hours over lunch and both sides described it as frank and cordial.
It was agreed that the dialogue would continue. Over the next couple of
months, Singh and Talbott met often at different locations, even airports! Both
the interlocutors have written about it, in books that make for fascinating
reading.
True to form, the US planted a story which said that it was the Indians who
had asked for the meeting, which I knew to be false. I clearly remember
Jaswant Singh asking Vajpayee ‘Toh main unko kya jawab doon (What reply
should I give them)?’ This was before Vajpayee had agreed to begin the
dialogue with the US. There was considerable scepticism brewing in the
internal, informal meetings about what the talks with the US would achieve.
Vajpayee was clear, though he did not articulate it directly, that India must not
only engage with the US but move away from the beaten path and forge good
relations. That is why he gave his full support to the Jaswant Singh–Talbott
dialogue, despite considerable scepticism. In retrospect, his decision made a
lot of sense, and it became evident in less than a year, when Kargil happened.
Even though the two countries had started their dialogue at such a senior
level, the Clinton administration kept building pressure on Vajpayee
relentlessly through their public statements and newspaper articles. And so,
we had to be on guard constantly, though occasionally one could sense the
emergence of a marginal change in the United States’ stance. Clinton had a
certain vision of China’s role in the subcontinent and what he saw as its
responsibilities within South Asia and beyond, but his proposal on China’s
position found no takers in India. In fact, China also made it clear later that it
was not keen to mediate. It preferred that India and Pakistan talk bilaterally.
Clinton added that because of its history with both countries, ‘China must be
part of any ultimate resolution in the matter’. This was an interesting
statement, delightfully ambiguous, for it could have been interpreted to mean
that since China is an integral part of the problem, it had the responsibility to
take an active part in the solution. The evidence for this was weak, as just a
week later, while in China, Clinton said that together, they were two great
nations who ‘have a special responsibility to the world . . . [and therefore]
appreciate your [China’s] efforts at peace and stability in Korea and South
Asia.’
Going back to his pre-visit remarks, Clinton added that had China been
isolated and the US not worked with it, ‘would China have agreed to stop
assistance to Iran for its nuclear program, to terminate its assistance to
unsafeguarded nuclear facilities such as those in Pakistan, to tighten its
export control system?’ History would prove him wrong on these points, as
China itself confirmed a decade later when it first informed the Nuclear
Suppliers Group (NSG) that it had ‘forgotten’ to list its assistance to two
unsafeguarded facilities. Just when this sank in, they informed that there were
two more such facilities assisted by them in Pakistan, which they had also
forgotten to inform the NSG about.
‘Over time, the more we bring China into the world the more the world
will bring freedom to China . . . China can only reach its full potential if its
people are free to reach theirs.’ This touching faith that Clinton had in China
would not be taken seriously at present, but back in 1998, the hubris that had
resulted from post-Cold War triumphalism was not yet obvious. The
expectation was that every nation would evolve into a clone of the Anglo–
Saxon market-led liberal democracy. Contextually, Clinton was building up
momentum to his forthcoming China visit.
Vajpayee went on a public-relations overdrive, meeting correspondents of
the Western media. For example, he expressed his concerns to the French
daily Le Figaro about the China–Pakistan nexus. He balanced it by saying
that in recent years India’s own relationship with China, which he called a
great civilization, had improved. This nuanced messaging was absolutely
necessary to establish, for the rest of the world, India’s maturity and sense of
responsibility. This gained greater credibility as Vajpayee’s special envoy
made visits to leading countries and the India–US dialogue moved forward.
Gradually, due to India’s consistent efforts at bringing its security concerns
in front of the international community, India’s case gained support and
people started speaking up. Congressman Frank Pallone told the US
administration not to link Kashmir to the nuclear tests and warned against
third-party mediation. He argued that India conducted nuclear tests because
of the China–Pakistan nuclear and military nexus. He questioned Clinton’s
proposed role for China, saying that China could not mediate when it was
aligned to one party. Similarly, Senator Connie Mack criticized the US
administration for rewarding authoritarian China and penalizing democratic
India. Reports in the international media mentioned the placement of Chinese
missiles in the Qinghai province on the Tibetan plateau, targeted at India,
Russia, etc.
There seemed the gentlest of shifts in the US administration’s stand.
Speaking to CNN in June 1998, Albright mentioned Kashmir but agreed that
the issue could be settled bilaterally. Inderfurth ruled out any mediatory role
for the US but emphasized their interest in seeing India and Pakistan engaged
in dialogue. This was basically in response to Pakistan, which played up the
risk of heightened tensions in the region and asked for third-party mediation.
The result of all this was that even as positions in the US shifted, the ‘K
word’ and the India–Pakistan hyphenation remained central to their
worldview. Of course, long-held positions are not given up easily, even
when the facts on the ground have changed.
As part of the effort to make India’s case better understood, and to convey
that Delhi did not in the least feel contrite about what it had done, George
Fernandes spoke to the New York Times about the hypocritical attitude of the
US and Clinton administration. His basic grouse was that the US trusted
China but not India. He explained that India only sought deterrence against
China and Pakistan. Fernandes was critical of the P5 ‘shutting out countries
like India that believe they need nuclear weapons for their own defence’. He
argued that the minimum deterrence India talked about was not equivalent to
the USSR–USA arms race of the Cold War. Also, that India’s decision must
be contextualized by the fact that Pakistan was in receipt of nuclear and
missile technology from China.
At the end of Clinton’s visit, there was a US–China joint statement on
South Asia, which called upon India and Pakistan to desist from carrying on
more tests and asked them to sign the CTBT. ‘We stand ready to assist in the
implementation of confidence-building measures between them.’ Both
countries also agreed to not sell missiles, missile equipment, etc., to either
India or Pakistan, but strangely remained silent about the sale of missile
designs.
Naturally, India dismissed the statement issued, saying that the ‘approach
of the two countries was reflective of hegemonistic mentality of a bygone era
that was completely unacceptable and out of place’. We further asked how
the US and China could ‘arrogate to yourself, jointly or individually,
responsibility for peace, stability and security in the region’. India could not
help but point out the hypocrisy of these countries who talked about
proliferation when they, directly or indirectly, had contributed to unabashed
proliferation of nuclear and delivery systems in India’s neighbourhood. This
led to the Americans toning down the temperature, and Inderfurth
acknowledged that both India and Pakistan had security concerns and must
talk to each other.
India was simultaneously developing its own options. While in Manali, on
a week-long holiday, Vajpayee hosted the Russian minister for atomic energy,
Yevgeny Adamov, who was accompanied by Dr R. Chidambaram, the
chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and one of the key players
behind Operation Shakti. During Adamov’s visit to India, the two countries
signed a bilateral nuclear deal for a 2x1000 MW nuclear power plant at
Kudankulam. This was a genuine diplomatic coup, the negotiations for which
had begun during previous governments but were followed through even in
the aftermath of the nuclear tests. Fortunately, the Russian establishment,
despite Yeltsin, were able to assert their autonomy. The signing of this
agreement showed Russia’s open defiance of the US-led sanctions regime.
The leader of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and others
openly supported India’s tests.
A day or so after Vajpayee met the Russian minister at Manali, we flew to
Shimla, where the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, Prem Kumar Dhumal,
wanted to demonstrate public support for the BJP regime. He had just come
into office after the close, indecisive verdict, propelled by some deft
manoeuvring by the then BJP prabhari for Himachal Pradesh, as described in
Chapter 3, ‘The Incomplete Mandate’. Besides demonstrating public support
for the Vajpayee government, the fact that the BJP formed a government in
Himachal for the first time had to be publicly acknowledged.
President Narayanan was also in Shimla for a summer break. After calling
on the President and briefing him on the latest developments, Vajpayee
addressed a very large and celebratory meeting at the Mall. He used this
occasion to send a message out to the world. He called upon Nawaz Sharif
for a dialogue on all bilateral issues, including Kashmir. He said that the two
sides should work for a revival of the Shimla spirit, recalling the 1972
agreement between Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, where the two
countries had agreed to settle their disputes bilaterally. He assured Pakistan
that Prithvi missiles were not being deployed against them. Since there was a
lot of uncertainty about the effect of the sanctions on the Indian economy, he
explained that the US sanctions would have limited impact and called them
counterproductive.
Later, Vajpayee would formally write to Sharif, calling for a dialogue and
reiterating the points he’d raised in Shimla. This was in line with his firm
belief in India’s need to have a peaceful neighbourhood. He used to often tell
people that one could choose one’s friends but not one’s neighbours. It was
inconceivable that India could be seen as a global player if its own backyard
was unstable, or if it was bogged down in local disputes. As a result, within
the span of a fortnight, there was formal announcement that Vajpayee and
Sharif would meet by the end of July in Colombo during the SAARC summit.
Soon after the Shimla speech, the second round of the Jaswant Singh–
Talbott talks was fixed to be held in Frankfurt in early July 1998. The US
diplomatic pressure was persistent, with James Rubin, reflecting the state
department’s views, basically rubbishing India’s pitch for a credible
minimum deterrence on the eve of these talks. Rubin said that they ‘strongly
believe that the deployment of nuclear weapons in South Asia would be a
dangerous precedent – one that would seriously undermine the security of
both India and Pakistan’. Once again, Vajpayee had to show flexibility in
order to address some of the genuine fears of many well-wishers, who were
alarmed at what they thought, wrongly, was a dangerous situation in South
Asia. Brajesh Mishra put forward India’s position that the country was
willing to sign the CTBT, though with a few caveats. One, the sanctions had
to be lifted; two, India should have access to dual-use technology; and three,
that certain reactors would be kept out of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) inspections, which meant that India retained the right to
reprocess plutonium for its security needs. It took another ten years, but
finally, without signing the CTBT, India all but joined the nuclear club.

RETURNING TO 1998, THE ONE-STEP-FORWARD-ONE-STEP-BACK scenario in the

Indo–US relations continued. Albright told the world that it was not China or
the US–China bonhomie but India’s domestic politics that had led to the tests.
She added that China played a ‘significant and helpful role in trying to move
India and Pakistan back from the brink of nuclear arms race’. These remarks
were completely off the mark, and anybody with even a limited
understanding of India’s regional dynamics can estimate how wrong she was.
Fortunately, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former US ambassador to
India, criticized Albright and said that, contradictory to her assessment, it
was very much China’s nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan that had
forced India to test. He regretted that US policy towards South Asia was still
based on the Shanghai Communiqué between Nixon and the Chinese. This
document declared its support for ‘the Pakistan government and people in
their struggle [against India] to preserve their independence and sovereignty
and the people of Jammu & Kashmir in their struggle for the right of self-
determination.’
Even as the third round of the Indo–US diplomatic talks was initiated,
when it was announced that Talbott was to be in Delhi from 20–21 July, India
faced another extremely provocative action. Dr R. Chidambaram, who had to
attend a routine meeting of crystallographers in the United States, was denied
a visa by the US Embassy, no doubt because he was the head of India’s
Atomic Energy Commission. He was gracious in his response, saying that if
he knew that he would be denied a visa, he would not have applied in the
first place, to avoid unnecessary bilateral embarrassment. When a few days
later the US gave its reasons for the rejection, it only made matters worse.
The legal provision cited were those relating to ‘espionage, sabotage, illegal
export of technology’. Rationally, none of these was defensible.
The economic situation of Pakistan was making the US nervous, though the
latter did nothing to help reduce Islamabad’s belligerence towards India.
Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves were drying up, and there was
widespread panic in the country. The US State Department made an
extraordinary statement on the economic sanctions imposed by them on
Pakistan, saying that their sanctions should ideally have roughly the same
effect on India as they do on Pakistan; but this was not possible, as the two
economies were of vastly different sizes. In other words, India was being
blamed for the disproportionate effect of US sanctions on Pakistan!
In order to deal with a situation that seemed to be getting out of control, the
US Senate gave Clinton unprecedented powers of sanction waivers. This
was soon followed by an announcement by the US that Pakistan’s structural
adjustment loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would go
through. The announcement was most hypocritical, since the only exemption
to the sanctions regime was assistance and aid for humanitarian causes,
which the structural assistance loans were definitely not. This announcement
effectively meant that the sanctions had been waived in practice, though not
on paper. In effect, it freed up Pakistan’s budgetary resources, enabling a
higher level of defence expenditure, the negative repercussions of which
were to become obvious in less than a year. The generosity shown towards
Pakistan by the Clinton administration was in striking contrast to the decision
taken by the World Bank to indefinitely delay the consideration of a large
loan (US$865 million) to the state of Uttar Pradesh just a month previously.
The US State Department had hailed this decision.
 In retrospect, when I became familiar with the work of the American
political theorist and public official Joseph Nye, I realized that these
decisions, by the management of the IMF and the World Bank acting under the
pressure exerted by its largest shareholder, were examples of the United
States’ soft power at work. Contrary to popular belief that soft power
emanates from the popularity of movies and cultural norms, Nye had argued
in his book that the US, instead of flexing its muscles openly, ought to use its
controlling powers over the IMF, World Bank, etc., to achieve its strategic
objectives.13 Correspondingly, Nye was critical in his work of President
Bush’s tendency to get the US directly involved in ‘setting things right’
internationally, instead of using these institutions to pursue the same goals
and extract the desired results.
I was directly exposed to this in 2000, when I joined as an adviser to the
executive director representing India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka on
the board of the World Bank. The senior management, in private
conversations, expressed their frustration that they could not go ahead with
its India lending programme due to ‘instructions’ from the US. Rather than
put up these proposals to the board and have a vote on it, the US ensured that
these proposals were kept pending within the bank bureaucracy. It was only
after the mid-2000s that the spigot on the India pipeline was turned on.
The US was not yet done with its public humiliation of India. Within days
of the Jaswant Singh–Talbott meeting in Delhi in July 1998, and more than
two months after India’s tests, it packed off seven Indian scientists who were
on attachment with US government laboratories, with seventy-five more
scientists on the list. Clinton now came up with a new formulation when he
said that Russia and China have influence over India and Pakistan, and had
been helpful in ensuring that India–Pakistan relations did not deteriorate
beyond a point.
India’s neighbourhood—countries in the immediate vicinity as well as
those in the larger region—was also getting into the act of ‘normalizing’ the
situation in the subcontinent. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), other than Thailand and Philippines, started evolving its own
stance, away from the American one. Now, it only deplored the tests and did
not condemn them. This was a major shift, but I suspect if India had paid
more attention to ASEAN countries and spent more energy on explaining
India’s strategic environment, there would have been greater appreciation for
our position among them. For too long, till Narasimha Rao launched his
‘Look East’ initiative, successive governments since Indira Gandhi had
looked upon the South-East Asian countries with suspicion, given that they
were largely a part of a US-led defence alliance.
All attention now shifted to Colombo’s SAARC summit. The Indian Air
Force’s desire to have a refuelling halt in Chennai was seen as unnecessary
by us, since the Delhi–Colombo route was well within the ageing Boeing
737’s range. In fact, the initial idea was for a night stopover at Chennai, in
order for a much shorter hop to Colombo that would enable Vajpayee to
plunge into meetings as soon as we arrived. However, the optics of a
Chennai stopover en route to Colombo could be seen a message to Sri Lanka,
even if unintended.
Pakistan’s efforts to ‘regionalize’ tensions by bringing those within the
ambit of SAARC had failed, because this was incompatible with the
organization’s charter. When the organization was set up in 1985, it was
explicitly agreed upon to keep out bilateral disputes; its founders—like the
President of Bangladesh, Hussain Muhammad Ershad—had felt that if this
was not so, India would not join.
Lakshman Kadirgamar, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, had been wrong in
rushing to Beijing to try and bridge the gap between India and China, but his
unease at the political tensions arising out of the tests was not unjustified, nor
was he alone in his apprehensions. The prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh
Hasina, considered a good friend of India, had visited Delhi at short notice,
apparently alarmed by what she thought was the deteriorating security
situation in the subcontinent. She had, in fact, made a statement offering to
mediate between India and Pakistan, but the MEA publicly repudiated the
notion of third-party mediation. Still, she was the first foreign dignitary to
visit India after the tests and the first head of government that Vajpayee
hosted as prime minister. The visit itself passed off smoothly, with a rather
pleasant round of talks at the Hyderabad House in Delhi.
 In Colombo, Vajpayee had to address these misgivings of our neighbours
without conceding India’s position on the tests. Economically, this was done,
for example, by initiating substantial movement on the South Asian Free
Trade Agreement (SAFTA), with such measures as lifting import curbs on
about 2000 items, besides other concessions. Politically, India initiated a
bilateral meeting with Nawaz Sharif. The meeting was one-on-one and lasted
ninety minutes. The two delegations waited outside, but ultimately there were
no delegation-level talks. Normally, in a summit, there are both—delegation-
level talks and talks without aides. The Pakistani foreign minister, Gohar
Ayub, looked restless, as if he wanted to be called in.
The two leaders spent the time getting to know each other better and
understanding their respective positions. Sharif was on a weaker wicket,
having limited autonomy over his country’s India policy. The two sides only
formally agreed that the two foreign secretaries should meet. Later, the
Pakistani delegation let on to the media that their line on third-party
mediation had not been dropped. My own assessment at the time was that
both prime ministers, with their efforts at starting the talks and hoping to
achieve progress, were skating on thin ice.
Less than two months after this, in the fourth week of September 1998,
Vajpayee and Sharif would meet again in New York, on the sidelines of the
UN General Assembly session. First, the two leaders met privately and then
with the delegations, over lunch. Sharif had to leave early, since his turn to
speak at the UNGA was soon coming up. The two leaders showed that they
had developed an easy camaraderie. Sharif mentioned that he had driven
down to Delhi with his wife in 1982 to watch the Asian Games. As he was
leaving before the lunch was over, he started saying, ‘Ijazat hai?’ but
spontaneously switched to Hindi and asked, ‘Aagya hai?’ and Vajpayee,
equally quickly, said, ‘Ijazat hai.’
The light banter could be misleading as, within half an hour, Sharif was
bashing India in his speech at the UN, but to expect otherwise, as some in our
delegation did, was unrealistic since the bilateral meetings had not resulted
in any real progress. And Sharif had to be wary of an important domestic
constituency that would not look kindly on his attempted rapprochement with
India, as the Kargil war was to demonstrate in mid-1999.
The New York visit was an important one, but more relevant to this
chapter is Vajpayee’s speech at Asia Society, for it was here that he called
India and the US ‘natural allies’ for the first time. In fifty years since
Independence, the word ‘ally’ had not featured in the vocabulary of India’s
foreign policy. It is still a term that is not used, obsessed as we are with
retaining ‘strategic autonomy’. Even though his speech was otherwise
preachy, with Vajpayee listing a litany of disappointments that India felt, the
coinage firmly indicated that as the world order was poised to change, India
and the US had more interests than disagreements in common, which must
motivate the two countries to try and work together.
Even as Vajpayee worked hard to defend India’s strategic interest globally,
domestically he had to weather many storms that made international politics
look simple.
 5
The Stumble

‘Jayalalitha daily; Mamata Banerjee weekly; the Akalis and the Samata Party
occasionally: the BJP-led alliance resembles a government less and a confederation
of sulks more.’

—Editorial, India Today, 24 August 1998

If we thought that crossing the hurdle of the confidence vote or the speaker’s
election would allow normal functioning of the government to kick in, we
were sadly mistaken. Vajpayee, the moderate, was expected to be someone
who would perennially allow people to ride roughshod over him. Even a
relatively non-partisan analyst like Kuldip Nayar expected Vajpayee to
function with his hands tied, when he wrote in a column (Indian Express, 1
April 1998) that if ‘the BJP was sincere about cooperation, it would have
allowed Sangma to become the Speaker.’
Had Vajpayee and the NDA allowed the Opposition to have its candidate
get elected as the speaker, the government would have become a lame duck at
the very start of its innings. No doubt Sangma had been an outstanding
speaker of the previous Parliament, but India does not share the British
tradition where a speaker resigns his party membership in complete measure,
which is why speakers in India fight elections as candidates of their parties,
go on to become ministers, and so on.

WHILE INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENTS LIKE THESE were creating a climate of non-

confidence in Vajpayee’s government, more debilitating for the government,
however, was the political pressure within the ruling alliance. Jayalalithaa
reached Delhi on 2 April and met Vajpayee the next day with a long list of
her demands, the sum and substance of which was the dismissal of the DMK
government in Tamil Nadu. But there was little that Vajpayee could do in this
regard, besides asking her to have faith in him.
That was when I began, for the first time, to appreciate the value of the
second chamber in Parliament, in our case the Rajya Sabha. A government
elected on a popular mandate does feel frustrated, often rightly, when their
legislative agenda is held up in the Rajya Sabha, where they often lack a
majority.1 Assuming that the NDA had a majority in the Rajya Sabha, one can
only imagine how impossible it would have been for Vajpayee to put off
Jayalalithaa’s demand that the DMK ministry in Tamil Nadu be dismissed. In
fact, as it was to be seen in the coming months, it was not just Jayalalithaa,
but almost all NDA constituents who wanted the governments in the states to
be dismissed, since it was run by their political opponents.
Meanwhile, Pramod Mahajan was at a loose end, as he was neither a
minister nor a parliamentarian. Once the process of government formation
was over, his key role in mediating and negotiating with allies was over.
Vajpayee needed help with retail political management, so he appointed
Mahajan as ‘political adviser to the prime minister’, with the rank of cabinet
minister. This set off a major controversy, since the move was
unprecedented. Was Mahajan a minister or a civil servant? Would he attend
cabinet meetings? To settle these issues, Mahajan was sworn into office by
Vajpayee himself, as is done for the deputy chairman and members of the
Planning Commission.
Mahajan’s appointment, and the fact that he started sitting in a room at 7
RCR, was a source of comfort for me. He took care of most political
visitors; in turn, I could find out information about different
cases/complaints, etc., from the bureaucracy at my level. It generally worked
out but could also cause some embarrassment at times. I remember a specific
case when I rang up the joint secretary concerned in the industries ministry to
check when the minutes of a meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion
Board would be issued. The matter was reported to Sikander Bakht, the
minister who, in turn, reported the matter to Vajpayee, saying that I was
interfering in his ministry. Vajpayee was quick to understand the context and
did not tick me off. Meanwhile, the poor investor wanting to put his money
into the Indian economy kept waiting.
Vajpayee’s efforts to strengthen his ministry by getting the Telugu Desam
Party (TDP) to join in were going nowhere, since Naidu refused to budge.
Oddly, he instead suggested jointly contesting the assembly elections that
Andhra Pradesh would face in 1999 but was not prepared to be seen as part
of the BJP-led government. Obviously, secularism was not the issue. I held
then, and stand by it today as well, that this reluctance arose from a fear of
seeing the rise of alternative power centres in his party. Naidu’s experience
with his nominees led him to adopt this policy, wrongly I would argue.
Renuka Chowdhury from the TDP was the health minister in the United
Front governments of Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral. Unlike the other TDP
representative in the UF government who remained low-profile, Chowdhury
was quite visible in the media and became the most known face of the TDP
after Naidu. Politically, she was not a threat to Naidu, but since most
regional parties have become closely held private limited companies, even
this was not acceptable. Chowdhury expected to fight the 1998 parliamentary
elections, but the TDP did not give her a ticket. Some assumed that since her
Rajya Sabha term was about to end, she would be re-nominated, but even that
did not materialize. Much later, a repeat would be seen in Mamata Banerjee
refusing Vajpayee’s offer of a second cabinet slot for her party, preferring to
make senior leader Ajit Panja, a former cabinet minister, a minister of state.
Even as the government was slowly getting down to work, the Opposition
was getting more active. Sonia Gandhi was asserting her control over the
Congress party. She declared a ‘war on communal forces’. She was duly
anointed as Congress president, with the disgraced Sitaram Kesri formally
proposing her name, a tradition the Congress adopted post its 1969 split,
when it discarded the elective principle for nomination by the ‘High
Command’. Sonia Gandhi’s extremely aggressive statements betrayed the
Congress’s nervousness that parties at the Centre, avowedly secular, were
prepared to engage with the BJP, which no longer was ‘untouchable’.
Vajpayee as leader of the government and the National Agenda of
Governance—which showed the BJP’s acceptance that its core agenda, of
Ram Mandir, the removal of Article 370 and uniform civil code, would have
to be put on the back burner—allowed other parties to work with it.
This fear about BJP becoming the central feature of Indian politics, which
would prevent Congress (I) from staging a comeback, was clear from Sonia
Gandhi’s speech on becoming party president. She said that before the
elections, the Congress party should have connected better with leaders of
different communities and taken them on board. There was constant harping
by her and by other leaders of her party that the government must be kept
under watch and that it was the RSS that was actually running the show; they
cited as proof the proposed Constitution Review Committee, whose purpose
was to turn India into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. The All India Congress
Committee’s political resolution declared that the party would do anything to
ensure that ‘the BJP government does not tamper with the basic secular,
democratic and egalitarian fabric of the nation’, and that the party would
challenge ‘all communal, divisive and authoritarian forces’.
Putting Vajpayee further on the back foot, Sonia Gandhi sent him a detailed
letter criticizing certain changes in the security setup at her residence, 10
Janpath, made by the SPG. She basically conveyed that her and her children’s
security was being compromised. There was a sketch accompanying the
letter, showing the location of the fixed-point deployment, before and after
the changes. The letter was obviously written by someone from within the
SPG, or someone who’d had a long association with it. The letter upset
Vajpayee, and the SPG was told to roll back the rationalization done by them.
M.R. Reddy, who was the director of the SPG, was clear that his changes
would have improved Sonia Gandhi’s security, since individuals deployed
would have their guard duty hours shortened and hence would be more alert.
But Vajpayee’s concern for Sonia Gandhi’s security was to be expected.
Bharat Vir Wanchoo had been involved in security arrangements for the
Nehru–Gandhi family. In 2004, the Manmohan Singh government made
Wanchoo the director of the SPG, superseding dozens of his seniors. After
Wanchoo’s retirement, the same government also made him governor of Goa.
Things were not much better on the NDA front either. On some day, it
would be the law minister, M. Thambidurai of the AIADMK, expressing his
annoyance that the Central government was most hesitant to sack the DMK
government in Tamil Nadu to avoid misuse of Article 356; and on another
day, it would be Jaswant Singh telling a TV channel that almost all of
Vajpayee’s energies were consumed by ‘coalition compulsions’. Singh also
added that unlike Nehru, Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, Vajpayee ‘cannot
cast India in his vision’. The Punjab chief minister, Parkash Singh Badal,
expected Vajpayee to give his state a fair deal by hiking procurement prices
of wheat and paddy, while the petroleum minister, V. Ramamurthy, declared
war on the DMK on another day.
Not to be left behind, even the finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, got into
the act and asked for the dismissal of the Rabri Devi government in Bihar,
citing gross violation of constitutional norms and provisions. This was a
demand that the Samata Party would come back to quite often. And later,
even the Janata Dal leader, Ram Vilas Paswan, then in the Opposition, joined
the demand. This issue of using Article 356 to dismiss Rabri Devi was going
to hound the Vajpayee government later at a critical time. The Akalis also let
it be known that they would like a candidate of their choice as the
commissioner of police of Delhi but, to be fair, did not press the point.
Even as the media was raising serious doubts on Vajpayee’s capacity to be
firm on important matters, he had to handle a crisis in his cabinet. A court in
Chennai framed criminal charges against S.R. Muthiah of the AIADMK, the
shipping and transport minister in Vajpayee’s government. The case was
related to the period when he was speaker of the Tamil Nadu state legislative
assembly. Muthiah was defiant that he would not go, though, traditionally, if a
person was charge-sheeted by a court, it meant resignation from the
government. Vajpayee, however, was firm that Muthiah would have to resign
and he had his way, though the latter publicly lashed out at his perceived
victimization.
Lost in all this din was the final report submitted, on 3 April, by the Jain
Commission of Inquiry about the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Unlike the
preliminary report, which pointed a finger of suspicion at the DMK and
Karunanidhi, the final report exonerated them completely. Interestingly, the
Congress (I) had used the pretext of the preliminary report to ask for the
removal of DMK ministers from the UF government of I.K. Gujral, thereby
precipitating its fall. After the final report came out, there was no sense of
contrition anywhere, and of course, Vajpayee became its beneficiary, because
it was the fall of the Gujral government that led to the mid-term polls that
brought the former to power.
On 7 April, a few days after the release of this report, Karunanidhi came
to Delhi and met Vajpayee. Compared to Vajpayee’s meetings with
Jayalalithaa, this one could not have been more different. The relaxed body
language and the comfort level of the two was so obvious. This was despite
the limitations of not having a common language to converse in, with
Murasoli Maran acting as translator. The memories of having jointly opposed
the Congress and of the high-handedness they’d faced during the Emergency
were evidently quite strong.
But this period was not just about the compulsions of running a coalition
government with a narrow majority. Vajpayee received a very warm letter
from the Japanese prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto. It made three specific
points, which are worth mentioning in the present context of India–Japan
relations led by the two prime ministers, Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe.
One, that Japan wanted India to play a greater role in ‘international
management’ of power, ‘given its pre-eminence in Asia’. Two, bilateral
relations should not just be about business and economics but strategic as
well, since both countries shared strategic goals. Third, Japan felt
encouraged by the National Agenda of Governance and looked forward to
greater economic liberalization.
 Clearly, Japan had already developed misgivings about the rise of China,
which it had liberally financed at the prompting of the US. And it saw that
this rise threatened India’s strategic space too, something which Indian
analysts seemed unwilling to articulate and Indian policymakers refused to
countenance. That understanding and articulation would have to wait for
some time in the future. At that moment, Vajpayee did not let on that his
decision to go ahead with Pokhran-II would severely test India–Japan
relations despite the emerging strategic convergence.
It was assumed that a BJP government, particularly one headed by
Vajpayee, would pay attention to national security issues, especially to
structural issues, like setting up a National Security Council. Vajpayee’s first
important intervention in Parliament was in September 1957, when he spoke
on foreign policy. Over the years, he developed considerable interest, and
expertise, in strategic issues. A former foreign minister in India’s first non-
Congress government (March 1977–August 1979), he attempted to change
India’s strategic positioning.
Despite all the domestic tensions, Vajpayee found time to appoint a task
force on national security, to be headed by K.C. Pant, a former minister of
state of defence in the Indira Gandhi government. Not unexpectedly, Jaswant
Singh was named as a member, with Air Commodore Jasjit Singh as the
convenor.
Meanwhile, Vajpayee made persistent efforts to get Mamata to join the
government, but despite all the pressure, she still refused. I guess Vajpayee’s
understanding was that for the sake of stability, a Mamata or a Naidu was
better inside the room than outside. In Mamata’s case, she had the offer of
being personally present inside the room, and not through representatives.
Yet for the moment, she wasn’t interested.
At this stage, no one was paying attention to the Bahujan Samaj Party
(BSP), which, after all, had only five members in the 542-member Lok
Sabha. Their leader, Kanshi Ram, one of most underrated persons in Indian
politics of his generation, was presciently telling his party, in early April
1998, to prepare for the Lok Sabha elections in 1999. Having gone through
general elections in 1996, followed by mid-term polls in early 1998, more
than three years in advance, was anybody else betting on a third election so
soon?
As if to give credence to the Kanshi Ram school of thought, Jayalalithaa
decided to hit out at the Vajpayee government publicly. She demanded that
Vajpayee drop all tainted ministers. As she told the media, there ‘cannot be
one set of rules for the AIADMK and Mr Muthiah and a different one for
other parties or other leaders in the ministry’. In case there were doubts
about whom she had targeted, Subramanian Swamy informed everybody that
L.K. Advani had been charge-sheeted in the Ayodhya case. It also seemed
like her immediate target was Buta Singh, a Congressman turned independent
who was telecom minister in Vajpayee’s government. Buta Singh, along with
Narasimha Rao, Bhajan Lal, Satish Sharma and others, had been charge-
sheeted in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case, but they had filed an
appeal in the Supreme Court, where the case was pending at that time. Yet, it
didn’t take a genius to understand that Jayalalithaa’s real target was neither
Advani nor Buta Singh but the DMK ministry, which she wanted sacked.
Responding to Jayalalithaa’s charge that the DMK government in Tamil
Nadu was soft on terrorists, the home ministry sent a team to Tamil Nadu, led
by Special Secretary Ashok Kumar, former chief secretary of Jammu and
Kashmir. This decision was administratively correct but politically a
disaster for Vajpayee. At the conclusion of his visit, Ashok Kumar informed
the media that the law-and-order situation in Tamil Nadu was ‘satisfactory’.
In fact, he added that the ‘law-and-order situation has improved considerably
and it would continue to improve due to effective steps taken by the
administration’.
Even as Ashok Kumar was giving, rightly but unnecessarily, a clean chit to
the DMK government of Tamil Nadu, two Union ministers, Ramakrishna
Hegde and Ram Jethmalani, severely criticized Jayalalithaa for putting
unnecessary pressure on Vajpayee. In turn, the petroleum minister, V.
Ramamurthy, a Jayalalithaa ally, attacked the Hegde–Jethmalani duo. Adding
to the confusion, Buta Singh declared that he would not resign. However, the
Supreme Court had delivered its judgment, which held that Buta Singh and
the others could be prosecuted. Even though Buta Singh tried to hang on by
claiming that there was no need for him to resign as the court had only
clarified on the jurisdiction and not, in essence, on the case, his days as
minister were numbered.
The Supreme Court judgment and the home ministry’s clean chit to the
Tamil Nadu government gave Jayalalithaa enough ammunition to start firing
her salvos. She assailed the home ministry team, calling it a joke, as it had
only spent a few hours in Chennai meeting state government officials. Her
representatives in the Vajpayee government took on Jethmalani for his
adverse comments on Jayalalithaa, advising him to refrain from making
remarks that could endanger the coalition government. The irony of their
advice on how to save the Vajpayee government was obviously lost on them.
In any case, the internecine war of words between Hegde and Jethmalani
on one side and the Jayalalithaa combine on the other would only pick up in
momentum, and nastiness. It was hard to believe that technically they were
all on the same side. Though, to be fair, Hegde maintained his dignity
throughout, even he felt exasperated enough to advise Vajpayee that rather
than face daily humiliation, it would be better to go in for a fresh mandate.
That it would happen so soon was not what most people had expected.
Facing the Jayalalithaa heat, Advani conveyed his ‘extreme displeasure’ to
the central team for talking to the press. In fact, he said that the team was sent
to assess the growth of militancy that had resulted in the pre-election blasts
in Coimbatore and not the general law-and-order situation in the state. But
the damage had been done. A few days later, Ashok Kumar, who had led the
team, was posted out of the home ministry and sent to the Planning
Commission. Advani’s clarification was not enough to mollify Jayalalithaa,
who now stepped on the pressure by sending Vajpayee a six-page letter
asking him to either drop Buta Singh, Jethmalani and Hegde, or to reinstate
Muthiah.
Buta Singh meanwhile was trying all sorts of tricks to escape having to
resign. Initially, he said that the entire exercise was a conspiracy to replace
Vajpayee with Advani. When this did not get him Vajpayee’s sympathy, he
stopped taking calls, and even challenged the authority of the former to sack
him. According to Buta Singh, Vajpayee could not pick and choose,
overplaying the government’s dependence on one-person parties like his.
Vajpayee sent Pramod Mahajan to try and persuade Buta Singh to resign, but
even that failed. Ultimately, he had to be sacked. Buta Singh’s public position
was that he had been ‘betrayed’. About Vajpayee, Buta Singh was quoted as
saying, ‘When he should have stood by me, he chose to surrender meekly to a
woman [Jayalalithaa] who has as many cases slapped against her as the
number of hairs on her head.’
Again, the irony—a ‘charge-sheeted’ politician feeling that injustice was
being done to him—was completely lost on Buta Singh, who took his revenge
seven years later, in 2005, when after the Bihar legislative assembly
elections, as governor, he refused to allow the largest combination of the
Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) and BJP to form the government. The Supreme
Court again proved to be Buta Singh’s nemesis, but that is another story.
As Vajpayee was handling Jayalalithaa’s new offensive by sending
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to talk to her, trouble was brewing elsewhere.
Mamata and West Bengal BJP got into a brawl over the upcoming panchayat
elections in the state. Unlike most states, where panchayat elections are held
on a non-party basis, in Bengal, to this day, these elections are fiercely
contested by political parties, with very high levels of intimidation and
violence. It would have made eminent sense for the two parties to jointly take
on the CPI(M)-led Left Front, but Mamata and Tapan Sikdar, the state BJP
leader and newly elected MP from Barrackpore, could not stand each other
and were trading charges. The colourful language employed by one about the
other would make even a hardcore politico blush. At the same time, Mamata
lashed out at Jayalalithaa for her ‘blackmail’ tactics that were weakening the
Vajpayee government. Fortunately, before the actual panchayat elections, the
two sides came together. This was not enough to depose the Left Front, but
they did put up a spirited fight at the village panchayat level. But that was
still some time away.
Vajpayee then decided, after consultation with some allies, to hold the
NDA coordination meeting on 9 May, so that some alignment of views could
be brought about. The first issue to be sorted out was its composition. There
were so many one-person parties that it would have been impossible to
achieve the right balance in terms of representation. Having tried Pramod
Mahajan, Yashwant Sinha and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, it was to Jaswant
Singh, the veteran negotiator and conciliator, that Vajpayee turned again to
sort out the composition of the Tamil Nadu delegation for the coordination
committee meeting. Singh flew to Chennai and after two long sessions and
arrived at the decision he was sent to achieve. Subramanian Swamy would
not be invited to the meeting.
Swamy had been demanding the sacking of both Hegde and Jethmalani on
the grounds that inquiries were pending against them. Faced with exclusion,
Swamy announced that he would now oppose the government and support the
Opposition but continue to be in the AIADMK-led front in Tamil Nadu,
which in turn continued to be part of Vajpayee’s government. If it had not
affected the government’s functioning, one could have afforded to laugh at the
farcical state of affairs.
Now came the turn of the Samata Party to demand its pound of flesh. The
NDA government had appointed some governors, including senior BJP
leader Sunder Singh Bhandari, who went to Bihar. The Samata Party said that
it was not consulted about his appointment. This was a valid point, since
Home Minister Advani had consulted the West Bengal chief minister before
shifting Bihar’s governor, A.R. Kidwai, to Bengal for the remainder of his
five-year term. Similarly, in Maharashtra where the Shiv Sena–BJP alliance
was in power, Governor P.C. Alexander was re-appointed because the Shiv
Sena wanted it. Apprehensive that if Jharkhand was hived off as a state, then
Bihar would suffer a perennial financial loss, the Samata party demanded a
special package for Bihar in the event of such division of the state. Finally, it
wanted the Rabri Devi government to be sacked.
The issue of tainted ministers was simply not going away. The BJP had
formed its first government with the help of Sukh Ram’s Himachal Vikas
Congress. Many of BJP’s well-wishers were uncomfortable with this fact, as
the BJP had paralysed the Parliament’s functioning in the Narasimha Rao
government. Sukh Ram was now PWD minister in the BJP-led state
government. BJP’s general secretary and the person behind this alliance,
Narendra Modi, justified this by drawing a parallel with Vibhishan in the
Ramayana.
The President then gave the CBI prosecution sanction in cases involving
Sukh Ram and two other former Congress ministers, Sheila Kaul and P.K.
Thungon. Vajpayee was clear that charge-sheeted ministers had to go.
Earlier, it had been Muthiah and Buta; now it was Sukh Ram. Since Swamy
had raised complaints against Hegde and Jethmalani, Vajpayee said that he
would seek legal opinion on them, since their cases were different. Sukh
Ram resigned, but he was persuaded by Modi to continue the alliance so that
the Himachal ministry was safe.

VAJPAYEE’S TROUBLES WERE NOT ONLY domestic. Despite the change in

government and Vajpayee’s open support for the Tibetan cause in the past, the
Indian system still found it difficult to handle the Tibet question. Before the
chief of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was to visit India in end-
April 1998, a few Tibetan demonstrators sat on a peaceful dharna near Jantar
Mantar, far away from where the Chinese general would stay or travel to.
However, the Delhi Police forcibly evicted these Tibetan protestors, of
whom one, Thupten Ngodup attempted self-immolation and died in the
hospital later. This touching concern on the part of the Indian authorities for
Chinese sensibilities, purely one-sided, represented to me the pervasive
inferiority complex that the Indian system suffers from. It did not strike me
that the trauma of 1962 has been so internalized that despite Vajpayee’s
ascension to office, there was no difference in how things were handled.
The Vajpayee government had inherited a weak economy, with plummeting
growth rates, despite the hype of P. Chidambaram’s dream budget of 1997.
Just to check that my memory was not playing tricks or that my personal bias
did not lead me to make this comment on the economy, I decided to look at
independent assessments made at that time. I ran into this edit-page article by
Prem Shankar Jha, the noted economic commentator and no friend of the BJP,
in the Hindustan Times of 7 May 1998. According to him, the United Front
left the economy in a mess; the fiscal deficit was understated by 1.5 per cent;
it was not 4.6 per cent of the GDP but 6.1 per cent. This was achieved by
keeping borrowings out of public sector undertakings (PSUs), which had
sovereign backing. There was a considerable shortfall in customs duty, since
imports had been falling since July 1997. Industrial growth rate, which was
7.1 per cent in 1996–97, had fallen to 4.5 per cent in 1997–98. Similarly, the
growth rate of exports, which had been 20 per cent in 1993–96, fell to 4 per
cent in 1996–97 and to 3 per cent in 1997–98.
I had done a similar exercise in May 2014, which was published in the
Dainik Jagran on 15 May 2014—that is, before the counting of votes. I
estimated that the interim budget for 2014–15, presented by Chidambaram
just before the elections, had plugged the fiscal deficit more than 1 per cent
below its actual level by rather unusual executive action. The profitable
PSUs were asked to declare interim dividend before the end of the financial
year, and in many cases the amounts exceeded the previous year’s dividend.
The government collected a further amount as dividend tax and also stopped
paying food and fertilizer subsidies in the last quarter. In simple terms, dodgy
steps were taken to dress up the government accounts for the financial year,
ending on 31 March 2014, to look good by pre-empting next year’s revenue
while passing on expenditures to it.
The power sector was crying for reforms, so this was attempted by
Vajpayee, but using the ordinance route. It was accepted wisdom that private
investment would flow into the sector if tariff setting was de-politicized and
power generation made profitable. Accordingly, the power reform ordinance,
piloted by Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, proposed the setting up of a Central
Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) and state commissions along
similar lines (SERCs). Substantially, the ordinance was based on a draft bill
on the power sector that the UF government had drawn up after getting it
endorsed by state power ministers. However, due to its contentious nature,
the draft bill never made it to Parliament.
The ordinance moved tariff setting from state governments to autonomous
regulators. It also shifted to a more robust system of tariff determination,
away from the cost-plus methodology in use, which pushed up the cost of
power. It laid down the rule that the minimum tariff could not be below fifty
per cent of the costs of generation. Understanding that any immediate shift to
this modest tariff level could be destabilizing, it allowed a transition period
of three years in the case of the farm sector. If state governments wanted to
subsidize the supply of electricity, they would have to give cash
compensation to state generation utilities. State electricity boards that were
in default would be denied power supply till they cleared their dues. Lastly,
that there would have to be a transparent bidding process for mega projects.
This would enable the best offers to go through, so that the country wasn’t
saddled with high-cost power.
Initially, nobody reacted negatively to these sensible changes being made.
In fact, they were generally welcomed as a much-needed corrective.
Vajpayee then went to address the annual session of the Confederation of
Indian Industries (CII). It was a powerful speech, with a lot of
announcements and many of these had extremely ambitious timelines. There
was a need to send out a strong message that the government was working,
and that it was focused on solving problems and developing a long-term
vision.
Some of the ideas he articulated reflected his long-held views on the
economy. These included the beliefs that (i) citizens should pay for what they
use ‘and must also get what they pay for’; (ii) the government would be less
and less of an active player in the economy, and more and more of a
legislator, facilitator and regulator; (iii) ‘My government’s relationship with
industry will be based on trust, not marred by mistrust.’ He added for good
measure the he came ‘from a political tradition that does not look upon
commerce and industry with distrust. When it was conventional political
expediency to decry entrepreneurship, we championed their cause.’ He tried
to allay fears about swadeshi by explaining that it meant ‘that the bulk of the
resources needed for our development must be mobilised by ourselves’.
The aim was for the economy to grow at 7–8 per cent; the government
would substantially increase its investment in infrastructure; there would be a
new housing policy; a task force would develop a new informatics policy;
there would be new and unconventional sources of funding to facilitate
investment in infrastructure; the Foreign Investment Promotion Board would
have to follow strict timelines to facilitate FDI; the inordinately high non-
performing assets (NPAs) of the banks would be brought down; the Foreign
Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) would be reformed; disputes between
industry and government (revenue/telecommunications) would be sorted out;
and the prime minister’s office would actively monitor the implementation of
large projects.
Vajpayee was in his element and words flew with the full force of his
sincerity and conviction. Each announcement was greeted with thunderous
applause, and the ‘feel-good’ mood pervaded every nook and cranny of
Vigyan Bhavan. All the tensions of managing what was a ramshackle
coalition seemed far away. Later, a journalist friend reminded me that if an
economy could be talked up on to a higher plane, this was the way to do it.
Vajpayee was an instinctive reformer, almost a libertarian, but the road ahead
was not going to be easy. Ultimately, Vajpayee would be judged not by his
words but by what he achieved.
The mood in the government became better when it emerged that two of the
Tamil Nadu parties—the PMK, led by S. Ramadoss, and the MDMK, led by
Vaiko—were moving away from Jayalalithaa and were not willing to
endorse her brinkmanship. Vajpayee, reacting to Hegde’s advice to seek a
fresh mandate, said that it was not necessary to do so. Meanwhile, trouble
was brewing in the east. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) wanted a special
package for Odisha and an assurance that Naveen Patnaik would be the CM
face in the next assembly elections. Mamata wanted a fact-finding mission to
be sent to West Bengal, to assess the law-and-order situation; she also
wanted the state government dismissed and the public investment in West
Bengal to be stepped up. Moving on to Bihar, the Samata Party wanted the
dismissal of the RJD government, more ministries in Delhi and a special
package of Rs 50,000 crore on account of Jharkhand being separated.

AMID ALL THE POLITICAL UNCERTAINTIES, there was one inauguration that I
particularly remember—of the Konkan Railway in Ratnagiri on 1 May 1998.
The agreement to set up the Konkan Railway was finalized on Good Friday
in 1990. George Fernandes, railway minister in V.P. Singh’s government, had
come to Panaji, Goa, where I was posted. Being a holiday and a day of
sorrow and introspection, the official dinner hosted by Goa’s first Catholic
chief minister, Luis Proto Barbosa, was a quiet one. Fernandes, who was
from Mangalore and had cut his political teeth in Mumbai, knew how
important this line was for the tens of millions who lived on the west coast.
He was determined to push this project and was supported by the then
finance minister, Madhu Dandavate, whose parliamentary constituency,
Rajapur (now Sindhudurg), Maharashtra, lay just north of Goa, and who
understood how this region’s development had been held back by lack of
connectivity.
Instead of taking the usual route and doing it through the Indian Railways,
the Konkan Rail Corporation (KRC) was formed as a company, whose
shareholders were the Indian Railways, the three States (Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Goa) through which the railway line would pass, and Kerala,
which would benefit by it. Based on the equity paid for by its shareholders,
the KRC floated long-term bonds and built the 740-kilometre line, India’s
biggest rail project in over a century. Incidentally, India’s metro man, E.
Sreedharan, headed the KRC and established his reputation as an outstanding
project manager.
Though it was warm by late morning, when the inaugural function began,
the mood was celebratory. There was a feeling that this was a non-Congress
project that had been successfully implemented. Besides Vajpayee, Nitish
Kumar (rail minister) and his minister of state (Ram Naik), the chief
ministers of Maharashtra (Manohar Joshi), Karnataka (J.H. Patel) and Goa
(Pratap Singh Rane) were also present, to demonstrate the federal nature of
the project. Since the function was in Maharashtra, the state’s governor (P.C.
Alexander) was present. It was only fitting that George Fernandes, without
whose initiative the project would have remained on the drawing board, was
in attendance as well. There was a stamp to be released, so the
communications minister, Sushma Swaraj, was also there.
With so many speakers, the function was a long-drawn one. I remember the
clamour demanding that Chief Minister Rane should speak not in Marathi but
in Konkani, which he did. I also remember having to juggle so many VVIPs
and arranging for them to fly back to Mumbai in helicopters, so that none felt
deprived. Vajpayee added a touch of Marathi to his speech, a language he
was familiar with, having spent his childhood and youth in Gwalior. He also
remembered that Ratnagiri was among the four seats that the Jana Sangh won
in 1957, the year Vajpayee was first elected to Parliament. In hindsight, one
wonders if his trips to Ratnagiri—considered a backwaters despite having
produced such stalwarts as Lokmanya Tilak—had a role to play, in stressing
for him the importance of connectivity, when Vajpayee came up with the
game-changing idea of linking India through excellent highways, the Golden
Quadrilateral.
After spending the night in Mumbai, we proceeded to Gandhinagar for the
BJP’s national council meeting (3–4 May), which was preceded by a meeting
of its national executive. Much before Mamata Banerjee talked about
poriborton (change), the complex where this meeting was held was called
Parivartan Nagar. With Advani now a minister, the party presidentship
passed from him to Kushabhau Thakre, a low-key organizational person who
had moved to the party from the RSS. Not all ministers, or holders of high
office, were enthusiastic about attending the national council meeting.
Before leaving for Gandhinagar, I had put it to Jaswant Singh that we
would be seeing him at the meeting. He shook his head rather firmly,
indicating that this was not a forum where he was comfortable! I did not have
to sit through either of the meetings, spending my time in my office-cum-
bedroom in the Raj Bhavan, which turned into an oven every afternoon. Till I
experienced the Jaisalmer summer about two weeks later, on our way to
Pokhran, this was the hottest climate I had ever experienced. You could have
fried an egg on the roof without any fire. This was despite the fact that I’d
spent a summer in Jodhpur in 1979, when I first started working for the State
Bank of India. And yet, Vajpayee, Advani and other leaders were sitting
down and finalizing the nitty-gritty of party and governance in such weather.
Thakre’s message to the BJP was clear. He expected the party to provide
oversight, and feedback, to the government. He cautioned against an
ostentatious style of living consequent to acquiring political power. He was
strong on national security, asking the government not to give in to Western
pressure on India’s missile programme. In his speech, Advani described the
previous six weeks—it was difficult to believe that the government had been
in power for so short a time—as the ‘birth pangs’ of the new order emerging
from the womb. Though he did not say it, there was a sense of
disappointment in what he was saying, that the Vajpayee government did not
get the benefit of a honeymoon period.
This feeling pervaded the entire assembly of thousands who had come
from all over the country. The mood was more sombre than joyful. Vajpayee,
during his interventions in the party forum, and later at the public meeting at
the conclusion, made one very powerful point. Coming to power in the
Centre at the head of a coalition government ‘was a milestone, not our
destination’. This was necessary to state for two reasons. One, there were
murmurs that the party had given up its core agenda of Ayodhya, Article 370,
and uniform civil code, which did not figure in the National Agenda of
Governance. Not till the BJP was able to come to power on its own and win
a majority could these be taken up. Two, Vajpayee maintained that there
should be no complacency, something which could have easily crept in with
the perks of office and influence.
That the government can function and take important decisions even when
the prime minister and home minister were not in Delhi was brought home to
me around the same time. I got a call from Union Home Secretary B.P. Singh
that the Delhi Police commissioner had to be replaced. He had spoken to his
minister, the relevant file was being sent. So could I get the PM’s approval,
after the home minister had given his nod to the proposal? This was done. In
fact, wherever the prime minister goes, his office is present there. We always
had with us a small staff contingent and a direct line to PMO’s phone
exchange, so that whenever we picked up the receiver, the operator in Delhi
came on line and immediately connected us to whosoever we wanted to
speak to. This meant that important decision-making or conversations and
discussions did not have to wait for the PM to get back to Delhi. Even though
cell phones were slowly permeating our lives, their effectiveness was
limited—they worked only in big cities, local sim cards had to be used and
the rates were astronomical. This made our patchwork communications
system extremely critical.
 Before moving on, I must refer to Advani’s speech at Gandhinagar, where
he said that the proposed Constitutional Review Panel could look at a
presidential system. He, and many others, had long been votaries of the idea
of having a directly elected chief executive who could act decisively.
Leaving aside my personal preference, I knew that while his statement
reflected his frustrations with the running of coalition governments as such, it
would not go unchallenged. A few days later, Mulayam Singh Yadav referred
to it and said that the BJP’s hidden agenda was now emerging. As proof of
his contention, he pointed to the fact that no BJP leader at Gandhinagar spoke
on their three core agendas of Ayodhya, Article 370 and uniform civil code,
which for him meant that those commitments had not been dropped. Veteran
Congress leader Arjun Singh, on the other hand, said that even if Vajpayee
and Advani had said that the BJP was committed to the common agenda of
the coalition, the Vishwa Hindu Parshad (VHP) was committed to building
the temple in Ayodhya. Mulayam Singh also criticized the nuclear tests,
stating that the BJP went ahead with them in order to achieve their goal of the
‘Hindu Rashtra’. This line of attack would recur throughout Vajpayee’s
tenure.
However, the enemy was always within. No sooner had Vajpayee returned
to Delhi than Jayalalithaa launched an attack on the government, calling the
power sector ordinance anti-farmer and distancing her party from it.
Kumaramangalam pointed out that the ordinance had been vetted by the law
ministry, whose minister was Thambidurai from the AIADMK. Thambidurai,
caught in this cleft, tried to wriggle out by clarifying that he had indeed seen
the ordinance as law minister, but only from a constitutional angle and not
from a political angle. He was absent when the cabinet discussed the
ordinance and approved it. He added that he should have been consulted. I
could imagine his predicament.
There was never a dull moment. One day, Jayalalithaa’s representative in
the finance ministry, R.K. Kumar, who was minister of state, transferred the
entire income tax team probing her cases. On another day, the left parties
jumped into the tainted ministers’ controversy by asking both Advani and
M.M. Joshi to resign, since they had been charge-sheeted in the Ayodhya
case. G.K. Moopanar, the veteran Congress leader from Tamil Nadu who had
broken away from his parent party in 1996, when it aligned with Jayalalithaa,
to set up the Tamil Maanila Congress, expressed himself that fresh polls
were imminent.
The NDA held its first formal coordination Meeting on 9 May. It was
decided that only Jaswant Singh would brief the media. But that would have
been boring and out of character. Mamata informed the media that
Jayalalithaa had raised the issue of her income tax cases, while Jayalalithaa
herself informed the media that she had raised the now contentious issue of
power sector reforms. Hegde later told the media that the PM looked tired
and physically weak, but not mentally. He hoped that Vajpayee would assert
himself more. Little did he or the others know what was on Vajpayee’s mind.
Exactly a day after Hegde shared his assessment of Vajpayee’s mental stress,
the latter was telling the media that India had carried out three nuclear tests.

SUDDENLY, THE POLITICAL PENDULUM HAD swung Vajpayee’s way. However,

rather than appreciate this major step that changed India’s position in the
world and hinted at the country’s manifest destiny, the Congress (I) was
churlish in its reaction. It only cheered the Indian scientists and did not even
ask why India had to wait so long to demonstrate that it is in a position to
defend itself. As already described, Vajpayee invited Sonia Gandhi for a
detailed briefing; later, other leaders, including the two leaders of the
Opposition in Parliament, Sharad Pawar (Lok Sabha) and Manmohan Singh
(Rajya Sabha), were also briefed. Though the government was a little
apprehensive, President Narayanan proclaimed India’s right to test ‘as
directed by its security needs and developments in the region’. This, he
added, could not be questioned.
Routine governance could not take a back seat. Vajpayee visited Kerala in
mid-May. The visit was arranged by the veteran journalist T.V.R. Shenoy,
with help from E. Ahamed of the Muslim League. He was received at Kochi
airport by the state’s chief minister, E.K. Nayanar. This surprised some in the
PM’s large group, including journalists, since Nayanar had just written an
article in a local CPI(M) paper attacking Vajpayee. This, I had to explain,
should not be taken seriously, as Nayanar, in his article, was addressing a
pure party audience.
Nayanar came across as someone who was completely grounded, with
absolutely no airs. I remember he once limped into the room, and on
Vajpayee’s query, slightly pulled up his mundu, rolled down his socks and
showed his varicose veins. He must have been in some discomfort but he
laboured on. I was very impressed with his simplicity.
Jyoti Basu, the veteran Marxist leader and long-serving chief minister of
Bengal, called on Vajpayee as soon as we were back from Kerala. If I recall
correctly, this was Basu’s first visit since Vajpayee became prime minister.
State finances being what they were, he too had a long list of demands. Being
pillars of their respective parties who had collaborated in the past during the
Janata experiment (1977–80) and later when both their parties supported V.P.
Singh’s minority government, Vajpayee and Basu shared a decent comfort
level but without the bonhomie that I saw between Vajpayee and
Karunanidhi, Nayanar and Jag Pravesh Chandra (Congress leader of Delhi)
to name a few. Despite this, Mamata was always suspicious that the Vajpayee
government gave the Left Front government of West Bengal too much leeway.
A few weeks after this meeting, in the West Bengal panchayat elections,
the TMC–BJP alliance actually did well. They restricted the Left Front (LF)
to 58 per cent of the gram panchayat seats, the only level where voters
directly participated. This was their lowest achievement in two decades in
office. The TMC–BJP alliance did very well in the areas surrounding
Kolkata. Since the LF had put up a good show at the two higher levels
(panchayat samiti and zilla panchayat) due to the indirect nature of these
elections, there was a feeling that the LF had swept the polls. It must be
remembered that the panchayat elections in West Bengal see massive use of
force by the ruling dispensation, including intimidation of workers of the
Opposition, who are prevented from filing nominations, and violence to
scare away voters likely to vote for the other side. Murders are not
uncommon. This is probably the only elections in India where the brutal
power of the government is on full display.
 The results of the panchayat elections led to panic and anger in the TMC,
and their senior leader, Ajit Panja, even announced the withdrawal of
support to the Vajpayee government. Mamta toned down that decision: she
would boycott the budget session. The reasons for the ire were obvious.
Vajpayee had rightly ignored her pleas for clamping President’s rule before
the panchayat polls. Mamata’s reaction to the election results was that her
party had ‘fought the CPI(M) and BJP as equal enemies’. She accused the
BJP of having a secret understanding with the CPI(M). The BJP, particularly
the West Bengal unit, was equally upset with Tapan Sikdar making it clear
that they had had enough of Banerjee’s arrogance. He had added that they
would fight future elections separately.
Later, during the Parliament session, Mamata explained the rationale for
the temporary suspension of support to the government. The ostensible reason
the TMC was boycotting the budget session had to do with what she thought
was the BJP government’s indifferent attitude towards its allies. According
to her, Panchayat polls had led to tensions among the allies, and she
demanded immediate imposition of President’s rule. She warned that her
strength went beyond seven (TMC) MPs, claiming the support of all twenty-
nine MPs of the north-east. Earlier, she had said that she would not withdraw
support, but she was now cautioning the BJP to not take the TMC’s support
for granted. She would subsequently withdraw her suspension of support and
come up with fresh demand for an eight-point package for Bengal, including
big-ticket investments in railways, highways, ports, etc.
On the Tamil Nadu front, things became curious and then farcical. R.K.
Kumar, as minister of state in the finance ministry, was moving heaven and
earth to help extricate his boss, Jayalalithaa, from the plethora of tax cases
against her. However, by the third week of May 1998, Kumar, who was
diabetic, was hospitalized in Chennai, but the first news was that it was for
political reasons that he got into hospital. There was speculation that it was
not so much her unhappiness at his handling of her tax cases as her
perception that Kumar did not do enough to fix Chidambaram and DMK
leaders like Murasoli Maran. Kumar soon resigned from the government, on
medical grounds, and was publicly upbraided by his leader. He never fully
recovered and, sadly, passed away in October 1999.
K.M.R. Janarthanan, another Jayalalithaa nominee who was minister of
state for personnel, was given the additional charge of MOS (Finance). He
held both jobs till the AIADMK withdrew support from the Vajpayee
government. Newspapers reported that Janarthanan, immediately after
assuming office in the finance ministry, told the income tax department and
Enforcement Directorate that they needed to consult Central government
counsels during their investigations, clearly intended to shield Jayalalithaa.
This looked to be in violation of Supreme Court directives, and in the case of
Jayalalithaa, it was now her pick of lawyers who were the Central
government counsels in Chennai.
With a number of senior BJP leaders either drafted as ministers or
unavailable for party work, the new party president, Kushabhau Thakre,
formed a new team, though he could only do so some time after he assumed
charge. Not unexpectedly, Narendra Modi, after his success in Himachal
Pradesh as the party’s prabhari, was made the general secretary. This
choice, not entirely unexpected, stood vindicated when shortly after, the
BJP–HVC alliance swept the polls to the four Himachal assembly seats,
polling for which could not be held with the general election because these
areas were snowbound. The BJP had now a majority of its own in the
assembly and was no longer dependant on HVC’s Sukh Ram for his support.

THE ISSUE OF THE CONSTRUCTION of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya suddenly came to

the forefront when a news report, authored by Prakash Patra (‘The Ram
Temple Agenda’), appeared in the Hindustan Times of 25 May, detailing
how temple components were being fabricated/carved and kept in a godown
in Karsewakpuram, Ayodhya. According to the report, work had picked up
momentum since BJP came to power. Sonia Gandhi wrote to Vajpayee,
wanting to know whether the government would uphold the sanctity of the
judicial process; Vajpayee’s reply was quick, confirming that it would. The
timing of the report, with the budget session of Parliament only days ahead,
meant that the issue was frequently in the news. It was first raised in the
Rajya Sabha.
The Opposition demand that, given the past record of the BJP in not
keeping its promises, off-site preparations for the construction be stopped.
CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta said that ‘one section of the BJP was attempting to
appease the secular parties, while another led by the VHP and Bajrang Dal
whipped up communal passions’. It was left to veteran BJP parliamentarian
V.K. Malhotra to state that the status quo would not be changed. The BJP’s
position was that the temple would ‘only come about when it is permitted by
court’. Alternatively, it would need the BJP to get sufficient majority to get a
bill passed to overcome legal hurdles. At that moment, nobody could
visualize such a situation arising.
Mamta, too, raised the Ayodhya issue in the Lok Sabha. Not to be outdone,
the AIADMK resorted to a walkout on this issue. Later, the BJP vice
president, K.L. Sharma, also jumped into the fray and said that the party
could bring legislation on the Ram Mandir issue as well; in effect, do a Shah
Bano. Vajpayee attempted to tone down the temperature by clarifying that
they would wait for the court orders. However, the Opposition was up in
arms, calling the two statements—Vajpayee’s and Sharma’s—contradictory.
Later, Pramod Mahajan had to correct his party colleague Sharma and remind
him that the BJP lacked the numbers to bring in legislation.
Ayodhya was only one of the many points of controversy and tension in the
run up to, and during, Parliament’s budget session. Others included the
nuclear tests, petrol and urea hike announced in the budget, the power sector
reforms, the sending of Central government teams to West Bengal and Bihar
in order to mollify allies and the brinkmanship by members of the ruling
coalition. The media often commented that with friends like these, Vajpayee
did not require enemies.
The Congress launched its attack on the government. Both Sharad Pawar
and A.K. Anthony said that the nuclear tests were done to cope up with tiffs
within the ruling coalition. Earlier, immediately after the tests, Salman
Khurshid had said that the Congress was upset with Vajpayee for naming
Pakistan and China in his letter to Clinton justifying the tests. On the opening
day of Parliament, Vajpayee read out a detailed statement explaining the
rationale behind the tests. A lot of effort had gone into preparing the
statement, with Vajpayee correcting drafts and making changes. But it seemed
to be of no avail. Or could it be that the Opposition, with honourable
exceptions, was not prepared to give credit where it was due? Perhaps the
latter! The columnist Swapan Dasgupta (India Today, 8 June 1998, ‘After
Summer, the Fall’) quoted the American senator Diane Feinstein as saying
that the nuclear tests would not have happened in a Congress regime. He then
went on to quote Newsweek, a prestigious American news magazine, which
said that Clinton’s anxiety was for ‘a more predictable party to take power in
India’.
Former prime minister Chandra Shekhar accused the Vajpayee government
of having invented a threat, rather than discovering it. He said if China was
not a threat when I.K. Gujral demitted office, how could it have become one
later. The Opposition had this common theme that they talked about
repeatedly, which was that the BJP government was essentially guided by its
political compulsions, rather than reasons cited, in reversing the nuclear
policy followed since 1974.
After Pakistan tested, the left was quick to blame Vajpayee for initiating an
arms race in the subcontinent. The Congress (I) also got into the act and
blamed India for the Pak tests. Sharad Pawar, agreeing that it was the Indian
government which had ‘initiated a nuclear arms race’, advised that the
government should not panic now and advocated restraint. It was left to Dr
Raja Ramanna—former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who
had also been minister of state for defence in V.P. Singh’s government and
was now a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha—to bring in a sense of
realism, moving away from petty politicking. Among other reasons, he cited
the need to keep the morale of the army high.
Advani reminded the Congress that its 1991 manifesto had spoken of the
dangers of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Vajpayee also explained that the
Pokhran tests had actually pre-empted Pakistan’s tests. There was no way
that Pakistan could have tested just in reaction to the Indian tests if it did not
have an advanced nuclear programme and had made preparations for a test
already. There were stories in the media that the Akalis were uneasy about
the tests because Punjab would face the brunt of the damage in the event of an
India–Pakistan war. Later, Sukhbir Badal cleared the air and said that
Parkash Singh Badal had, in fact, congratulated Vajpayee after the tests. With
so much rumour mongering and speculation in the air, the truth was always
the first casualty, and people were prepared to believe the worst.
Another rumour doing the rounds was that Vajpayee, fed up with his allies,
was exploring the formation of a national government. Some of the
Opposition parties were up in arms, seeing this as a ploy to wean away
members from their side. The government was peeved as this seemed a
signal to their smaller partners that they could be dumped. It was frustrating
to function with such daily misunderstandings, tantrums and lack of desire to
develop a common perspective towards governance.
Nitish Kumar presented his rail budget, and this prompted the Biju Janata
Dal (BJD) to stage a walkout, and even threaten to withdraw support. The
BJD was undergoing a serious crisis, and with six out of its nine MPs in a
rebellious mood, it seemed that Naveen Patnaik would lose control over his
fledging party. Later, when the budget was presented, the BJD expressed its
unhappiness that Odisha had not been given special status. Not to be left
behind, the Samata Party demanded that in view of the governor’s report on
the deteriorating law-and-order situation in Bihar, if President’s rule was not
imposed, its ministers (George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar) would
withdraw from the government. With the AIADMK (perpetually), TMC, BJD
and Samata Party in different stages of rebellion, no wonder Subramanian
Swamy wrote to the President to ask Vajpayee to submit a list of supporting
MPs. And not surprisingly, rumours that Vajpayee was exploring the
formation of a national government gained currency.
Yashwant Sinha, finance minister for the second time—he had been one in
the short-lived Chandra Shekhar government as well—presented his first full
budget. It was fairly pedestrian, which in hindsight was not a bad thing. He
did miss out on addressing structural issues like the company law and Income
Tax Act, but to be fair, at this stage he was a political lightweight in the party
and possibly did not have the kind of rapport with Vajpayee that would have
allowed him to be bolder. The budget also did not explicitly factor in the
effect of economic sanctions that were imposed on India after the Pokhran
tests. Sinha would go on to present a much better budget the next year, by
which time he had developed a comfort level with Vajpayee that allowed him
to be more forthright. In fact, Sinha had warned much before he presented his
first budget in 1998 that he wanted to but could not present a ‘dream budget’.
It was a bad choice of words, for the dream budget of 1997–98 had only
pushed the economy downwards.
The strength of the budget was that it tried to correct the serious fiscal
crisis that India was facing. A high fiscal deficit and high inflation meant that
the lending rates of banks would remain high. The result was that, as Bimal
Jalan, the then governor of Reserve Bank of India, explained, he could do
nothing to reduce interest rates, out of fear that inflation would go out of
control. High interest rates meant that productive investments, required for
creating jobs and powering the economy to a higher growth rate, could not
take place. The 1997–98 budget had exacerbated the situation, as it had led
to fiscal deterioration.
Unfortunately, this piece of sensible decision-making had to be
substantially undone. The budget had proposed a petrol cess of Re 1 per
litre, which would be used for highway construction. Urea prices were also
set to go up by Re 1 per kg, which would have the added advantage of
preventing the soil deterioration being caused by unbalanced use of
fertilizers. The allies were extremely sore over the petrol and urea hike. In
addition, the finance ministry either goofed up on the petrol price hike or was
caught out as they attempted to raise far more revenue than what Yashwant
Sinha had declared, for the excise duty on petrol was also hiked from 20 per
cent to 35 per cent. The result was that the actual hike was not Re 1 per litre
but Rs 4 per litre.
There was an immediate uproar, and the finance minister was forced to say
that the petrol hike would be limited to Re 1 per litre. The second rollback
was in respect of urea, where he announced that the hike would be limited to
50 paise per kg, not Re 1 per kg. In fact, the Akalis were not satisfied with
this and wanted that there should be no hike in urea prices. With these two
withdrawals happening in less than a day, the media named Yashwant Sinha
as ‘Rollback Sinha’, a moniker which stayed with him. As a result of
pressures from Jayalalithaa and the Akalis, the Power Sector Reforms Bill,
which was introduced in Parliament to replace the earlier ordinance, was
toned down. It did away with the requirement for state governments to pay
upfront for subsidies and establish State Electricity Regulatory Commissions
(SERCs).
Not unexpectedly, the markets turn jittery, a reaction to the combined
effects of sanctions, budget rollbacks and the government under constant
attack by allies. Mamata did end her suspension of support to the
government, but the markets shrugged it off. The budget rollbacks made the
government look vulnerable. The economic situation was itself uncertain, and
the budget was unable to inspire confidence among investors, locals and
foreign. In Prem Shankar Jha’s analysis, referred to earlier, the top priority of
the government should have been to energize the economy in the shortest
time; but that didn’t seem to be the case.
It was not that the Vajpayee government did not mean well. In some cases,
it did achieve success. The way the unnecessary spat between the
government and Suzuki, over management control over Maruti Suzuki,
created during the UF government, was sorted out was commendable.
Industry Minister Sikander Bakht never got the credit for unravelling the
mess. If India wanted FDI, it needed to show that it would not interfere in
commercial enterprises. Maruti Suzuki was a joint venture between two
equal partners, the government of India and Suzuki Motors. But it could be
nobody’s case that it was a commercial success because the government ran
it!
But such wins were relatively few, and this period was mostly consumed
by managing the alliance. Vajpayee, who popularized the phrase ‘coalition
dharma’, was still learning at that time, and his learning curve was
uncomfortably steep. Senior leaders of the AIADMK accused the BJP
leadership of colluding with the DMK. In protest over the non-dismissal of
the DMK government, they staged walkouts in both the Lok Sabha and the
Rajya Sabha, and, in one case, after a breakfast meeting with Vajpayee. No
wonder there was an editorial comment in the Hindustan Times of 10 June
1998 saying that the ‘AIADMK has been on good behaviour for only one
week following Pokhran’.
The changing situation in Sri Lanka gave the Tamil Nadu politicians
another chance to put pressure on the government. This time, the
memorandum asking for India’s intervention was signed by Jayalalithaa and
leaders of the alliance, including Kumaramangalam. Fortunately, the
intervention sought was not military but moral. The AIADMK made it clear
that the Lanka issue was a new time bomb. Swamy called upon Jayalalithaa
to withdraw support from the government. He was quoted as saying, ‘The
only way to get the DMK out of Chennai is to get the BJP out of Delhi.’
Petroleum Minister V.K. Ramamurthy said that they (the people of Tamil
Nadu) would not wait indefinitely and that their patience was running out. He
added, however, that he would not withdraw support because of that.
In order to queer the pitch, Jayalalithaa launched a strong direct attack on
Vajpayee and Advani. She accused Karunanidhi of being a threat to national
security. She once again delivered what she called a friendly warning to the
BJP to not take their support for granted, adding that her party would not take
a hasty decision. She alleged that there was a secret understanding between
the DMK and the BJP to replace the AIADMK, therefore the BJP was not
making up with her and not dismissing the state government in Tamil Nadu.
Rajiv Gandhi had given her a lot of respect, even though he had the support
of over 400 MPs, while Vajpayee did not have even half the number.
Jayalalithaa accused Vajpayee of refusing to realize the importance of allies
even when they were partners in government. She was critical that on
Pokhran, Opposition parties had been briefed but not allies.
But Jayalalithaa’s control over her alliance was slipping. Vaiko (MDMK)
made it clear that he was against the use of Article 356 for sacking the DMK
government. This was remarkable when one considered that Vaiko was seen
as a protégé of, and possible successor to, Karunanidhi; the two had a
falling-out, and Vaiko founded the MDMK in 1994. Despite this background,
he held that the demand to dismiss the state government was unreasonable
and went against his party’s ethos. As he later elaborated, the alliance
‘secured votes for a stable government. So it is not proper that such a
government suffers from repeated pinpricks.’ Even the PMK maintained
silence on Jayalalithaa’s demands.
There was something about BJP governments that led its critics into
thinking that the worst was just waiting to happen. In this case, there was a
hue and cry that the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) had been
recast to ‘give a communal spin to history’. It was said that this was an
attempt by the RSS to legitimize its own interpretation of history, and that
Gandhi and Nehru would be replaced as ‘central icons’ by ideologues like
Golwalkar and Savarkar. All that had happened was that the government had
filled up a few vacancies in the governing board of the ICHR, and Professor
S. Settar, appointed by Deve Gowda, remained its chairman.
Meanwhile, the law-and-order situation in Bihar continued to deteriorate.
The prominent CPI(M) MLA Ajit Sarkar was shot dead on 14 June 1998. His
party called for the dismissal of the Bihar government, but other Opposition
parties did not endorse this demand. Nitish Kumar demanded the sacking of
the Rabri Devi government, explaining that the situation in Bihar was
different from that in West Bengal or Tamil Nadu; Bihar was characterized
by ‘financial anarchy, maladministration, corruption and breakdown of law
and order machinery’.

THERE WERE NOW THREE STATES where the demand from allies for dismissal of
state governments had gained traction, viz., Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and
Bihar. In relation to the first (Tamil Nadu), the government had already burnt
its hands. The issue then was—could the Vajpayee government impose
Article 356 in the other two states? It was, therefore, decided to send Central
government teams to West Bengal and Bihar. The team to West Bengal would
look at alleged violations of law by state government authorities during the
panchayat polls. The team to Bihar would study the general law-and-order
situation.
In view of President Narayan’s track record, there were doubts whether he
would easily go along if the government were to try and use Article 356 to
dismiss a state government. There were also members of the NDA, like the
Akali Dal, Shiv Sena, National Conference, AGP, MDMK, PMK, Lok Shakti,
HVP and the TDP, who on different occasions had expressed themselves
against using Article 356. And between the two states, arguably Bihar was a
far more suitable case for the use of Article 356 than either Tamil Nadu or
West Bengal.
The central team that was sent to Bihar met the governor, Chief Minister
Lalu Yadav, senior officials and leaders of different political parties. Though
the Samajwadi Party had set up a Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha with Lalu
Yadav’s RJD, it representative from Bihar, Papoo Yadav, demanded the
dismissal of government. On the other hand, the West Bengal government
snubbed the home ministry team, who could not meet official functionaries.
Their stand was that law and order, and the panchayat elections, were state
subjects, and the Central government had no business sending a team to
assess the situation. The Congress and United Front slammed the government,
calling the move unconstitutional, one that meant to undermine the federal
structure of the Indian Constitution. Jaipal Reddy, then still in the Janata Dal,
called it the ‘weakest central government in free India . . . such flexing of
muscles is a demonstration of weakness not strength.’
Apparently, the critics of the government had not read the Constitution.
Articles 355 and 256 are essential features of the Indian Constitution. Article
355 casts a duty on the Union government ‘to ensure that the government of
every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this
Constitution.’ Hence, sending a team to check on the actual situation was
well within the powers of the Government of India. Article 256 is even more
significant to the sending of the team. It requires the Government of India to
issue instructions to state government/s ‘to ensure compliance with laws
made by Parliament and any existing laws, which apply in that State’. The
direction issued under Article 256 is an essential component before any
action can be taken under Article 356 to dismiss a state government, which
allows the Union government take over the functions of a State government, if
it is satisfied ‘on receipt of report from the Governor of the State or
otherwise’ that ‘the government of the State cannot be carried on in
accordance with the provisions of this Constitution’ (italics added). Sending
a team to the concerned states was meant to allow the Union government the
opportunity to assess the situation and to determine whether in fact the
powers under Article 356 should be exercised. Unfortunately, even the home
ministry was either unaware of these provisions of law or was unable to
muster the argument that sending the team was a legitimate exercise of
sovereign function. Instead, it was the Vajpayee government that was put on
the defensive. As the Kashmir situation continued to deteriorate, with mostly
targeted killings of Hindus south of the Pir Panjal—e.g., Prankote (17 April,
twenty-six killed), Dessa (19 April, thirteen killed), Surankote (20 May, four
killed) and Champnari (19 June, twenty-five killed)—Jyoti Basu taunted
Advani in the most callous manner: ‘Why don’t you do something in
Kashmir? After all you have the bomb.’
Looking back, it was clear that coalition dharma was still in its early
stage. The Akalis were upset, as the Planning Commission had withheld
clearance of Rs 12,000 Bathinda Refinery that Hindustan Petroleum had
proposed setting up, holding it to be unviable. However, based on earlier
assurances, the Punjab government had already acquired 2000 acres of land
and spent Rs 80 crore. Akali support was not to be taken for granted, was the
message coming from them. I could understand the logic of the Planning
Commission. Neither were there any oil fields nor a port for importing
petroleum nearby, so it made no economic sense to have a refinery in
Bathinda. It is always cheaper to transport a value-added product like petrol,
LPG or fertilizer than feedstock like petroleum.
Years later, as power secretary in the Delhi government, I was witness to
the situation where Delhi power distribution companies were faced with the
dilemma of buying power from the Jhajjar Thermal Power Station, which
cost 50 per cent more than comparable power from other plants. Jhajjar got
its coal from the Mahanadi coalfields of Odisha, while the Bhatinda refinery
gets its feedstock from the Persian Gulf, via the Mundra port in Gujarat.
However, when politics drives economic decision-making, which was the
case in the Soviet-style planning model that we followed, then decision-
making cannot be rational. This was not the first time that the Akalis had felt
slighted. Earlier, Badal had reacted strongly to Advani’s statement in
Parliament that there was no immediate plans to hand over Chandigarh to
Punjab. Badal had said that Chandigarh was Punjab’s by right.

THE SECOND COORDINATION COMMITTEE MEETING was scheduled for 27 June. It

was not even 100 days into the government, and the NDA coalition looked
ramshackle. The only issue before the meeting was whether Jayalalithaa
would attend. She did not, and nor did two of her allies, the PMK and TRC,
but the former was quick to clarify that they would not withdraw support.
Interestingly, Ramamurthy (TRC) and the AIADMK ministers continued to
attend office, take part in cabinet meetings, etc. Hence, every time
Jayalalithaa demanded President’s rule or laid down an ultimatum, one was
not sure whether ‘this’ was to be the last time. It was clear that the
government would fall if she withdrew support. The question was when
would she do it.
Vajpayee was not the only leader in crisis. In fact, with the election of
Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan to the Rajya Sabha, there was panic in
Congress (I) ranks when Sonia Gandhi’s close confidant Ram Pradhan failed
to get elected from Maharashtra. Sharad Pawar, then holidaying in London,
became a target of attack, and show-cause notices were issued to Datta
Meghe and then to Praful Patel. Pawar defended his supporters and called
them loyal and active Congressmen. Indeed, Pramod Mahajan may well not
have been elected, but on his way to the airport to fly to Mumbai and file his
nomination, he was tipped off by a senior Congress leader that his position
as adviser to the prime minister could get him into trouble, since it would be
affected by the bar on those holding ‘office of profit’ from contesting
elections. Till then he had not resigned, and his ticket to Mumbai was bought
through the PMO. I advised him not to panic and to send his resignation by
fax. His office was told to withdraw the ticket requisition, and it was paid
for by a member of his personal staff. The result was that by the time he filed
his nomination, he was all clear. It would take Vajpayee months before he
could induct both Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan as ministers.
The month of July was consumed by two big-ticket activities. These were
the attempts by the home ministry to create new states of Uttaranchal
(Uttarakhand) and Vananchal (Jharkhand), and to upgrade Delhi and
Pondicherry as states. The BJP, and earlier the Jana Sangh, had been a
persistent votary of small states. However, due to lack of homework, so
much energy went into sorting out Uttarakhand and Delhi that ultimately
nothing came out of it all.
The Akalis were up in arms against incorporating Kashipur (now Uddham
Singh Nagar) in Uttarakhand, since they were led to believe that their vast
landholdings would face land ceiling issues. Kashipur was in the Terai part
of the Jim Corbett territory, where Corbett used to hunt man-eating tigers.
Post-Independence, large numbers of Sikh refugees from what became
Pakistan were settled in the Terai and given land. They cleared the forests,
worked hard at growing sugarcane and prospered. Later, many other Sikhs
from Punjab also bought land here. The pressure to retain Kashipur in UP
was so strong that eventually the proposal could not go further. Ultimately,
Uttarakhand became a state only five years later, in 2003. But back in 1998,
the Vajpayee government could not push the Akalis into accepting its
position.
The BJP/Jana Sangh had been promising statehood to Delhi for decades,
partly because their victory in the 1967 general election, when they won six
out of Delhi’s seven parliamentary seats, gave them a sense that it provided
easy pickings for them. Though the successes of the Jana Sangh/ BJP in the
metropolitan council (truncated legislative assembly) elections were limited,
they controlled the municipal corporation almost always. Promising
statehood is one thing, but delivering it to the capital of a federal republic is
not easy.
In July 1998, the home ministry initially proposed granting statehood to the
whole territory; it later modified it to take out the New Delhi Municipal
Council (NDMC) area, where the Government of India was generally
located. They further proposed that the NDMC area would get its own police
force. This was to see that the security of the VVIPs and ministers was not in
the hands of the Delhi state government. A few ministers pointedly asked
about access to, and control of, the airport. Seeing that the going was not
smooth, the Central government withdrew the proposal. Later, under pressure
from the BJP government in Delhi, the home ministry announced that pending
statehood, the control of Delhi Police would be transferred to the
Government of Delhi from the home ministry. At the time of writing (October
2020), more than twenty-one years after this suggestion, the Delhi Police
continues to be controlled by the home ministry.
As if to prepare the ground for Delhi to become a state, the Vajpayee
government announced that Pondicherry, another union territory with a
legislature, would also become a state. Unlike Delhi, there had not been
much of an issue about statehood in Pondicherry, which, as a former French
colony, had an additional complication. Pondicherry has three enclaves
located some distance away. While Karaikal, like Pondicherry, is Tamil-
speaking, Yanam is Telugu and faraway Mahe (Mayyazhi) is near Kannur in
Kerala, and therefore Malayalam-speaking. At the time, Jayalalithaa thanked
Vajpayee for agreeing to provide statehood for Pondicherry, but like Delhi, it
remains a union territory with a legislature, and this is unlikely to change.
But, it was not all gloom all the time for Vajpayee’s government.
Vajpayee’s most underrated and least talked-about achievement in this period
was the setting up of an institutional framework for dealing with regular
disputes among the riparian states, particularly Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,
on the Cauvery River. Neither the origins of the dispute nor the relative
merits of the party should concern us here. The Cauvery Water Disputes
Tribunal had passed an interim award on Tamil Nadu’s plea in 1991, which
had been notified the same year but had not been implemented. The matter
was pending in the Supreme Court, where it was agreed that the prime
minister should call the four chief ministers concerned—Kerala and
Pondicherry being the other two states—and try to find a solution.
Karnataka’s chief minister, J.H. Patel, who had succeeded Deve Gowda
when the latter moved to Delhi as prime minister, was facing dissent from
Gowda’s followers. His relationship with Ramakrishna Hegde was
complicated, but they had come on the same side because of Gowda’s
politics. The Karnataka BJP, particularly Ananth Kumar, now a minister in
Vajpayee’s government, was keen on strengthening Patel. On the other side,
Karunanidhi was looking for a solution so that paddy cultivation in the
Cauvery delta did not suffer. Since the meeting was to take place in a living
room and not in a conference hall, at Ananth Kumar’s suggestion, I put the
name tags of Patel and Karunanidhi next to each other on a sofa. However,
when the delegations arrived, each chief minister sat with his team members
on both sides for support!
I have always held that the Indian bureaucracy, if given clear directions by
the political executive, delivers, and this was shown in the way the Cauvery
meeting proved productive. Once it became obvious that the prime minister
and the chief ministers, particularly of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, were
looking for a solution and willing to move beyond stated positions, the senior
officials of the Centre and the states found solutions. The result was the
establishment of the Cauvery River Authority (CRA), with the prime minister
as its chair and the four chief ministers as members. While decision-making
would be by consensus, in the event of a deadlock, the chair could decide.
This saving clause would be used in the future, when differences became
unbridgeable. The officer-level body, the Cauvery Monitoring Committee
(CMC), would feed the CRA. The CRA was able to find a sharing
mechanism that helped tide over the 1998 crisis, and everybody went home
happy.
The Cauvery farmers welcomed the decisions taken and all was well.
Rather, all should have been well but this agreement left Jayalalithaa
unhappy. She saw in it a conspiracy to strengthen Karunanidhi’s position.
That the Cauvery delta farmers were celebrating only seemed to make her
angrier. At least, she should have been informed that an agreement would be
arrived at, so that she could have broken the news and taken credit. But how
does one predict an agreement till it is agreed upon by all the parties? When
an understanding was reached with the three states and Pondicherry on 7
August, Jayalalithaa warned the government of ‘disastrous consequences’ if
the original tribunal award was not notified. But she did not move beyond,
though Subramanian Swamy had promised that Vajpayee would not be PM on
15 August.
Jayalalithaa did use an interesting analogy when she said that in ‘a boxing
match, the knock-out punch is not delivered in the first round itself’. When
George Fernandes and Pramod Mahajan went calling on her, she made them
wait for half a day, and then launched into a diatribe. One of her
representatives in the Vajpayee government, K.M.R. Janarthanan, described
the Cauvery agreement as ‘a wedding without a Mangalsutra’. Fortunately,
Jayalalithaa just threw a tantrum and did not move to withdraw support.
What made her even more upset was that two of her Tamil Nadu allies, Vaiko
and V. Ramamurthy, seemed to be moving away from her.
Vajpayee went ahead and calmly notified the new agreement. Neither the
sky nor the government fell.
What made this 7–8 August agreement all the more commendable was that
Vajpayee had not been at his best since mid-July, physically. Doctors treating
VVIPs are prone to over-medicate. Vajpayee, who, for his age (sevety-four
years at the time), was quite fit even if overweight, now looked bogged down
and often sluggish. The burden of office and the uncertain nature of his
position could not have made things any easier. I am convinced that it was
over-medication that made life more difficult for Vajpayee than just the
psychological burden that he was carrying. Fortunately, it was a passing
phase, but at that moment, it seemed quite troubling. The journalist Saba
Naqvi, who covered the BJP, wrote that while Vajpayee was previously
described as ‘wise, witty and charming’, the adjectives had now changed to
‘tired, exhausted, listless’.
If this was not enough, Vajpayee seemed overwhelmed about speaking
from the Red Fort on 15 August and spent lots of time agonizing over the
many drafts that he got prepared from different persons. Our best efforts to
make him feel that it was no big deal, that it would be child’s play for him,
did not succeed. His simple reply was, ‘Bolna toh mujhe hai (I have to
speak).’ So how would others know the pressure? This, from a person whose
eloquence was legendary, who had a way with language and was never at a
loss for words in any verbal duel. Since the Independence Day speech by the
prime minister at the Red Fort was traditionally part feel-good exercise, part
exhortation to the Indian people, part reporting on the government’s
achievements and part announcement of new schemes, Vajpayee was clear
that it had to be a written one. Even Arun Shourie’s point, that if he read out
the speech it would be like a major medieval warrior riding a scooter, did
not move him.
The fifteenth of August was a wet morning, and our first port of call was
Raj Ghat, where Vajpayee paid his tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, as all prime
ministers had done before him. We left our shoes in the car and walked in our
socks over the wet cemented pathway, to the spot where flowers are offered
and back. Vajpayee was distinctly nervous. At the Red Fort, the car stopped.
Vajpayee got down and was walking towards the honour guard to take salute
when he told me that he had forgotten to slip on one shoe, which had been left
in the car. I quickly retrieved it from the car and, as innocuously as possible,
placed it next to him so that he could slip it on. Even though we were in a
relatively secluded spot, a press photographer captured the shot, which was
carried by the Indian Express the next day. To me, that shot signified the
position that Vajpayee found himself in. Would this state of affairs continue
or would it change? That was the question we were looking at after
Independence Day in 1998.
 6
Vajpayee Asserts

‘Evidently concerned by the effect that her charges would have on the party’s image,
BJP spokespersons momentarily gave up their self-imposed restraint and deplored
Jayalalitha’s outbursts, which they said were ‘unbecoming of an alliance partner’.
Push had come to shove, and the BJP perhaps felt that it had for far too long been
seen to be appeasing Jayalalitha and that it was time to assert itself.’

—‘Survival Stakes’, Frontline,

29 August–11 September 1998

It was clear by August 1998 that things had to change, and they indeed did.
But most people did not notice, since the change was incremental and subtle,
not unidirectional, with frequent sidestepping and occasional retreats. The
Cauvery decision was a case in point, since it could even have endangered
the life of the government. Yet, Vajpayee risked becoming the first prime
minister not to address the nation from Red Fort on Independence Day.
The economy was in a downslide, and though a five-month-old
government could not really take the rap for it, it was nevertheless held
responsible. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) reported that out of
eighty-two sectors, thirty-one reported negative growth and another thirty-
two reported an increase of less than 10 per cent. The capital goods sector,
considered the base on which other sectors depend, was particularly hard hit.
Even the services sector, seen as dynamic, recorded negative growth figures.
Export growth in the first two months of the financial year (April and May)
was negative and trade deficit was up. Inflation, which normally moderated
after the monsoon, was running at 8 per cent, as compared to 4 per cent a
year back. Reflecting the sentiments of the investor community, market
capitalization was down by 30 per cent. The rupee was holding up despite
pressures, and even corporate profits were up, yet there was a feeling of
despondence and of drift.

THE POST-POKHRAN BOLDNESS WAS MISSING. Yashwant Sinha’s budget had

made the right noises, but the confused handling of the petrol price hike, the
rollback of fertilizer price, etc., drowned out all the other sounds and
feelings, especially the positive ones. Analysts, including those who were
usually sympathetic, concluded that with all attention on foreign policy, the
economy was not a priority for the government. This general despondency
was despite an increase in the rate of growth of agriculture and the relatively
low real interest rates.
In fact, the effects of the East Asian crisis were being felt by India,
particularly the global headwinds that constrained export growth.
Compounding this was the poor state of public finances, which, after the
decision on the Government Employees Pay Commission by the UF
government, meant that not just the Centre but the states, too, were scraping
the bottom of the barrel. The post-Pokhran sanctions, and the resultant
stoppage of funds from bilateral donors and multilateral institutions,
deprived many state governments of money to fund critical interventions, the
difference between business-as-usual and making a difference. Worse, the
negative sentiment this conveyed prevented foreign investors from coming to
India and discouraged domestic investors from taking decisions.
Much as Vajpayee was uncomfortable with the details of economic
policies, these could no longer be ignored or left to individual ministries to
initiate. The economy needed both structural reforms and also short-term
remedies to fix specific problems and boost investor confidence. Manmohan
Singh as finance minister had famously declared that he did not let the stock
markets disturb his sleep. The economic leadership of the Vajpayee
government decided that while targeting equity levels was not what the
government should be looking at, creating a sense of confidence and
unleashing the animal spirits was decidedly a priority. There were changes
made at secretaries-level of the finance ministry among others; two advisory
groups were also created in the prime minister’s office to provide
suggestions for improved economic policymaking, though the move was
controversial as it was seen to be undercutting the finance ministry.
The very first shot fired against bureaucratic changes was by Jayalalithaa.
Protesting the transfer of the enforcement director, she alleged that a top
media group was behind this particular change and demanded that the change
be reversed. Jayalalithaa condemned what she called a ‘cunning attempt’ to
make it appear that the transfers had been effected to placate her, since some
of her close associates were facing investigations by the ED for alleged
violations of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. She distanced herself
from all the transfers and said that when George Fernandes and Pramod
Mahajan called on her, she had not broached ‘any subject other than the
Cauvery River water issue’.
To deal with this, Vajpayee tried a different tack this time and got Brajesh
Mishra, as principal secretary to the prime minister, to write to Jayalalithaa
and request her to produce ‘all evidence’ in respect of her allegation that
‘hefty bribes’ had been given to ‘persons very close to the Prime Minister’ to
get the ED transferred out. Not to be outmanoeuvred, Jayalalithaa got her
office secretary, P. Mahalingam, to reply to Mishra immediately, demanding
an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into ‘the furious lobbying’
by the media group she had blamed for getting the ED transferred. According
to Mahalingam’s letter, ‘Such an inquiry will reveal the motives behind the
shifting of an upright officer more than two years before his tenure was
completed.’
Despite the domestic shenanigans, the Vajpayee that we saw in action at
the NAM summit in Durban, which ran from 2–4 September 1998, was self-
confident and assertive. The summit was part of a week-long tour which took
Vajpayee to Oman, Namibia and Mauritius, besides South Africa. The first
hop was to Salalah in Oman, where the sultan used to spend his ‘monsoon
months’—this being the only part of the Arab peninsula which is touched by
the monsoons. Though it is located on the Arabian Sea, it has territory
overlooking the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Oman is culturally very close to
Kutch, practising a heterodox version of Islam. The Sultan was a Western
classical music buff, and the military band regaled us with various
compositions at the state banquet. However, it was not the weather or the
culture that had brought Vajpayee to this place.
Oman had displayed a nuanced strategic sense. It had controlled Gwadar
in Balochistan, across the entrance to the Gulf, giving it control over access
into this very important body of water. However, it was forced by the United
Kingdom to surrender it to Pakistan in 1957. Oman was generally helpful to
India at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), when it discussed
Kashmir. It was also the first country in the Gulf with which India had
established joint ventures. In fact, Vajpayee, in his remarks, pointed out that
two of India’s largest joint ventures were with Oman: the Oman–India
Fertilizer Project (OIFP) and the Bharat–Oman Refinery Project. Oman had
also signed a twenty-year contract for the supply of 1.2 million tonnes of
liquefied natural gas per annum to India.
Flying to Namibia from Oman meant covering almost the entire length of
the continent, with the Horn of Africa clearly visible from 40,000 feet. The
South African winter had still not withdrawn, and Windhoek, Namibia’s
capital situated in the highlands, was chilly at the time. The cityscape of
Windhoek is quite European, except for the dry climate. Though the visit was
a bilateral one, Namibia’s President, Sam Nujoma, hero of the armed
struggle of his people against the South African rulers, infused excitement
into the visit when he suddenly brought into the room Laurent Kabila,
President of Congo. Still to recover from the collapse of the Mobuto regime
and the civil war, Congo had been invaded by Rwandan and Ugandan armed
forces. South Africa and Zimbabwe were also involved as peacekeepers and
mediators. In other words, Central Africa and the Great Lakes Region was a
mess. This had led to a lot of bad blood that would be pumped into the NAM
summit at Durban.
 The crisis in Central Africa, terrorism and nuclear proliferation were the
issues that dominated the Durban summit. Kabila also made a dramatic last-
minute appearance in Durban and stole the show. Nujoma allowed the time
allotted for him to be transferred to his friend Kabila. The bitterness between
Kabila, Mandela, Robert Mugabe and Kofi Annan (secretary general, United
Nations) was obvious. Kabila and his allies wanted an outright criticism of
the ‘aggression’ on Congo by Uganda and Rwanda. Mugabe refused to be
photographed with Mandela, and Kabila walked out when Annan was to
speak.
Vajpayee received a warm hug from Mandela on the opening day, but the
mood quickly turned sour. Mandela’s long speech at the inauguration touched
upon Kashmir. He said, ‘All of us remain concerned that the issue of Jammu
and Kashmir should be solved through peaceful negotiations and called the
members to lend all the strength we have to the resolution of this matter.’
This was the first time that the issue of Kashmir had ever come up in a NAM
chairman’s speech. Vajpayee was not about to let Mandela off the hook. But
this was not it. Mandela also mentioned his concerns about nuclear
proliferation, saying that ‘the critical question of nuclear disarmament had to
remain high on the list of NAM’s priorities’. South Africa also tried behind
the scenes to push a critical statement on the proliferation scenario in South
Asia. Vajpayee was furious, and he expressed his annoyance to Mandela at
the evening reception.
The South Africans tried to make amends. Thabo Mbeki, then vice
president and later President, met Vajpayee in the morning. The atmosphere
was tense; it reminded me of the lashing that Kadirgamar had got from
Vajpayee after the Pokhran tests—controlled and focused anger. Mbeki, in
effect, apologized for Mandela’s Kashmir reference. The result was that in
the final NAM statement, the India–Pakistan tests were not condemned.
Instead, in the context of nuclear apartheid and the failure of disarmament, it
noted the ‘complexities arising from the tests in South Asia. They considered
positively the commitments given by the parties concerned in the region to
exercise restraint . . . to discontinue nuclear tests.’ The reversal was total.
After the summit, Mandela’s spokesperson said that South Africa would
prefer that India and Pakistan resolve their outstanding issues bilaterally.
Vajpayee had successfully defended India’s interests, even if it meant
expressing annoyance at Mandela’s comments.
The role of the then Indian high commissioner to South Africa, L.C. Jain,
also complicated matters. A Gandhian economist, he was sent as an envoy by
the Gujral government. When the government changed, all such envoys
appointed by Gujral from outside the Foreign Service were withdrawn. Jain
was still there in South Africa, and reportedly shared Mandela’s distaste for
the nuclear tests, and apparently did not hide it. I remember Brajesh Mishra
was livid about it; he mentioned it to all concerned, and Jain was recalled
almost immediately after Vajpayee’s return from Durban.
I was acquainted with L.C. Jain, had met him at his Barakhamba Road
office a few times and knew that since he was a Gandhian, the tests would
not have made him happy. If memory serves me right, he had resigned from
the Planning Commission in 1990, in protest against Chautala’s reported
rigging in a Haryana assembly (Meham) by-poll. Knowing Jain’s strong
convictions, the Vajpayee government should probably have withdrawn him
much earlier.1
Vajpayee, in his address to the summit, strongly rejected any third-party
role in the Kashmir dispute, ‘however well-intentioned’. He said that Jammu
and Kashmir was an integral part of India, and that the real problem there
was cross-border terrorism. Therefore, what was needed essentially was a
concerted action against terrorism. Just before the summit, in reaction to
massive truck-bomb attacks on the US Embassies in Dar es Salaam and
Nairobi, the Clinton administration had fired missiles at a pharmaceutical
factory in Sudan and at a terrorist training facility in Khost, Afghanistan.
Thus, while terrorism as an agenda was very much on everybody’s lips, there
was still inadequate appreciation of India’s concerns and experiences. Sudan
and many others wanted outright condemnation of the United States’ action,
but this would have been one-sided. The final declaration of the summit
emphasized its opposition to ‘selective and unilateral actions’ and
underlined that ‘international cooperation to combat terrorism should be
conducted in conformity with the principles of the U.N. Charter’. Again,
India had reasons to be satisfied, as it had long argued for the convening of
an international summit to formulate a joint global response to terrorism.

INDIAN POLITICS, MEANWHILE, CONTINUED TO fester. The Congress (I) did some
brainstorming at Pachmarhi. Even as it decried coalition politics, calling it a
temporary phase, it agreed that ‘coalitions will be needed’. However, the
party added, somewhat contrarily, that it should not compromise on its basic
philosophy. What the newspapers focused upon besides the substance of the
decisions, was the complete sidelining of Sharad Pawar, though he was the
leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and had successfully dented the
BJP–Shiv Sena’s newly acquired strength in Maharashtra in the 1998
elections, denying Vajpayee a comfortable majority he would have otherwise
got.
Vajpayee also faced challenges from within the larger Sangh Parivar,
specifically from the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), which dubbed some of
the Centre’s economic policies as ‘anti-people and anti-swadeshi’ and
criticized the government for following the National Agenda of Governance
rather than the BJP’s own manifesto. It was critical of the composition of the
two advisory committees that Vajpayee had formed to deal with economic
issues, pointing to the exclusion of any known proponent of Swadeshi. It was
also upset with Vajpayee retaining certain bureaucrats, who, according to the
SJM, ‘are habituated to compromise national interests’. This was strong
language, but Vajpayee remained unruffled, or so it seemed to us around him.
Vajpayee’s strength within the larger ruling alliance was increasing, in an
incremental manner. On 15 September, Vaiko organized a grand rally and
public meeting in Chennai. His party, the MDMK, had split from the DMK
and Vaiko was keen to show how much it had grown. Though Jayalalithaa
avoided the rally by organizing one of her own at Tiruchi the same day, her
Tamil alliance partners, S. Ramadoss and V. Ramamurthy, were present at the
Marina in Chennai. It was a grand show with floats and party units marching
down, culminating in a massive public meeting. Top leaders present included
Advani, Parkash Singh Badal, George Fernandes and Farooq Abdullah.
Since the ostensible reason for the rally was the celebration of Annadurai’s
ninetieth birth anniversary, Vajpayee reminded the audience that in 1947,
when Periyar, the founder of the Dravida movement and Anna’s guru,
described 15 August 1947 as a black day, Anna welcomed the departure of
the British. Vajpayee also recalled how the 1962 war so upset Annadurai that
he gave up his demand for Dravida Nadu.
On his part, without referring to Jayalalithaa, Vaiko said that in the Lok
Sabha elections, the people of Tamil Nadu had given a mandate for a stable
government under the leadership of Vajpayee. He assured the audience, and
Vajpayee, that the MDMK would not do anything to betray the trust of the
people and would provide unconditional support to the BJP government.
Earlier, when Vajpayee had alighted from the plane, Karunanidhi, the chief
minister, was there to receive him, along with Vaiko. The latter was really
excited, and not just because of his rally. He repeatedly mentioned that he
and Karunanidhi were meeting after a long time. Anybody familiar with
Dravida politics would remember how the two had been very close before
Vaiko fell out with him, when the DMK started morphing into a family-run
entity.
Buoyed by this turn in domestic politics, which provided the government
with a little more stability and assurance, Vajpayee set off for what was till
then the most important overseas trip of his tenure. He was headed to New
York to attend the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA),
an occasion that allows for a large number of other engagements. The fiftieth-
floor suite of the Plaza Hotel provided the perfect platform to make the
world understand the New India that Vajpayee had effectively launched by
going through with the nuclear tests.
Vajpayee gave two important speeches, one at the UNGA and the other at
Asia Society, where he addressed the US strategic community. Vajpayee, true
to form, had asked different people for draft speeches, and we had to fashion
coherent messages out of those. The UNGA speech was delivered in Hindi,
following a tradition that Vajpayee had himself initiated in 1977, when, as
foreign minister, he chose to address the UNGA in Hindi. It was, however,
his speech at the Asia Society that got more attention, though this attention
was not all positive. Vajpayee mentioned that on a number of occasions when
India wanted to open up to the US, the latter had either walked away or
actually spurned India. There was no rancour in his tone, and yet, a few
Americans at my table were upset with what they felt was a harangue.
Vajpayee then dropped his bombshell when he said that India and the US
were natural allies. He was criticized for drawing this parallel at the time,
but history, and the not-so-peaceful rise of China, has proven him right.
After that, there were numerous meetings, with leaders ranging from
Nawaz Sharif to Benjamin Netanyahu, with important US advocacy groups
like the B’nai B’rith, and with the Indian diaspora. The days and evenings
were packed, but Vajpayee had an able support team—Jaswant Singh,
Brajesh Mishra and Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath. Vajpayee was in his
element in New York, and went through all the programmes with aplomb.
An interesting aspect of the New York visit was that Jaswant Singh was
provided security cover by the US Administration, guarded by no less than
the famed Secret Service. In the Indian hierarchy, he enjoyed a minister’s
rank by virtue of being deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, but in
the Indian pecking order, rank comes with office and responsibility. Singh’s
security detail always referred to him as minister, which we found amusing.
Paris was next on the schedule, where we had productive meetings with
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and later with President Jacques Chirac,
followed by a five-course meal at the Élysée Palace. France had been
extremely supportive in the immediate aftermath of the tests, and while it
could not stop the sanctions, it did its best to limit them. Due to shortage of
time, Jospin dispensed with interpretation, but Chirac, after his initial
welcome notes in English, said that he would speak in French so that he
could accurately convey his thoughts—so accurately, in fact, that he had to
correct his interpreter more than once when she used words that he felt were
not appropriate. For me, the high point of the visit was staying at the historic
Ritz and listening to the fascinating conversation between Vajpayee and the
French leadership. Vajpayee also met a group of French Indologists and
thinkers. Their depth of scholarship made me regret our monolingual
academic system that has denied us access to their works and that of others
who do not write in English.
 The after-effects of the sanctions were slowly tapering off, not just
strategically but economically as well. This was reflected in the
overwhelming response from non-resident Indians (NRIs) to the Resurgent
India Bonds (RIB) scheme, launched to avoid a run on our foreign-exchange
reserves post-sanctions. The response to the scheme, worth US$ 4.18 billion,
helped restore a measure of confidence in the Indian economy, which, as we
saw in the CII report, was in dire straits. The economy, and the government,
desperately needed this reassurance because of what was happening in the
Unit Trust of India (UTI), which was till then Indian society’s primary
vehicle for participation in the capital market through investment in mutual
funds. Its flagship venture, the Unit Scheme 1964 (US-64), which has a
corpus of over Rs 22,000 crore, was under tremendous pressure. Its sale
price was higher than its net asset value. Public acknowledgement of this led
to a stampede, causing the collapse of the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive
Index (Sensex), which fell by 224 points in a single day (5 October). This put
on hold government’s hopes of raising revenues through disinvestment of its
holdings in public sector undertakings. The situation called for demonstrating
decisiveness and leadership.
Vajpayee used the forum of the annual session of the Federation of Indian
Chambers of Commerce and Industry, on 24 October, to announce different
steps aimed at the revival of the economy. There were two separate
components to this stimulus package. The first was changes to the Companies
law, using the ordinance route. The amendments would allow corporates to
buy back, and boost, their own shares, and to make it harder to allow
creeping takeover of companies. The changes also allowed for much higher
levels of inter-corporate loans and investments, which were meant to
facilitate fresh investments. Recognizing that IT sector had emerged as an
important player, with the potential to drive economic growth, we pushed
through a provision to allow for ‘sweat equity’, which would let companies
reward good performers by giving them stock options.
In fact, these proposals—to allow corporates to buy back their own shares
from the market and on liberalizing rules governing inter-corporate loans and
investments—were not strictly new. They were part of the companies law
amendment bill, introduced by the UF government, but which was still to be
cleared by Parliament.
A valid question may be asked here: What was the big deal about these
changes? The answer is, politics. The minister for corporate affairs,
Thambidurai of the AIADMK, was presumably under strict instructions to do
nothing that would enhance the reputation of the Vajpayee government. T.S.
Krishnamurthy, later to become chief election commissioner, was the
secretary of the ministry concerned, and though he was ready with the
proposal, the ministry just stonewalled it. It took all of Vajpayee’s persuasion
and cajoling to get it out from the ministry to the cabinet. It was easy for us to
blame Thambidurai then, but I can only guess at the kind of tightrope he must
have had to walk. The compromise he made was that he would oppose his
own ministry’s proposal but not obstruct it. Vajpayee had to later convince
the President to go along with the Ordinance. Technically, the President can
always return any cabinet proposal that goes to him for reconsideration, but
if the latter resubmitted it without chnages, the President would have to go
along. However, governance is not just about technicalities, and governments
do not usually act to overrule any President’s advice unless it is really
important. Vajpayee was therefore keen to avoid such a situation.
The second part of the announcement has actually had a much greater
impact on India in general, and not just on its economy. Persuaded by an
internal discussion that India must learn something from the US Interstate
Highway system, Vajpayee announced a massive highway project which
aimed at developing highways from north to south, from east to west, with the
Golden Quadrilateral linking the four metros. The plan was to have main
grids with spur roads to link interior areas to metros. The total length would
be 12,000 km, and it was estimated to cost approximately Rs 50,000 crore.
In addition to budgetary support and private partnership, money would be
made by charging a cess on petrol sales. The costing was tentative but, to be
fair, no cost-benefit analysis was done. Not that governments in India
actually look at policy alternatives or even cost-benefit analysis before
taking major decisions, but in this case, the government’s gut feeling, that
reducing logistical costs would give a big boost to growth, would be
vindicated many times over. But where would the funds come from? The
private sector was roped in as a partner in this scheme, something which was
happening in India for the first time. Funds raised by the Resurgent India
Bonds were seen as another source. Lastly, the funds that the government
could release from disinvestment of PSU shares and buybacks were other
alternatives. In fact, it assumed that the construction phase of the project
would itself push up demand for steel, cement and labour.

DESPITE THE STOCK MARKET REACTING positively to these announcements, the

overhang of poor economic outcomes threatened to sink Vajpayee. The high
price of onions in 1979 brought Indira Gandhi back to power in the January
1980 elections; it was threatening to be equally unsettling in late 1998.
Though there was a poor onion harvest in December 1997, about 15 per cent
lower than usual, neither the UF nor the Vajpayee governments imposed a ban
on onion exports, since such drastic actions would not have been good for
farmers and for the reputation of India as a reliable trading partner. There
were onion exports of 2,50,000 tonnes or 8 per cent of the depleted harvest
during the year. This led to an increase in prices, and by the time the export
ban was imposed, on 8 October, the retail price of onions was over Rs 40 a
kg in several centres in the north. It later scaled an all-time high to Rs 60.
Though import norms were liberalized, onion imports did not total more than
500 tonnes. It was not just onions; prices of vegetables and fruits also went
up and remained high. The consumer price index was in excess of 15 per cent
by the end of October, the highest in five years.
Vajpayee decided that the time for audacity in economic reforms had
come. On 23 November, the cabinet decided to go ahead and open up the
general insurance sector to foreign investors. Chidambaram, as finance
minister in the UF government, had attempted to do this but, in the face of
strong opposition from the BJP and his own allies, had to withdraw his bill
from Parliament. Vajpayee now decided to take up from where Chidambaram
was forced to abandon his plans. This decision took the BJP by surprise, and
the party president, Kushabhau Thakre, publicly complained that they had not
been consulted.
 The bill was slated to be introduced in Parliament in the winter session,
but there were doubts about its fate. A vocal section of the BJP was
completely against it. In fact, Vajpayee had his back to the wall since the
opposition to his economic policies, and even his governance, ran strong.
The RSS and its affiliates (BJP, BMS, ABVP, VHP, SJM, etc.) held their
chintan baithak, a regular event, in Nagpur, early in December. The message
was that the Parivar was not happy with the government because ‘the
Vajpayee government is giving in to immediate constraints, including
pressures from the international agencies, without considering the long-term
implications’. Not only had the BMS publicly opposed the Insurance
Regulatory Bill, but its convenor, Dattopant Thengdi, had also resigned from
the government taskforce on employment generation in protest against Montek
Singh Ahluwalia being made the chair. Thengdi, a senior RSS functionary,
also attacked Vajpayee later at a public event in Nagpur. But there was an
acceptance that other parties in the NDA would rally around Vajpayee. The
general acceptance in party circles was that ultimately, there would be a
compromise and the opening in insurance would be restricted to domestic
investors only.
There is a cliché that Indians do not cast their votes but vote their caste.
While this may have been true in parts of the country, it seemed absent in
November–December 1998, when legislative assembly elections were held
in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi (Mizoram, too, went to the polls at
the same time, but the issues there were different). Rajasthan and Delhi were
ruled by the BJP, and Madhya Pradesh by the Congress. The elections in the
Hindi heartland were seen as a referendum on the Vajpayee government,
which faced huge challenges, mostly home-grown. In Rajasthan, the
Shekhawat government was skating on thin ice. The BJP had been blown
away in the parliamentary elections in terms of seats and could not do worse,
but it did. It polled a mere 32 per cent, 10 per cent less than its share in the
parliamentary elections, held barely six months prior.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP won 39 per cent of the popular vote, exactly
the same as in the previous assembly elections in 1993, so it remained in the
Opposition. Surprisingly, the BJP had swept the parliamentary elections in
1996 and 1998, polling 46 per cent and 48 per cent respectively. The state
BJP was faction-ridden, and it was said that each faction leader was happier
seeing Digvijaya Singh of the Congress (I) in power as chief minister than
any of his rivals. Singh, on his part, did not allow anti-incumbency to harm
him by denying tickets to a large number of incumbents. His re-election was
a big shock to the BJP.
But the BJP’s performance in Delhi was probably worse. The party had
removed Madan Lal Khurana from chief ministership because his name had
figured in the Jain hawala scam. Sahib Singh Verma took over as chief
minister, but when Khurana was found to be innocent, he saw that his way
back to the office of the chief minister was blocked. High food inflation,
prolonged infighting and a perceptible lack of governance forced the BJP
leadership to replace Verma with Sushma Swaraj, but not without drama.
Verma switched off his phone and went underground. When forced to quit, he
walked out of his official house and boarded a city bus. Swaraj took office
just forty days before Delhi went to the polls.
The BJP was wiped out, with the Congress (I) winning fifty-two out of the
seventy seats; its earlier tally was fourteen. The BJP’s vote share fell 17 per
cent, from over 50 per cent in February to 33 per cent, and it had only fifteen
MLAs as against the forty-nine seats won in 1993. Interestingly, the BJP’s
share of votes in the Delhi assembly polls has, over the years, remained in
the 32–34 per cent range, depriving them of the right to form the local
government. It won thirty-two seats and almost formed the government in late
2013, and one and a half years later, got wiped out, wining just three seats,
but with almost the same number of votes. What determines the number of
seats the BJP wins in Delhi is how well or badly others perform.
Were these late-1998 state assembly elections a referendum on Vajpayee?
The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) had conducted a
pre-election survey in Delhi. According to its findings, ‘63.5 per cent of the
respondents considered price rise as the biggest electoral issue, 47.8 per
cent said that the law and order situation in Delhi had deteriorated during
BJP’s five-year rule, nearly 50 per cent were unhappy about the shortage of
drinking water, and 57.7 per cent had a similar opinion about electricity
supply.’ Responsible or not, Vajpayee’s government had to take a beating that
pushed it on to the back foot.
Before Parliament met, there was further pressure on Vajpayee, this time
from the Christian community, which on 4 December, held a nationwide day
of protest. The protest was directed at the attacks that were said to have
taken place against members of the community. Christian institutions,
including schools, remained closed for the day. They said that there was
propaganda against the Christian community that it was ‘pursuing an
aggressive campaign of proselytisation’. A delegation of Church leaders and
laypersons met Vajpayee on the day of the protest. Vajpayee deprecated all
incidents of violence against the community, but he strongly refuted any
suggestion that the BJP might have been involved in them. The issue would,
of course, continue to dog Vajpayee for much of his tenure as prime minister.
Vajpayee was carrying too much of the burden of governance and needed
effective support. Even though Parliament was in session, he expanded his
ministry, which was unusual timing since the new ministers would have to
answer questions in Parliament even before they could settle down in office.
The induction of Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan as ministers was proof
that Vajpayee had indeed come into his own and would not allow himself to
be boxed in easily. Further, he needed a full-time foreign minister, and the
government’s bench strength needed credibility. Singh had the gravitas,
Mahajan brought in political skills, and Jagmohan, also sworn in, was
acknowledged as possessing formidable administrative capabilities.
It was widely expected that Sushma Swaraj would be back in government
after her stint as Delhi CM, but this was not to be. She had just been elected
to the Delhi assembly from the Hauz Khas constituency, and since she was a
member of the Lok Sabha, she was required to resign from one seat. She
asked Vajpayee, who wanted her to remain in the Delhi Assembly. However,
Vajpayee either changed his mind or was persuaded to do so, for Swaraj
resigned her Delhi assembly seat, but she did not become a minister in the
Vajpayee government for another two years.
WITH PARLIAMENT ON AND A visible need to push the legislative agenda,
Vajpayee, an economic liberalizer at heart, came out very strongly in favour
of the decision to allow FDI in insurance. He understood that business-as-
usual would drag India down and that bold steps were necessary to reverse
the decline in the country’s fortunes. He also seemed determined to establish
his authority and would not let the conflicting pulls and pressures of his
disparate alliance to hold him back any longer. He had to live up to the
expectation that his government would be different from the others and would
deliver. Therefore, to quote Frontline (19 December 1998), ‘Vajpayee put
his personal prestige on the line, warning that any hint of prolonged
turbulence over a crucial policy issue would deal a fatal blow to the
Government’s credibility.’
The party and the alliance, by and large, rallied behind Vajpayee. The only
notional concession was that no amount collected as insurance premium
would be allowed to be invested overseas. On the other hand, the
government maintained the equity ceiling for foreign investors at 26 per cent,
with another 14 per cent permitted for NRIs. There would be an Insurance
Regulatory Authority, vested with wide-ranging powers to ensure the security
of insurance funds. This was done despite continued opposition to this
measure from the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, part of the larger Sangh Parivar.
It would take Vajpayee another year to get the insurance law through, but
that was because his government fell and there was no Parliament for six
months. Fortunately, the Congress (I) and BJP shared the understanding that
this reform was necessary. Similarly, the Congress (I) went along with the
government in the passing of the amendments to the patent law to make it
compatible with a ruling of the World Trade Organization in a case that India
lost. There was, however, still considerable opposition to the proposed
changes, from both the left parties and from within the BJP and its
ideological partners like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. The Cabinet
discussed the proposed legislation a number of times but eventually agreed
that it had become necessary to amend the law without further delay. This
legal change would be approved in another three months, in the budget
session of Parliament.
 There was consternation in the non-Congress Opposition ranks that the
government’s legislative agenda was moving so smoothly. Could the
Congress’s attitude have anything to do with its expectation that it would
soon be running the government and therefore considered it better that the
BJP government took the initiative to get these controversial laws through
Parliament? There was no political capital to be gained if the BJP
government succeeded in pushing these changes through, which the Congress
agreed with in any case. However, if the government failed, it would stand
exposed as ineffectual. Arguably, the Congress (I) would not want to be seen
as being led by other Opposition parties. Instead, it would prefer to lead the
alternative government as the largest non-BJP outfit in Parliament, and to
reclaim its base in UP, where it was increasingly becoming irrelevant.
There was one piece of legislation that Vajpayee set much store by.
Though the Congress (I) was in agreement with it, the legislation still went
nowhere. This was the bill to reserve one-third seats in Parliament and state
legislatures for women. The UF government had taken the initiative, but with
large-scale opposition in its ranks, the bill it introduced lapsed when
Parliament was dissolved in December 1997. There were, no doubt,
practical difficulties with the proposal in a constituency-based first-past-the-
post system. Fixing some seats for women, as is done for scheduled
castes/scheduled tribes, would not work, because in the latter case, it was
done on the basis of the relative strength of the SC/ST population in
individual constituencies. The other option, of rotating seats, as is done in
municipalities and panchayats, was also not found feasible, since MPs would
not be sure that in the next election they could even stand from their own
constituencies. Vajpayee felt that the option of increasing the number of seats
in Parliament and state assemblies could be explored. However, opposition
from Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Sharad Yadav, backed by
members across parties, made even the introduction of the Constitution
Amendment Bill, providing reservation for women, almost impossible.
Vajpayee’s symbolic success was that the bill was introduced at all, with no
hope for any further movement.
 The relative success of the government in pushing its agenda somewhat in
the winter session of Parliament ensured that there was no immediate threat
to it. However, this did nothing to shore up the inherent instability of the
Vajpayee government, which meant placating Jayalalithaa. The DMK
government had filed cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA)
against her. It had also set up special courts under PCA to expedite the
disposal of the cases. Contrary to popular wisdom, the CBI and PCA are the
responsibility of the Ministry of Personnel, and not of the home ministry. The
minister in charge has always been the prime minister. However, the day-to-
day management rests with the minister of state, who, in this case, was K.R.
Janarthanan of the AIADMK.
Jayalalithaa wanted the government to intervene and found a legal
loophole, which was that it was only the Central government that had the
powers to establish and transfer cases under the PCA to special courts. After
many discussions, including lengthy consultations with Attorney General Soli
Sorabjee, the Ministry of Personnel issued a notification transferring the
cases back to the regular court. This was despite the fact that the Madras
High Court had upheld the creation of the special courts by DMK
government, and though the Supreme Court had admitted Jayalalithaa’s
appeal, it had not issued any stay orders. While politics is not about ethical
behaviour, however desperate the circumstances, this was a cynical move
that neither enhanced Vajpayee’s image nor, in the final analysis, prolonged
the life of his government. Even if it was Vajpayee acting on legal advice, it
was not a happy occasion.

IT IS NOT EASY TO understand the full scope of a prime minister’s

responsibilities. Vajpayee had to grapple with insurgencies in Assam that
seriously threatened the stability of the state. Unlike in the smaller states of
the north-east, reports of insurgency from where could be kept away from the
mainstream, Assam is a big state and effectively controls all access to the
other states in the region. Vajpayee had been given an extensive brief on the
Assam situation by the state’s governor, Lt Gen S.K. Sinha, right at the
beginning of his tenure. Armed insurgents of the United Liberation Front of
Asom (ULFA) and of Bodo groups had cross-border sanctuaries in
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, etc.
The Bhutanese government finally agreed with the Indian assessment that
such sanctuaries needed to be destroyed. Around December 1998, the Bhutan
Army started joint operations with Indian security forces against ULFA and
Bodo rebels in the hills and forests of southern Bhutan. The then king, Jigme
Singye Wangchuck, put his personal weight behind these flushing operations,
with reports emerging that the crown prince and present king, Jigme Khesar
Wangchuck, led the operations. Encouraged, Bangladesh too started putting
pressure on camps in its territory.
The Russian prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, visited India in early
December 1998, the first high-level visitor from any major power to visit
India since the Vajpayee government assumed office. In fact, no high-level
visitor from any Western country visited India in Vajpayee’s first term.
Primakov, was a stand-in for Yeltsin, who wanted to visit India but his health
was failing. The evening meeting at Hyderabad House, followed by dinner,
was a raucous event by diplomatic standards, since the meeting kept getting
postponed while the visitors quenched their thirst. However, there was also a
lot of substance to the meeting. India’s recent experience with Primakov had
not been very pleasant, when post-Pokhran, he bluntly told Brajesh Mishra
that India must sign the NPT and CTBT. Still, it was easier to talk to him than
to his boss, Yeltsin. Vajpayee’s phone conversations with Yeltsin were
nightmares for us. They were long, rambling monologues, which, because of
translation, made it hard for Vajpayee to recall all the points and nuances
later, when we made notes.
Primakov was a realist who had thought long and hard on re-positioning a
declining Russia in the world. Russia and China had started moving closer to
each other, partly as a response to Clinton’s unilateral actions in the Balkans
and West Asia. The Russia–China relationship could be described as
hardcore strategic, with a total absence of ideology. Primakov loudly
wondered whether India and China might develop a similar tack. A ‘strategic
triangle’ between Russia, India and China would, in his eyes, be the best way
to prevent the continuance of the post-Cold War unipolar world.
 His suggestion, though tantalizing, could not be endorsed easily. Vajpayee
responded by pointing out that while India’s relations with Russia had stood
the test of time (after all, Russia sold more defence supplies to India than to
the rest of the world), post-1991, their non-defence economic ties had
collapsed. In the case of China, Vajpayee was defensive and agreed that
bilateral relations must improve. He, however, made it clear that India would
not like to be in any bloc, not even in a partnership that could be seen as
directed against any other country, certainly not the US. In any case, their
bilateral relations with the US were most important for all three countries.
Vajpayee wanted India and Russia to sign a strategic partnership agreement,
whose contours were broadly agreed upon. These would be long-term
military cooperation, possible purchase of important defence platforms (like
the incomplete aircraft carrier ‘Admiral Gorshkov’), advanced jet trainers,
mid-air refuelling planes, T-90 tanks, the joint manufacture of silicon chips
and cooperation in hydrocarbon exploration and development (including in
Sakhalin). Russia also categorically confirmed to India that it would not sell
defence equipment to Pakistan. India and Russia further shared concerns over
the evolving situation in Afghanistan and decided to continue to collaborate
over it. There were obvious disagreements on the NPT and CTBT, with
Primakov arguing that India must sign the former if it wanted to join the UN
Security Council.
The month of December was almost done with. It was on a cold and misty
morning that Vajpayee waited in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, where
Sri Lanka’s President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, was to be given a ceremonial
welcome. Kumaratunga, who was staying at Rashtrapati Bhavan itself, was
late. We had been informed by those who knew her that she was always late,
and she lived up to her reputation. The visit was an important one. Later that
day (28 December), the India–Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement was signed.
This was as much political as economic. The hope was that it would lead to
the economic and political stabilization of Sri Lanka. The economies of the
two countries were not very complementary from the point of view of
bilateral trade, since both were interested in the export of garments and tea.
Though limited in its ultimate impact, the Agreement helped cement India–Sri
Lanka relations.
On 30 December, the Vajpayee government threw a bombshell. It issued an
order for the dismissal of the navy chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. It was a
simple order which read, ‘The President is pleased to withdraw his pleasure
for the continuance of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat . . . on account of the loss of
confidence in his fitness.’ This was done under Section 15(1) of the Navy
Act, 1957. It was possibly the most difficult decision that Vajpayee had to
make. I realized this because for Vajpayee, and indeed for the BJP, the armed
forces were an exalted institution, which they worshipped. In their eyes, for
history to reverse itself and for India to emerge as a world power, we needed
a strong military. Their main grouse against Nehru was for his failure to
defend India in 1947–48 in Kashmir, and for failing to build up a strong army
that could have avoided the humiliation of 1962. Despite all their differences
with Indira Gandhi, who sent them to jail during the Emergency, she was still
an admired figure for many in the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar, because
of her dissection of Pakistan in 1971. However, contrary to legend, Vajpayee
never called her Durga!
In the Admiral Bhagwat case, the issue had been building up for months.
Bhagwat would not accept government rules on promotions or on the appeal
process of performance appraisal of individuals. He’d had a running battle
with the navy’s hierarchy, with even a past chief recommending his dismissal
from service. Bhagwat himself had argued that in the case of promotions and
appraisal, the navy chief could only propose, and it was for the government
to decide. Despite repeated counselling, including by Brajesh Mishra, and
using the good offices of Sharad Pawar, Bhagwat was not prepared to accept
orders passed by the defence minister.
Something had to give, but it wasn’t Vajpayee. My own hunch is that with
the government almost on permanent crisis mode, and with allies and party
colleagues putting relentless pressure on Vajpayee, Bhagwat’s assessment
was that the government would back off. This was a mistake. A reluctant
Vajpayee was forced to accept an unpalatable truth that Bhagwat’s
misdemeanours had crossed all limits of discipline. There was confusion on
who could sack a serving chief. Since the President is the ceremonial head of
the armed forces, it was suggested that the matter be taken up with him. It
was left to me to point out that as per the ‘Transaction of Rules’, which
governs government functioning, it is the minister concerned who exercises
the powers of the President. Even the most minor of government orders—for
the purchase of pencils, for example—are issued in the name of the
President. As are all appointment orders. Ministers, in turn, delegate
financial and administrative powers to different levels below them. As a
matter of caution, the cabinet committee on security endorsed the decision to
sack Bhagwat.
Bhagwat did not take this lying down. Niloufer Bhagwat, his wife and also
his advocate, used rather strong language, alleging that Bhagwat’s successor,
Admiral Sushil Kumar, was unfit. She even accused the government of acting
on communal lines. Three of the key players in this issue—George
Fernandes, Admiral Sushil Kumar and the then defence secretary, Ajit Kumar
—were all Christians. Since Bhagwat had a running feud with one senior
naval officer, Vice Admiral Harinder Singh, a Sikh Officer, whom the Akalis
were said to be supporting (a claim made by Niloufer Bhagwat), this
Christian angle was missed by many. On New Year’s Day 1999, as if to
emphasize that he did not regret his decision, Vajpayee paid an unscheduled
visit to a naval warship in Port Blair on his visit to the Andamans, where
Vice Admiral Singh was the local fortress commander. However, despite the
sacking and the lack of any legal intervention to reverse it, l’affaire Bhagwat
would not go away.
The coming year, it was hoped, would to be different. But how different?
From Port Blair, Vajpayee went to Bengaluru via Chennai, where he
inaugurated the Indian Science Congress, keeping up the tradition of past
prime ministers. Vajpayee also launched his dream project, the National
Highways Development Project, in Bengaluru. The full impact of this
initiative would be visible only in the future; Vajpayee had to demonstrate
similar vision and leadership politically.
This opportunity came to him at the BJP National Convention, which was
what Vajpayee had primarily come to Bengaluru for. This meeting was being
held in the context of the drubbing the party had received in the legislative
assembly elections, the concerns that Christians were being targeted, and the
controversies within the BJP and the Sangh Parivar over economic reforms.
Kushabhau Thakre, in his presidential address, mentioned that the perceived
delay in containing the price rise had hurt the party in the assembly elections.
The backlash was swift. Madan Lal Khurana, a minister in Vajpayee’s
cabinet and member of the party’s national executive, strongly defended
Vajpayee and blamed his attackers in the Parivar for blocking government
decisions and obstructing smooth administration. He was scathing in his
criticism of the Bajrang Dal, Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Vishwa Hindu
Parishad. Khurana also announced his resignation from the BJP’s national
executive.
It was time for Vajpayee to assert himself. He said that while ‘widest
consultations are both desirable and necessary, decisions of the government
are final’. He was not going to accept any back-seat driving by people
outside the government. A draft resolution on economic matters had been
prepared by K.R. Malkani, an RSS veteran who edited many publications.
This draft was not taken up, and instead, the party adopted a fresh resolution
prepared by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. The party agreed that the
‘government is the best judge of the country’s economic situation and is best
placed to take appropriate steps’. The resolution endorsed the IRA and
Patent Bills. Sinha added that there was ‘no contradiction between economic
reforms and Swadeshi’. The political resolution did not blame the BJP
government for losses in the Rajasthan, MP and Delhi assembly elections. It
described the violence against Christian places of worship in Gujarat as
extremely unfortunate and agreed that the party should speak with one voice.
The clear message was that the continuance of the government would be
given precedence over the priorities of the party.
Vajpayee followed up this public acknowledgement of concerns of the
Christian community, particularly about attacks on places of worship in
Gujarat, by visiting the Dang district of that state. We saw damage—broken
tiles, parts of the roofs of those temporary (kucha) structures had been
destroyed—and also met with members of the community and others. In some
areas, we were told that reconversion efforts had been started. The Christian
population of this predominantly tribal district had gone up by 416 per cent
since 1981, and their total number had reached 30,000 due to evangelical
efforts. We were told, and I later read about it in the Economic and Political
Weekly, that in a particular village, Christian tribals refused to contribute to
the traditional village feast, which led to large-scale resentment. In one of
Vajpayee’s meetings with members of the civil society, two Sarvodaya
leaders, Chunibhai Vaidya and Ghelubhai Nayak, opposed the violence
strongly but also said that they were upset by the conversions, quoting even
Gandhi. They sought a debate on conversions, which Vajpayee endorsed in
all sincerity. This endorsement was to come back to haunt him in ways
wholly unexpected.

ON THE NIGHT OF 22–23 January 1999, in a heinous crime that put the country to
shame, an Australian Christian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two
young sons, were burnt to death as they slept inside their station wagon, by a
mob in Manoharpur village of the Keonjhar district in Odisha. The mob was
said to have been led by a member of the Bajrang Dal named Dara Singh.
Staines had gone to conduct a jungle camp, where he would preach the Bible.
Tensions had been brewing in this village and neighbouring areas between
the converted Santhals and the non-converted, with the former said to have
tilled land when it was not supposed to be tilled and taken a few other steps
that went against tribal culture and practices. The state of Odisha was ruled
by the Congress (I), and while there were multiple allegations against Dara
Singh, there appeared to be no formal cases charged or being pursued by the
police.
Vajpayee was shocked and horrified. I never saw him look so perturbed.
The murders had, in fact, shaken the entire country. Vajpayee immediately
condemned the murders, said that a judicial enquiry would be appointed and
sent three ministers, George Fernandes, Navin Patnaik and Pramod Mahajan,
to the spot. Fernandes, on his visit, questioned why the state government had
not taken action against Dara Singh. According to Fernandes, ‘After Pokhran,
there are many forces that don’t want this government to remain . . . Someone
had decided at some point of time that Staines had to be killed.’ The Bajrang
Dal denied that it had any link with the murders. Advani backed them, for
which he received a lot of flak. Dara Singh was apprehended, convicted and
given the death sentence, which was reduced to life imprisonment later, but
the Bajrang Dal connection could never be established.
Vajpayee was so affected by the brutality that he sat on a one-day fast on
30 January, Gandhi’s martyrdom day. But this got no traction. On the contrary,
some analysts attributed his talk of national debate on conversions as
encouraging such violence, for it delegitimized the work of missionaries—a
conclusion which could not have been more distorted and wrong. In fact,
Vajpayee’s sadness about this and many other such incidents was well
recorded by India Today (18 February 1999) when he said, ‘The outer shell
of democracy is no doubt intact, but it appears to be moth-eaten from inside.’
Simultaneously, the Khurana issue was coming to a boil. He wrote a letter
to party president, Thakre, resigning from the national executive—something
he had said in his speech at Bengaluru. He also said in the letter that he was
‘shaken over the killing of the missionary’. He sought ‘permission to atone
for the countrywide anti-minority attacks’. He added that he considered
‘Hindutva to be nationalism . . . The meaning of pseudo-Hindutva for some
could be destroying cinema halls, digging up cricket pitches, but not that
Hindutva which I believe in.’ More than the language used, the fact that the
contents of the letter reached the media before it reached Thakre, could not
go unchallenged. Thakre accepted his resignation, and when Khurana
dropped in to see Vajpayee, presumably seeking help for the second and last
time, I was the harbinger of bad news.
Khurana had been waiting in my room when I came back and conveyed
Vajpayee’s terse message that he should submit his letter of resignation. I
knew Khurana well, from his days as the chief minister of Delhi. He was
always warm and supportive of my maverick ways, and whenever I came up
with a bold proposals on education, he counselled me to seek the advice of
Jag Pravesh Chandra, former chief executive councillor (like chief minister),
a Congressman to his bones and then sitting on the Opposition benches. I felt
terrible as I handed Khurana a blank sheet of paper, on which he wrote his
letter of resignation.
What probably made it worse for Khurana was that he was basically
reflecting what he thought was Vajpayee’s angst, partly personal and partly
structural. The first as represented by the ideological issues with the Sangh
Parivar, which sometimes resulted in direct attacks on Vajpayee. It was also
structural, as neither did the BJP have the numbers to push its agenda, nor did
the alliance have the cohesion to be able to deliver on good governance.
Khurana, unfortunately, had crossed the line and tarred the reputation of the
party and the government comprehensively. Disagreements and arguments are
fine, but his attacks deteriorated into becoming unguided missiles that
worked against Vajpayee, against what Khurana himself was arguing for and
ultimately, against the BJP as well.
Khurana, however, did not relent easily. In an interview after his
resignation, he was quoted as saying, ‘There are elements in the RSS which
want to remote control this government and tarnish its image . . . A section of
the RSS is hell bent on destroying Vajpayee.’
Within a couple of days of the Staines murders, on 25 January, twenty-five
Dalits, including women and children, were massacred by the Ranbir Sena in
Shankarbigha village of the Jehanabad district in Bihar. Reports suggested
that this terrible violence arose from land-related tensions. The Naxalites
had effectively taken over thousands of acres of land of the upper castes,
with both sides resorting to violence. The Dalits were identified as
supporters of Naxalism. The brutality of the violence, which for the first time
targeted women and infants, was meant to send a message to anybody with
Naxalite sympathies. It was chilling. Unfortunately, the Rabri Devi-led Bihar
government was either ineffective or had a stake in inter-caste tensions. The
tragedy was that nationally, this massacre soon became a non-event.
Continuing his political offensive, at the end of January 1999, Vajpayee
attended the Swadeshi Mela organized by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch
(SJM). He’d probably decided to make up with the SJM, many of whose
leaders he knew well and, by and large, shared a common world view with.
He said that they all belonged to the same family, and he welcomed their
suggestions but added that he may not be able to accept all of them. It was
reconciliation but on his terms. Similarly, he reached out to different parties
within the ruling alliance. He was very keen on Mamata joining the cabinet,
but she wanted only railways, and the Samata Party (SP) could not be asked
to accommodate her at their cost. The SP also wanted their senior leader,
Abdul Ghafoor, made a minister. Jayalalithaa wanted some more of her
nominees, including Ramamurthy, to be made ministers (Ramamurthy was in
the government from her quota). She also made it clear that just because her
nominees were made ministers, it should not be taken to mean that she would
cease her onslaught of criticisms. Internecine conflict within the Akalis meant
that their nominee Prem Singh Chandumajra withdrew his candidature.
Vajpayee effectively said a no to the allies by simply not including anyone.
They would have to wait.
Vajpayee, it seemed, was always under attack, from different sides at
different times. Even the activist role of the National Commission for
Minorities (NCM), post-March 1998, indicated the kind of pre-conceived
notions and biases that Vajpayee had to encounter. The NCM sent its team to
Gujarat as early as August 1998, as if predicting that there would be trouble
in that state. There had been no violence till then, only sporadic, localized
tensions, no different from the past or elsewhere.
The team was composed of the NCM’s vice chairperson, Reverend James
Massey, and member Marzban Patravala, a Samajwadi Party activist who
had lost the 1996 parliamentary elections on that party’s ticket. The team was
also accompanied a lawyer, Y.M. Muchala, and two journalists, namely John
Dayal (general secretary, All India Catholic Union, who had authored a
pamphlet for the Catholic Bishops Confederation of India in 1997 on the
occasion of the fiftieth year of India’s independence, arguing for reservation
for ‘Dalit’ Christians); and Javed Anand (who later attained prominence
along with his wife, Teesta Setalvad, in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots of
2002). The NCM submitted its first report on Gujarat in September 1998. Its
chairman, Tahir Mahmood, was quoted in India Today (18 February 1999)
as saying that the ‘problem in Gujarat is based on a central theme: alleged
conversions.’ He did not present any facts in support of his claim and
completely ignored the census report of Dang.
Massey wrote to the chief minister of Gujarat, Keshubhai Patel, and to
Advani in December, saying, ‘To an impartial observer it appears that the
control of the entire country, particularly the state of Gujarat, has been
mortgaged to the activities of the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the RSS.’ Again,
a case of judgement without evidence! Tahir Mahmood happily informed the
media that he saw his tenure as chair, NCM, divided into two phases—pre-
March 1998 and post-March 1998. Mahmood was the person who wrote the
legislation (Muslim Women’s Act) that overrode the progressive Supreme
Court judgment in the Shah Bano case. The NCM submitted two more reports
on Gujarat, in January and February 1999, the latter report was presented to
the President himself, possibly to get greater media attention.
Despite the fact that constitutional bodies like the NCM had started
behaving in this cavalier manner, Vajpayee was still able to assert his
authority and tried to ensure a sense of balance. However, whatever he did
was never enough to silence those who were determined to show him in a
bad light, even by misrepresenting his position. To wit, the historian K.N.
Panikkar, who wrote, ‘The response of Prime Minister Vajpayee, who is
considered a good man and a liberal by many, was the most devious. By
calling for a public debate on conversions, he suggested that the blame, in
fact, rests with the victims.’ As Panikkar wrote in ‘Towards a Hindu Nation’
(Frontline, 30 January–12 February 1999), this ‘anti-Christian tirade’ was ‘.
. . another example of the unfolding of the fascist agenda of the Parivar’. He
concluded that ‘the BJP leadership, including the Prime Minister, has not
unequivocally condemned it is reflective of its tacit acquiescence’.
 7
The Bus Ride

‘My message to the people of Pakistan will be short and simple. Put aside the
bitterness of the past, together let us make a new beginning.’

—Atal Bihari Vajpayee at Atari border, 20 February 1999

‘De-freeze the Kashmir problem, weaken Indian resolve, and bring India to the
conference table without provoking a general war.’

—Maj. Gen. A.H. Malik, XII Div., who planned Operation Gibraltar

Even as India was trying to navigate the international arena and establish its
position as a responsible state, domestic developments were a perpetual
cause of distraction. The issue of violence against Christians had suddenly
acquired salience with the brutal murder of Graham Staines and his two sons
in Odisha. With this incident, India was once again on the back foot globally,
with an extremely high level of negative reporting. The general trend of the
reports was that the minorities were being persecuted and that India was
close to becoming a genocidal state. So much so that even the friends of India
raised alarm. Congressman Gary Ackerman, co-chair of the now emergent
India Caucus, said in an Indian event in the US that ‘I must warn all of you
that unless the Government of India does act firmly, showing the whole world
that it won’t tolerate attacks against religious minorities . . . New Delhi may
have serious problems on the Hill. Not merely image problems but
legislative sanctions as well.’
Simultaneously, and almost as a complementary to this negative publicity,
the US nuclear non-proliferation pressure on India was upped considerably.
From Strobe Talbott to his boss, Madeleine Albright, the message they gave
to the US Congress and to the world was that India was ready to sign the
CTBT, following which sanctions would be lifted. As if to soften the blow,
or conversely, to put us on the defensive, they said that Pakistan, too, was
readying itself to sign the CTBT.
In parallel, Russia’s attempt to reframe international order, by creating a
strategic triangle involving Russia, China and India, had run into a wall, an
idea which Prime Minister Primakov had pushed in his December visit to
Delhi. Primakov was assured that India valued friendship with Russia and
would strengthen it. In early February 1999, China formally rejected
Primakov’s idea of a strategic alliance between Russia, China and India,
more or less deploying the same logic as India.
According to the Chinese foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, China had
‘always adhered independently to a foreign policy oriented towards peace’.
He made it clear that while China had a strategic partnership with Russia,
this ‘includes neither alliances, nor confrontation with third countries such as
the United States’. In any case, he said that his country’s relations with India
were ‘far from ideal’. In the context of the present times, it is clear that China
has completely given up such objections, while it is India that keeps
emphasizing that its approach towards the Indo-Pacific in general, and the
Quad in particular, is aimed at confronting, or isolating, China. However, if
Tang’s successor in 2019 was to say that India–China relations were ‘far
from ideal’, he would not have been wrong. Some things, it seems, never
change.
Vivek Katju, who enjoyed, and rather continues to enjoy, the reputation of
being a hawk in the Indo–Pakistani strategic circles, rang me on 2 February
1999, around mid-morning. What he said challenged my own understanding
of Vivek’s world view; for him, defending the national interest was the
driving force, and if that made him appear as a hawk, so be it. In fact, Pervez
Musharraf in his memoir, In the Line of Fire, blames Vivek for the failure of
the Agra talks—a remark easy to make but wholly inaccurate.
Going back to that winter morning of 1999, Vivek said that the Indian
Express had carried a long interview of their editor-in-chief, Shekhar Gupta,
with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The short point of the interview was that
Sharif was inviting Vajpayee to Pakistan. Vivek worried that the response the
Ministry of External Affairs had finalized, was going to be a damp squib.
The ministry spokesperson was going to say that the ‘government would give
an appropriate answer as and when a formal invitation was received’. Vivek
argued with me that our response should be a positive one and that we should
not worry about formality. Unfortunately, Vivek said, even Brajesh Mishra
had gone along with the ministry’s position. Could I reach out to the PM,
who, by the way, was away in Lucknow, his parliamentary constituency?
Vivek felt that this was an opportunity that had to be grasped. I spoke to
Vajpayee, who agreed that we should send out a positive message. As
Shekhar Gupta subsequently wrote, Sharif himself was apprehensive that his
invitation might be snubbed by Vajpayee.
Sometime later that day, while addressing a press meet in Lucknow,
Vajpayee said, ‘I would like to have a bus ride from Delhi to Lahore.’ Since
this was a bombshell, the media wanted more information. At that stage, all
Vajpayee could say was that the details would be worked out between the
two governments. Since it wasn’t Delhi, Vajpayee could get away with such
cryptic answers. He did clarify, however, that some progress has been made
but added that ‘much ground [is] yet to be covered before India becomes a
signatory to the CTBT’. He made it clear that there were obviously a number
of steps required before this could happen.
As expected, this announcement of the Lahore visit set off a multitude of
reactions from analysts and commentators. Significantly, the impending visit
was generally seen as an indication that India and Pakistan were moving on
the road to signing the CTBT. This was because the US specifically, and the
West in general, maintained that ‘only close and friendly relations between
India and Pakistan can avoid effectively a suicidal nuclear race in South
Asia’. This was despite India shouting from the rooftops that its security
concerns went beyond Pakistan.
There were a number of reports in the media that Western and Japanese
sources believed that India would sign the CTBT by end of April or early
May. This belief was based on a read-out of the Jaswant–Talbots talks, as
briefed by the Americans. To strengthen this narrative, the State Department
spokesperson, James Rubin, on 2 February, said that the US had not diluted
its commitment to the CTBT, in order for India and Pakistan to sign it. The
unambiguous message was that it was India, and not the US, which was
making major concessions in moving ahead with improving relations. The US
made it explicit that the CTBT would come into effect as per the treaty; in
other words, India and Pakistan would sign up. For India and Pakistan, the
expectation was clear. They needed to have a number of mechanisms in
place, namely a nuclear weapons and delivery system restraint regime; a
stringent export control system; a moratorium on fissile materials production
pending agreement on the FMCT; direct India–Pakistan talks on all
outstanding bilateral issues, including nuclear. It was obvious that the US
was targeting to get India on board for not just the CTBT but also for the
NPT.
Editorial comment in India was more upbeat and less about the
international ramifications. It was suggested that the bus trip showed a new
mood of bonhomie, suggesting ‘a distinct thawing of relations’. There were
references to the idea of a common destiny of both India and Pakistan,
despite the three wars, Pakistan’s proxy war and terrorist activity elsewhere.
Analysts remembered that it was Vajpayee as foreign minister who had
opened up to Pakistan. There was a general feeling, which exists even now,
that in dealing with Pakistan, the BJP in power would be much less
constrained.
The news from Pakistan was somewhat different. Sharif was seen as
acting under economic compulsions, in addition to pressures from the US.
After all, Pakistan was economically much weaker than India. There was
appreciation that both leaders were aware of the limitations of confrontation.
With this move, Nawaz Sharif was signalling a shift away from Kashmir and
towards investments and trade, recognizing that resources should not be
wasted on an arms race. There were concerns in both countries, more so in
Pakistan, that signing the CTBT was a pre-condition for lifting economic
sanctions.
What made things worse for Sharif, though, was that in terms of Pakistan’s
power structure, his position was weak. As a Pakistani commentator,
Rasheed Rahman, bluntly explained, ‘The terms of “endearment” between the
military and civilian spheres, are still heavily loaded in favour of the
former.’ According to him, and to the agreement of many, none of the civilian
governments had established that they hold power, ‘and not merely occupy
offices’. The Pakistan Army had a powerful instrument of ensuring this,
which was that the electoral process was less than credible. This instrument
is as potent at present as it was two decades ago, with the electoral victory
of Imran Khan in 2018 a powerful reminder of it, if any was needed.
With the confirmation of Vajpayee’s Lahore visit, there was palpable
excitement, and unrealistic expectation, in the air. It was said that Sharif
would be visiting Delhi for the India–Pakistan Test match due in a couple of
days. That the visit did not happen was understandable. But Vajpayee did go
to the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi, met both the teams, spent some
time watching the match and later hosted a reception for the teams at 7 RCR.
On that day, I enjoyed my conversation with Raj Singh Dungarpur, the then
president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, about cricketers of
yore, including the American fast bowler John King, who scored over one
thousand runs and took over a hundred wickets in one season playing for an
English county in the early twentieth century.
Slowly, the officialdom got into the act. The Ministry of External Affairs
(MEA) hailed the proposed Lahore initiative as a path-breaking exercise, as
something that ‘will be one more manifestation of India’s abiding desire to
build peaceful, friendly and co-operative relationship with Pakistan’.
Vajpayee would become first Indian PM to visit Pakistan since Rajiv
Gandhi’s visit for the SAARC summit in 1988. At the same time, the MEA
also cautioned that Pakistan was yet to convey its acceptance, or rejection, of
the proposed dates (17–20 February) for the meeting between the foreign
secretaries of both countries. A series of meetings at the foreign-secretary
level had been mandated at the Vajpayee–Sharif talks in New York in
September 1998. That meeting had identified a set of six issues as the agenda
of these talks.
The Pakistani establishment now warmed up to Vajpayee’s proposed bus
ride. Their foreign ministry said that this ‘is a welcome step and would go a
long way in establishing good ties with India’. As with all bureaucracies,
including our own, they added that they were still waiting for official
communications from New Delhi that Vajpayee would indeed travel to
Lahore. One side wanted a written invitation, while the other wanted a
written confirmation.
When asked about the visit, Jaswant Singh, who was in London for not
very pleasant talks with the British government, explained that Vajpayee had
decided on taking the inaugural bus to Lahore months ago, ‘but the
announcement had come only now’. He was right that the idea of the bus
service was mooted in New York but had since moved rather slowly. In fact,
all actual approval and agreements were finalized in the two weeks between
Vajpayee’s public acceptance of Sharif’s invitation and the actual travel.
Interestingly, at this time, the Vajpayee government also decided to grant a
visa to Salman Rushdie to visit India. This announcement was made by
Jaswant Singh in London. The Vajpayee government would later allow him to
take possession of his ancestral house in Solan, to my mind, by taking a
liberal interpretation of the law governing evacuee property.1 Singh held
talks with both Tony Blair and Foreign Minister Robin Cook, whose
encounter with I.K. Gujral in 1997 has been referred to earlier. Singh
explained in detail how the India–Pakistan agenda was developing and went
beyond just the bus service. There was the resumption of officer-level talks;
India was interested in the supply of power from Pakistan; it had purchased
sugar from Pakistan; and their discussions would cover nuclear issues also.
Singh later told the media that on the CTBT, India would not stand in the way
of its coming to force, ‘provided all other Article 44 countries agreed to it’.
He also made it clear that he was in London not to make a case for lifting
sanctions but to see that our position is better understood. Cook’s gratuitous
advise on Lahore was that Kashmir be discussed too, which was obviously
on the table.
It was not as if there were no discordant notes in India or in Pakistan. Bal
Thackeray thought it was futile for Vajpayee to attempt to improve relations
with Pakistan. He was clear that ‘Vajpayee’s bus travel to Lahore will not
help him in either improving India’s relations with Pakistan or get extra votes
back home for his party’. For some time, Thackeray had been targeting
Vajpayee and the BJP over Pakistan, despite the fact the Shiv Sena and the
BJP had been allies for a long time, jointly running the government in
Maharashtra, besides being in the NDA.
In order not to disrupt Pakistan cricket team’s first tour to India in over a
decade, in the face of very strong objection from the Shiv Sena, the
government agreed not to schedule any match in Maharashtra, remembering
how the 1991 tour was disrupted when the Wankhede pitch was dug up. Not
satisfied with Maharashtra being kept out of the tour, Shiv Sena workers this
time attacked the pitch in Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium. Fortunately, the
damage was minor. Then, on 18 January, when Advani was in Mumbai, over
seventy Shiv Sena workers vandalized the office of the Board of Control of
Cricket in India (BCCI) in Mumbai, damaging, in the bargain, even the 1983
World Cup won by India. It was left to Advani to sue for peace; Thackeray
announced that the Shiv Sena was ending its agitation against the Pakistan
tour because he did not want the Congress (I) to benefit from these public
differences. However, he continued to use rather strong language against
Vajpayee and Advani on this issue.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF the border, there were reports that the Lashkar-e-Taiba
(LeT) would disrupt the proposed Lahore–Delhi bus service. Of all the
jihadi groups that have emerged out of Pakistan, LeT was, and is, seen as an
arm of the army, rather than an entity supported by it. The Jamaat-e-Islami
youth wing (Pasban) also announced that they would ‘not allow Vajpayee to
enter Pakistan as his visit will harm the cause of Kashmir’. Later, the Jamaat-
e-Islami and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) opposed the visit,
with the former sending its storm troopers in the streets of Lahore at the time
of the visit. But no major political party joined in this opposition. In a sense,
these opinions reflected the misgivings the Pakistani establishment harboured
at the bus initiative, in opposition to the positive sentiments on the Indian
side.
Veteran broadcaster David Frost’s interview with Jaswant Singh and the
Pakistani foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, brought out this contradiction quite
starkly. For Singh, Vajpayee’s bus ride to Lahore was part of confidence-
building measures. He explained that talks had been going on, and both the
PMs had issued a joint statement. Aziz, on the other hand, talked about
India’s ‘inflexibility on Kashmir’, mentioning the ‘high-level deployment of
troops and the number of civilian casualties’. He conceded that both PMs
were talking to help build a better world and that the US had been helpful.
These differences in approach would be on full display in the days
immediately prior to Vajpayee’s travel dates, when parliamentarians from
both sides met in Islamabad. Pakistan’s finance and commerce minister, Ishaq
Dar, was a rare public figure in that country to have a different take on the
matter. At a SAARC ministerial meeting in Dhaka, he said that political
conflicts between India and Pakistan should be no bar to increasing trade,
because ‘the governments of India and Pakistan were firm on improving the
situation’.
In case anybody thought that with the Lahore bus yatra in the offing, all
else was forgotten, discussions in the US Congress on the Christian issue
reminded us of the need for continuous vigilance, early action and persistent
balancing act. The US Congress wanted India to protect minorities and
mentioned what it saw as a sharp increase in violence. It specifically wanted
the Indian government to ‘check burnings, beatings, assault, rapes’. It
appreciated the government’s condemnation of violence, Vajpayee’s visit to
Gujarat and the arrest of the main accused of Graham Staines murder in
Odisha, but was ‘concerned about your government’s inability to protect the
basic human rights of Christians in India . . . while political organizations
such as the World Hindu Council, which has been allied with your political
party, continues to foment violence and call for a ban on conversions’.
 Taking his mind off the domestic and international pulls and pressures,
which were becoming immense at that time, Vajpayee travelled to the
Caribbean and to Morocco in the first fortnight of February 1999. It was the
first prime ministerial visit to Trinidad and Tobago since 1968. Our host,
Basudeo Panday, was the first prime minister of Indian descent in Trinidad
and Tobago and had been the chief guest at the 1997 Republic Day in New
Delhi. It was moving to hear the local band play ‘Suhani Raat Dhal Chuki’ at
the airport welcoming ceremony.
The dynamics of race politics and tensions that Trinidad was grappling
with came to the fore when Vajpayee laid the foundation stone of the
Government of India-funded Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Cultural Co-
operation, on a site donated by the local government. Prime Minister Panday,
to balance this, announced at the function that his government would establish
a research centre on Trinidad and Tobago Carnival in order to satisfy the
Afro–Caribbean community. Incidentally, when Panday had visited India in
1997, the Indian media generated a wholly unnecessary controversy on
whether he was a Brahmin.
For me, the highlight of that visit was meeting an elderly lady, who was
born in India and had moved to Trinidad in the 1930s. She was an exception,
for the present-day Indo–Trinidadians are the descendants of indentured
labour taken by the British Raj to different parts of their empire, largely to
grow sugarcane. This was necessitated by British economic interest,
hamstrung by the abolition of slavery. The terms of engagement, or
agreement, were legally governed by an agreement, hence they referred to
themselves as girmityas, which was slavery in all but name.
From Trinidad, we hopped over to Montego Bay in Jamaica for the G15
Summit. It seems an embarrassment to remember but once upon a time, India
and a large number of developing countries worked hard to try and
restructure what was called ‘global financial architecture’. The G15 was the
most important such platform. Vajpayee had been unable to attend the
previous iteration in Cairo (May 1998), because of the nuclear tests. The
expectation this time was that India would offer major inputs in this
restructuring exercise.
 The Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, fresh from the
setbacks he’d suffered during the East Asian crisis, when his country’s
economy went into free fall, was in full flow and had the hall at his feet with
his denunciation of global capital flows. On the other hand, there were
countries like Brazil and Peru, plugged into global financial markets and
worried about doing anything that would upset their access and therefore
threaten their growth story. In between was Vajpayee, trying a balancing out.
So on the one hand, he called for transparency in regulations governing
financial markets, and linked booms and busts to massive capital flows (‘hot
money’). The reality was that such turbulence even affected countries not
directly involved due to global interdependence, recalling the adverse effect
of the 1997 Asian crisis on India.
On the other hand, Vajpayee was clear that ‘India remains committed to
continuing with our economic liberalization programme at a pace and in a
manner that we consider is best suited to our needs’. Ultimately, all these
efforts at restructuring came to nothing as the largest and fastest-growing
developing country, China, stayed out, preferring to link its fortunes with the
supply of its manufactured products to the developed world and later to all of
us. Ultimately, most of these countries needed financing from the World
Bank/IMF; where they did not, they still needed to meet the financial ratios
laid down before they could access global financial markets. The limited
restructuring which happened was in reaction to the North Atlantic financial
crisis of 2008 and the need to make China a larger stakeholder in the system.
On our return, we stopped in Morocco for a day—a whirlwind of a day at
that. Breakfast on the plane, lunch in Rabat, evening tea in Marrakesh and
dinner in Casablanca. The last one was only for a few of us, but it had been a
gruelling day and Vajpayee was up to it. The formal meeting with the
Moroccan prime minister, Abderrahmane Youssoufi, was in Rabat, where we
stayed. The king, who ran the show despite an elected government, wanted a
meeting, but he was in Marrakesh, so we were flown there on a windowless
plane. Before meeting the king, we were taken on a quick tour of what was
supposed to be the most expensive hotel in the world, La Mamounia. Then,
without any warning, the king promptly awarded a medal to Vajpayee,
possibly some kind of national honour.
India’s relations with Morocco were on the mend at this time. India used
to import phosphates from Morocco for conversion into fertilizers. India was
also negotiating setting up a joint venture fertilizer plant in Morocco.
Bilateral relations had worsened since India had recognized the Polisario
Front as the government of newly decolonized, disputed territory of Western
Sahara. But India was now moving away from that position. The formal
dinner, hosted by the Moroccan prime minister was in Rabat, but it was
likely to be long and boring, like all such dinners, so off a few of us went to
Casablanca. We covered the hundred-plus kilometres in less than an hour.

THINGS WERE MOVING RATHER WELL on the Lahore front, if less well on the
domestic political front. All formal approvals of the bus service were in
place. It would run point-to-point between Delhi and Lahore, a distance of
around 500 km, with three technical halts, taking a total of fourteen hours.
The flagging off would be held at Ambedkar Stadium, New Delhi, on 20
February at 6 a.m. Though Vajpayee was to travel on the initial run, the plan
was wisely modified to the extent that he would board the bus at Amritsar
airport and travel the thirty-seven kilometres to the Attari border on it, where
he would be received by Nawaz Sharif. In fact, the official agreement
between the two sides on the establishment of the bus service was formally
signed by High Commissioner G. Parthasarathy and the secretary,
communications ministry, Government of Pakistan, barely two days before
the actual visit.
For the US and most developed countries, every step towards Lahore and
the establishment of better bilateral relations seemed to revolve around the
nuclear issue, and the false India–Pakistan equivalence. Strobe Talbott chose
the impending visit to affirm that the Clinton administration was determined
to see India and Pakistan sign both the CTBT and the NPT. He added that the
US position ‘remains that neither India nor Pakistan should possess or deploy
any nuclear weapons’ and ‘any number higher than zero’ would not be fine.
Yet he let on that the US had accepted that ‘neither India nor Pakistan is
likely to abandon its nuclear program any time soon’.
Talbott hinted that both PMs were building domestic consensus in favour
of signing the CTBT. At that time there was a G8 meeting in Tokyo, which
made it clear that there would be no lifting of economic sanctions till India
and Pakistan ‘demonstrate more willingness’ towards moving to signing the
NPT. If the US was serious about India signing the CTBT/NPT, statements
like these were certainly not the best way to help the cause. Today, the CTBT
is one forgotten treaty, while the NPT is better known by its failure to stop
proliferation even by those countries who have signed it.
Building on the momentum to improve bilateral relations, Pakistan’s Jang
Media Group, organized an India–Pakistan Parliamentary Forum meeting.
The Indian side was full of heavyweights, including past and future ministers.
It was led by former speaker of the Lok Sabha, Balram Jakhar. Other
members included Sushma Swaraj, Arif Mohammad Khan and K.R. Malkani.
There was lots of bonhomie, people quoting poetry, etc., but the ‘K’ word
divided the sides. Indians, irrespective of their political affiliations, said the
time had come to look beyond Kashmir and solve other issues. They
specifically suggested that if goodwill was developed, Kashmir could be
sorted out. The Pakistani side wanted Kashmir on the agenda as the top
priority. Their minister for parliamentary affairs said that the Lahore bus
service was a good beginning to solving Kashmir.
Sartaj Aziz urged India to focus on ‘the core issue of Kashmir’ rather than
lay emphasis on peripheral areas of the relationship between the two
countries. He warned the meeting that ‘unless we move forward towards a
settlement of the Kashmir dispute on the basis of respect for the inherent right
of self-determination of the Kashmiri people, peace will continue to elude
South Asia’. Benazir Bhutto came and told the meeting that she was ‘unable
to pray at my grandmother’s grave in India’ and brought in Kashmir. Gohar
Ayub spoke only about Kashmir. It was left to Sushma Swaraj to point out
that there was a lot of misinformation about Kashmir.
Nawaz Sharif, in his interview with Shekhar Gupta, had set a very
ambitious agenda. He said that if sincerity and reasonableness were to
prevail, India and Pakistan should be able to resolve the Kashmir problem as
well as other outstanding issues by the end of 1999. The veteran diplomat
Mani Dixit, someone Vajpayee was quite fond of, wrote a newspaper article
in support of the initiative and raised the important issue of whether this
meant that there would be a qualitative change in the negotiating stands of
both countries and in the mindset of the power structures of both countries;
because only then could the atmospherics change for any progress to take
place.
Dixit underscored the fact that Pakistan was facing political and economic
dilemmas, and needed a working relationship with India. He acknowledged
that Vajpayee was practical, sober and had a non-confrontational approach to
foreign policy. But would domestic political compulsions in both countries
allow relations to move towards finding solutions? Dixit’s view did reflect
the general perception that the visit might just provide the right environment
to move ahead. However, there were also fears that ‘without some
substantial progress on substantive issues, the whole exercise might go
waste’. One of Dixit’s predecessors as foreign secretary, the redoubtable
A.P. Venkateswaran, unfairly sacked from his job by Rajiv Gandhi, was
sceptical, arguing against the perils of ‘instant’ diplomacy, since what would
be achieved by it was unspecific.
In hindsight, it should have been clear that any road to peace with Pakistan
was going to be a long and hard one. But those were heady days, when the
sheer audacity of the initiative made all obstacles look manageable. In fact,
the only prominent person in Pakistan exhibiting any ambition about the effect
of the visit was Nawaz Sharif himself. Initially, he even announced that he
would travel back in the bus to Delhi. Pakistan Tourism, who would run the
bus from their side, said that the PM’s office had asked them to be ready for
it. Sharif then told the Pakistani parliament, ‘We are not afraid to take bold
decisions. I will use my mandate to ensure that.’ He urged India to go beyond
stated positions for a meaningful dialogue and not to let the opportunity go
waste.
It was at this moment that the IMF board considered Pakistan’s loan
proposal. The US, UK and Canada abstained, a technicality that ensured that
the loan went through. India did not oppose the proposal, indicating that it
wanted an economically stable Pakistan. We could hardly have acted
otherwise, considering that two of our joint secretaries in the Ministry of
External Affairs—Vivek Katju (looking after Pakistan) and Rakesh Sood
(disarmament)—were on their way to Islamabad, finalizing the agenda and
negotiating a joint statement and an agreement on nuclear issues with
Pakistan, necessary to make the Lahore visit a substantial one.
Vajpayee’s bold initiative seemed to be paying off. Japan, ever so gently,
shifted its stand. It ‘urged Pakistan to ensure progress in the nuclear field and
with the CTBT before India’. Japan also asked Pakistan to show adherence
to the NPT, tighten its nuclear export controls, and expressed concerns ‘over
the co-operation between Pakistan and North Korea in the nuclear field’,
making it clear to Pakistan how this might affect its ties with Japan.
Unfortunately, Indian analysts don’t seem to have even noticed this clear
signalling about the ‘help’ that Pakistan received in its nuclear and missile
programmes.
The changed sentiments were not limited to the Japanese alone. As if on
cue, the World Bank approved a US$210 million loan, for the restructuring of
Andhra Pradesh’s power sector, the first Indian loan to go through after the
Pokhran-II tests. Though the sanctions had exempted poverty-related loans,
the World Bank management was obviously under US pressure not to act till
they saw some progress, in terms of the reduction of tensions, in South Asia.
Further, Frank Pallone, the Democrat Congressman and co-founder of the
India Caucus in the US House of Representatives, came out boldly in favour
of US–India relations. He said that the US should move away from a
confrontation with India and that instead, the US should try ‘to make India a
partner in American foreign policy goal of minimizing the threat of nuclear
war’. The campaign to demonize India as a country which had initiated a
nuclear arms race in South Asia was beginning to come apart. Pallone
endorsed India’s candidature for permanent membership to the UN Security
Council, the first time that a US policymaker had taken such a position. No
wonder that the Vajpayee government decorated Pallone with a Padma
Vibhushan in 2002.
 Yet Sartaj Aziz remained sceptical. Even as Vajpayee was packing his
bags for Lahore, Aziz cautioned that ‘India must go beyond its present
emphasis on peripheral areas of our bilateral relationship and demonstrate
its willingness to work for the resolution of our fundamental differences’. By
contrast, Jaswant Singh was magisterial. Vajpayee, he said, would ‘carry the
message of peace, of India’s desire for an enduring relationship of mutual
confidence, peace, and multi-faceted co-operation between the two
countries’. Since the US was seen to have, directly or indirectly, pushed
India and Pakistan to meet, Singh clarified that ‘there has been no pressure.
India and Pakistan do not require the services of an interpreter in their
dialogue.’ It was Jaswant Singh at his best.
A few days prior to the visit, some of us were bogged down in tying up the
visit of the non-official delegation that would accompany Vajpayee to
Lahore. A very efficient foreign service officer in the PMO, Satish Mehta, sat
with me in my room as we contacted everybody selected to go along, and
where needed, added names. If I remember correctly, they included the
evergreen peace activist Kuldip Nayar; poet Javed Akhtar; actor Dev Anand;
BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra; economist-administrator A.M. Khusro;
heads of Indian chambers of business, Rajesh Shah and K.K. Poddar;
cricketer Kapil Dev; singer Mahendra Kapoor; journalist-parliamentarian
Indrajit; actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha and others. It was not an easy task
as we were running short on time. Passports had to be collected, travel plans
arranged and visas stamped. To be fair, the Pakistani high commission was
most cooperative. Farooq Abdullah, who was at his aggressive best during
the visit to Pokhran the previous year in May, declined the invitation. One
name I completely missed was Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s grandson, Nusli
Wadia—a fact he reminded me of when we returned. Taking him along would
have been a coup.
On the official side, Jaswant Singh would come along. Brajesh Mishra had
gone to Lahore a day ahead, to finalize the text of whatever was to be
released by both prime ministers. From Vajpayee’s family, his adopted
daughter, Namita Kaul Bhattacharya, her husband, Ranjan Bhattacharya, and
their daughter, Niharika, would accompany us. This indicated how much
Vajpayee was personally invested in the visit, raising the tenor of the
occasion by a few octaves.
The excitement at Race Course Road on 20 February was infectious. As
Vajpayee was to say on crossing the border later that day, he saw it as a
defining moment in South Asian history, which he hoped he and Sharif would
be responsible for. It all seemed unreal, as if there was nothing else left to
do, now that peace with Pakistan was all dusted and ready to be launched.
What could go wrong?

PRAMOD MAHAJAN, WHO WAS THE minister of information and broadcasting,

organized live coverage of the visit on Doordarshan, at a time when only
cricket matches were covered live. But life can be difficult. The burdens of
office and unrealistic expectations are not easy to handle. On our way to the
airport, Vajpayee turned to me and nervously told me that he had left his
hearing device at home. He had been checking his pockets and found them
empty! Fortunately, we had cell phones by then, so I quickly rang back and
asked for it to be sent pronto. But while the PM’s motorcade gets a free pass
on the roads, a car carrying the PM’s hearing aid does not. Once again,
fortunately for us, the PM’s plane, operated by the air force, always has
sufficient margin, a fact I knew by then. This I found out early, when one day,
while flying back from the north-east, I was told somewhere above Lucknow
that we would be landing in Delhi an hour later and not 35–40 minutes as I
expected. That knowledge gave us breathing space.
The airport send-off was touching, with L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Ranga
Kumaramangalam, Ananth Kumar and Pramod Mahajan among the ministers,
the service chiefs and the Gandhian activist Nirmala Deshpande present to
wish Vajpayee the best. We boarded but could not leave immediately since
the car with the hearing aid was still on the way. But we were lucky that the
traffic was light and the delay was a manageable twenty minutes.
The welcome at Raja Sansi Airport (as it was called then) in Amritsar
was raucous. After Vajpayee alighted and was received by the governor of
Punjab, General B.K.N. Chhibber, and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal,
all discipline broke down. There were people milling all over—a veritable
monsoon wedding in February. It was a relief to get on the bus, named Sada-
e-Sarhad, and move on. Earlier, speaking to the media on alighting, Vajpayee
had said:
I am going with a message of peace (aman) and friendship (dosti). The approximately 100
crore people of India want relations with Pakistan to improve, trade between the two
nations to increase and travel to be made easier. There are some issues of Punjab I would
take up with them.

The journey to Attari passed off quickly. The bus had two seats on either side
of the aisle. Vajpayee was on the first seat on the left side of the bus, all by
himself. Throughout the short forty-minute journey, we provided an
opportunity for each member of the delegation to sit with Vajpayee and chat
for a while. Kapil Dev came across as the most gracious, quickly moving out
when it was the turn of somebody else to sit with Vajpayee. With some of the
others, I had to almost physically evict them; they shall not be named as they
are not with us any more.
On reaching Attari, the Indian side of the border, the bus slowed down, as
bhangra dancers moved in front of it and there were cheering crowds
everywhere. Eventually, the bus stopped and Vajpayee got down to address
the media and the country. Unlike at Amritsar airport, this time he used a
prepared statement, as he was conscious of history in the making. To quote:
I am visiting Pakistan today at the invitation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. When I cross
the gate and throughout my visit, I will draw inspiration from the knowledge that the prayers
and goodwill of the people of India are with me. My message to the people of Pakistan will
be short and simple. Put aside the bitterness of the past. Together, let us make a new
beginning.

The message was brief but succinct, anticipating the 140-character Twitter
generation.
Vajpayee then boarded the bus and it crossed over to Wagah, Pakistan. In
fact, the entire bus was not even through the gate when it stopped. Nawaz
Sharif was at hand with half his cabinet and the governor of Punjab, our host,
to receive Vajpayee. The two prime ministers hugged each other, with Sharif
taking the lead and Vajpayee being, as always, the more publicly reserved.
Dev Anand, who stood next to them, started reminiscing about the time when
he left Lahore for Mumbai and would have carried on till we gently guided
him away.
What does one say about the atmosphere? Adjectives failed us but yes, it
was Amritsar’s chaos multiplied a few times. Much as I admire the
professionalism of our security set-up, especially of the SPG, for those ten
minutes, it was the almighty or pure chance that ensured things went well.
Even the guard of honour, though correctly conducted, was so squeezed for
space that when the guard commander lowered his sword to convey his
acceptance of dismissal, Vajpayee was well within striking distance. There
had to be a discordant note, and that was the absence of Pakistan’s three
service chiefs at the reception line-up.
Vajpayee again read out a written piece as his message and did not speak
extempore.
I am grateful to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his kind invitation. I bring the goodwill and
hopes of my fellow Indians who seek abiding peace and harmony with Pakistan. I am
looking forward to a substantive programme and talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
and am conscious that this is a defining moment in South Asian history and I hope we would
be able to rise to the challenge.

Vajpayee’s long years in diplomacy, mostly as observer and discussant, had

taught him the importance of being specific. Ambiguity had its purposes but
had to be ditched when one wished to achieve specific goals. This visit was
a big risk, possibly the biggest of his political career, and he wanted to send
a clear message—that India wanted peace and was willing to stake its
reputation to achieve it. Again, in retrospect, a well-thought-out and thought-
through move, contrary to many who missed this paradigm shift engineered
by Vajpayee because they were blaming him for his lack of short-term
achievements.
The brief helicopter ride from Wagah to Governor’s House in Lahore
brought us face to face with the realities of the deep state. The three chiefs of
the army, air force and navy were on hand at the helipad to receive Vajpayee;
the army chief was General Musharraf, whom Sharif had appointed after
removing the very professional Jehangir Karamat, the last time any Pakistani
PM would even contemplate such a move. Yet this was a show of pettiness,
as the chiefs seemed prepared to salute Vajpayee in private but not in public.
In fact, as a uniformed officer once taught me, for a person in uniform a salute
is a proxy for a greeting and nothing more. The city of Lahore was more or
less under a lockdown, with a rampaging group of Jamaat-e-Islami going
around the old city, forcing shops to shut down. In fact, the Jammat had given
a call for a hartal, but the only way it could enforce it was by force.
After our arrival, I remember a very casual evening tea session with
Sharif, his key ministers, service chiefs and a few of us. It was a surprise to
see the wife of our host in a saree, but then history tells us that till 1971, that
was the norm in Pakistan’s elite circles. Photographs of Musharraf’s wife in
his memoir would show the transition from the saree to salwar-kameez, once
the former was declared un-Islamic. Noticing that Namita was accompanying
Vajpayee, Sharif sent word to his wife, Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, who was in
Islamabad to drive down to Lahore.
The motorway from Lahore to Islamabad, a creation of Sharif initiated in
an earlier stint, was discussed. Apparently, the planners told Sharif that the
road made no economic sense. Sharif countered: Did Shah Jahan calculate
the costs and benefits before he built the Taj Mahal? A practical difficulty
with the motorway, we were told, was that since it was so prestigious that all
leading Chaudharies wanted it to go through their pind (village). The result
was that the roadway did not take the shortest alignment between the two
cities, running rather in a zig-zag manner to cover as many pinds as possible!
The atmosphere was relaxed. I did notice, though, that the chiefs were not
in their ceremonial dress but in their official uniform, a boorish act at best.
None of this registered very strongly, since the mood was exuberant. But it
was not meant to last. The departure for Lahore Fort for the grand dinner kept
getting postponed because it was said to be chaotic outside. As we found out
later, the numbers of Jamaat workers roaming the streets were in dozens, but
the police gave them kid-glove treatment, something which those who follow
Imran Khan’s accession to power would understand.
The Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad had vowed that ‘we will
not allow Vajpayee to walk the streets of Lahore’. The general understanding
was that the Jamaat was acting on instructions from the army. Suddenly, the
repeated use of the ‘K’ word by Sartaj Aziz—‘Settlement of the Kashmir
issue will be accorded the highest priority’—began to make sense, though to
be fair, Aziz personally was in favour of improved relations. He had become
the foreign minister, even though Finance was his natural home, after Sharif
realized that relations with India could not improve with Gohar Ayub as
foreign minister. Few remember that Sharif actually campaigned in 1997 on
making peace with India, a position he has stuck to since then at tremendous
personal costs.
The Punjab governor had graciously put a bottle of whisky each in the
rooms of those of us who were put up in the Governor’s House. But as the
evening wore on and the large delegation kept waiting, the supply proved
inadequate. It must have been past 9 p.m. when we received the all-clear to
move for dinner. Throughout, Vajpayee was a picture of calmness and
patience. His reminiscence about his visit to Lahore pre-Independence,
specifically about going to Anarkali, the heart of culture and entertainment in
the old city, reminded us how recent the political divisions were. Vajpayee
looked happy but was not exuberant.
We first drove to Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s samadhi and the gurdwara, and
then went to the Lahore Fort. Sharif had laid out a red carpet, the likes of
which most of us had not seen before. Sharif and Vajpayee rode on a horse
carriage into the fort. The dinner was overshadowed by the music. The band
played Hindi songs throughout. With great difficulty and after much
persuasion, we managed to convince them to play a few Pakistani numbers,
which was a bad idea.

WHILE THE MOOD IN LAHORE was stratospheric, the news from India was
extremely dispiriting. Late the previous night, there were three horrific,
targeted massacres of Hindus in the Jammu region, and in all, twenty Hindus
were killed. In normal circumstances, this should have led to the cancellation
of the visit, but Vajpayee was truly invested in it, and he could not let down
Sharif, who, it subsequently emerged, had staked so much more on it that
cancellation could not have been an option. But it did point to the limitations
in terms of what the visit could achieve in concrete terms. Sharif was battling
those who were determined to see the collapse of his outreach to India. So
while the American scholar Denis Kux could say that Vajpayee’s Lahore visit
was as dramatic as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel in 1977,
the fact that Benazir Bhutto endorsed Vajpayee’s visit but did not turn up for
the banquet demonstrated that in Pakistan it was unrealistic to expect
dramatic results, since the forces against the normalization of relations with
India were very powerful.
If I’d thought that dinner meant the end of my working day, I was wrong.
Vajpayee was tense about his speech at the next day’s public reception and
wanted to go over some of his poems, to decide which one he could use. My
colleague, Venkat—who is now in Washington, D.C.—and I, spent the best
part of the night with our Hindi stenographer in Delhi, going over Vajpayee’s
poems and having them faxed to us.
If 20 February was all about euphoria, the next day was one long grind, but
one should not complain. To us, at Ground Zero, it was history in the making.
There were official meetings of the prime ministers, the Lahore Declaration
was signed, a press conference in which both PMs were grilled and a
relaxed lunch. However, the two public events, one in the morning and the
other in the evening, were the highlights, which would be remembered for a
long time.
The first one was a visit to Minar-e-Pakistan, a column erected to
commemorate the 1940 Pakistan resolution of the Muslim League. If memory
serves me right, the idea of visiting the Minar was Vivek Katju’s. He thought
that it would send a good signal that India had in fact accepted the reality of
Partition. What Vivek had left unsaid, though, was that with the BJP
supposedly committed to an ‘Akhand Bharat’, a Vajpayee visit to the Minar
would make for powerful optics. Some of us were very enthusiastic about it,
but there were contrarian views. The idea was debated in Delhi quite a bit,
and Vajpayee agreed that his visit to the Minar would be in order, though
initially he was not very convinced.
The line between a politician and a statesman can actually be quite thin,
and I realized that Vajpayee had the skill to make the transition when
required. His comments at the Minar, and later, while referring to his visit at
the civic reception, were proof of that. It was a learning experience for me.
‘From this historic Minar-e-Pakistan, I wish to assure the people of Pakistan
of my country’s deep desire for lasting peace and friendship. I have said it
before and I will say it again that a stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is
in India’s interest. Let no one in Pakistan be in any doubt of it, India sincerely
wishes the people of Pakistan well.’ This was direct and forceful, yet
conciliatory, taking on all the naysayers in Pakistan who liked to indulge in
misinformation about India’s intentions. Vajpayee also needed to play to the
gallery a little, which he did at the public reception later that afternoon. He
opened the subject by mentioning that ‘I was told that my presence at the
Minar would put my seal of approval on the creation of Pakistan’ but then
added with a flourish, ‘Pakistan does not run on my seal. It has its own seal.’
The effect was electric. Unfortunately, the word ‘seal’ does not quite convey
the effect of its Hindi equivalent, mohar.
At the public reception held on the lawns of the Governor’s House, even
as Vajpayee worked the crowd, there was no ambiguity in his message. He
said that he was not in favour of Pakistan and that Partition had left a scar,
but added that ‘we have no option but to live together and work jointly. One
can change history, not geography. One can change friends, not neighbours.’
Without bringing in China, he explained that Pokhran-II was not done with an
aggressive intent but was an act of self-defence. Vajpayee, far from making
light of the threat of nuclear war, warned his audience that ‘a small spark can
cause a huge fire’. He emphasized that there was no option available to us
but peace and hoped that both sides would respect a mutual moratorium on
further testing. And then he unleashed his most potent weapon, reading out
from his poem, ‘Jang Na Hone Denge’. The general buzz in the audience was
that if Vajpayee were to stand for election from Lahore, he would sweep the
polls!
Earlier in the day, the two countries had signed a number of agreements,
some symbolic and others of substance. The prime ministers joined in signing
the Lahore Declaration, a detailed statement intended to meet the needs and
requirements of all concerned. It condemned terrorism in all forms and
committed the two sides to promoting and protecting human rights and
fundamental freedoms. It spoke of implementing the 1972 Simla Agreement,
in letter and spirit. With an eye on the international community, particularly
the US, Japan and the UK, it specifically spoke of ‘Confidence Building
Measures in nuclear and conventional spheres in order to prevent conflict.’
Even the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between the two
foreign secretaries was finely detailed. One could call it the operational
manual of the Lahore Declaration, which if implemented would have
allowed the two sides to actually get into a strategic dialogue (though the
word ‘strategy’ has lately got debased in the academic discipline of
international relations, since it is used rather casually). The MOU, without
using the term ‘strategic’, had got it right when it said that the ‘two sides
shall engage in bilateral consultations on security concepts, and nuclear
doctrine, with a view to developing measures for confidence building in the
nuclear and conventional fields aimed at avoidance of conflict’. It talked
about setting the stage for a regular security dialogue covering disarmament
and non-proliferation. It was agreed that the foreign ministers would meet
periodically to discuss all issues of mutual concern, including those falling in
the nuclear domain.
The MOU was also about brass tacks. For example, it said that ‘the two
sides undertake to provide each other with advance notification in respect of
ballistic missile tests and shall conclude an agreement in this regard’. Both
sides agreed to have an immediate exchange of information about any
accidental, unauthorized or unexplained incident that could create the risk of
a (nuclear) fallout or an outbreak of a nuclear war between the two countries.
An appropriate communications mechanism would be established to
eliminate possibilities of misinterpretation by either side of any action or
incident.
Sharif was open and very positive in his meeting with the media. He said
that in the near future, Pakistan would extend the most favoured nation
(MFN) status to India, reciprocating India’s action of 1996. MFN is possibly
the most misunderstood word in international trade; all it implies is the
lowest level of normal trading relations by which countries agree not to
discriminate against any trading partner. Before China joined the World
Trade Organization, the USA would give it MFN status on an annual basis.
Since people wondered why China was being singled out for favourable
treatment, the US administration replaced MFN with NTR, or normal trading
relations. Twenty-one years after Sharif’s announcement, till the Pulwama
attack led to almost a complete cessation of India–Pakistan bilateral trade,
Pakistan had yet to actually extend MFN status to India.
Sharif confirmed to the media that the Kashmir issue would be discussed
with India, but there seemed to be a certain amount of disbelief, so Vajpayee
was also asked this question. He confirmed that Kashmir was indeed on the
agenda. It was clear that most of the local press were unaware of India’s
persistent complaint about Pakistan-backed terrorists operating in Kashmir,
or about the Indian Parliament’s unanimous decision on Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir. Therefore, India did want to talk about Kashmir with Pakistan.
Vajpayee was effusive in his praise of Sharif and the hospitality. Left
unsaid was his acknowledgement of Sharif’s bold but risky gamble. The
body language and comfort level between Vajpayee and Sharif was to be
seen to be believed. That Begum Kulsoom Nawaz reached Lahore to play
formal host to Namita was a touching gesture. Sometime in the course of the
day, there was an informal interaction between the two prime ministers in the
first-floor living area of the Governor’s House, the same place where we had
tea the previous evening. A few of us were present there. The singer
Mahendra Kapoor, in a mustard-coloured suit, dropped in. He wanted to go
back early. Sharif told his people to arrange for a car to take Kapoor to the
border. It felt like the morning after a grand subcontinental wedding.
The chief ministers of both the Punjabs met separately. Parkash Singh
Badal’s emphasis was on the need to have an institutionalized arrangement
for cultural exchange. He expressed his concern about the upkeep of Sikh
shrines in Pakistan and suggested that the Amritsar-headquartered Shiromani
Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) could do it. Incidentally, the head
of the Pakistani version of the SGPC had been invited for the Vajpayee
functions. He was a non-Sikh army officer. But unlike Badal’s forward-
looking approach, his counterpart, Shehbaz Sharif, brought in Kashmir and
bilateral trade. Of the Sharif brothers, Shehbaz remained less inclined to take
on the Pakistan Army, always looking for a compromise with them, and
therefore the mandatory reference to Kashmir.
We returned to Delhi that evening buoyant and hopeful. Parliament was to
convene the next day, and since it was the first session of the calendar year, it
would begin with the President’s address to the joint sitting of both the Lok
Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Though the President reads it out, the address
contains the government’s agenda. The speech had been finalized before
we’d left for Lahore, but it would need revision. I was asked to write out one
paragraph, get Vajpayee’s approval and have it translated into Hindi before
sending it to Rashtrapati Bhavan. I alerted Gopal Gandhi, the principal
secretary to the President, and set to work. The next few hours went into that
one paragraph, because the President himself, being a former diplomat, was
very particular about the use of language. My day ended late, but it was with
a sense of achievement, bordering on euphoria.
Still, scepticism persisted in both countries about the usefulness of this
high-level initiative. Going further, people questioned the motivations of both
countries for what was seen as a high-risk gamble, which, while raising
expectations, could simply fail to deliver. Indian analysts were more or less
in agreement that with the economy in Pakistan floundering, Sharif’s options
were limited. Pakistan, much more than India, wanted the sanctions lifted,
and assuring the West that the ‘dangers’ of a nuclear conflagration in South
Asia had lessened would help in achieving this objective. Peace with India
and signing the CTBT were seen as key to this. Sharif was also constrained
in that his space for manoeuvre domestically was limited, though the full
extent of how limited it was did not become apparent immediately.
While Pakistan kept its options open to resort to multilateralism in case the
bilateral approach towards India failed, there was a realization that the
Kashmir issue had lost traction internationally. Despite this, the Pakistan
foreign office had to clarify within a day of the summit that they have not
accepted that Kashmir was an integral part of India, pointing that the
‘Declaration testified to the fact that Kashmir is an issue between the two
countries, to be discussed and resolved . . . We will rightfully expect a
genuine and positive movement towards the final settlement of Jammu &
Kashmir.’
India’s position was much better, but there was a lot that had to be done,
and getting the US sanctions lifted would help, financially, psychologically
and strategically. India’s problem was—and largely remains—that it needed
to regularly demonstrate its autonomy. This meant that there was a strong
aversion to third-party intervention, particularly if this had to do with the
dispute with Pakistan. It is not as if third-party intervention hasn’t been used
in sorting out India–Pakistan disputes before. This happened in the 1950s,
when the World Bank, under US instructions, brokered the Indus Water
Treaty; and again in 1965–66, when the Tashkent agreement was midwifed
by the Soviet Union. Both parties in 1999 came to the conclusion that they
would have to sign the CTBT to get the sanctions lifted, and the leaderships
felt that domestically, it would be easier to sell this in the context of a
bilateral peace deal than concede that it was due to any perceived American
pressure.
In those days, it was difficult to keep America out of any India–Pakistan
conversation. In the context of Lahore, President Clinton commended ‘the
two Prime Ministers for demonstrating courage and leadership . . .
addressing difficult issues’. He called on both to curb competition in nuclear
arms, prevent nuclear and conventional conflict, and resolve tensions and
disputes, including Jammu and Kashmir. The US State Department added that
they were ‘pleased that they discussed steps to address nuclear concerns,
including CBMs’. In case somebody had missed the story, it added that the
two prime ministers ‘met on their own, not under pressure’.
There was already considerable opposition to India moving away from the
national convention on not signing the CTBT. In fact, even as preparations for
Lahore were on, the analyst Brahma Chellaney wrote that ‘the blame for
providing resuscitation and respectability to the loophole-ridden treaty goes
to Prime Minister AB Vajpayee’s government, which began talking about
CTBT in a disjointed manner after the tests’. He pointed out that initially,
Vajpayee had said that India was ‘prepared to consider being an adherent to
some of the undertakings of the CTBT’. Later, he said, Vajpayee moved
further and asked that the US should match India’s steps, hinting at his
readiness to make concessions in his UN speech. However, the US backed
out and started helping Pakistan. Chellaney’s criticism, in retrospect, has its
merits. There was a lot of confusion on the CTBT, and India did seem on the
road to signing this highly flawed treaty. Fortunately, this was not to be, as
other developments overtook it.
In the Indian establishment, George Fernandes was consistent in his
opposition to signing the CTBT under pressure, arguing that India would do
so only if its security concerns were taken care of. Post-Lahore, Jaswant
Singh, largely seen by the strategic community as pushing the CTBT agenda,
had to clarify that there was no secret pact with the US on the CTBT, that no
other country could determine India’s level of minimum nuclear deterrent and
that there was no arms race in the sub-continent. He emphasized that India
would never compromise on fundamentals and that he would not respond to
claims by US officials that India was on the verge of signing the CTBT. Talks
with the US were focused on converting voluntary moratorium into de jure
obligation, and no decision had been taken about entering into negotiations
over the CTBT. Soon, this debate would get sidelined as the region faced
new challenges.
The story of Lahore was to end, but in very different ways from what any
of us could have envisaged. Vajpayee’s position as prime minister had
strengthened substantially over the past few months, and Lahore only added
more weight. Yet there were many in India who were unhappy with this, and
they realized that if Vajpayee were to continue, their agendas may well be
over. On the other side, would the Pakistani establishment allow any
substantial move towards normalizing India–Pakistan relations?
The ferocity of the backlash in both cases was unbelievable and
unexpected.
 8
The Fall

‘Since the BJP is at the core of the alliance, it shall make every effort to ensure that
the prestige and cohesiveness of the coalition are not diluted by organisations
belonging to its ideological fraternity.’

—Resolution of the NDA Coordination Committee, 2 February 1999

After the horrible months of most of 1998, with Vajpayee gradually

clawing back his autonomy but with the situation mostly in crisis mode, it
was difficult to believe that the Vajpayee government had any other way to
exist. It was a constant struggle to set the new agenda—meant to lift the
trajectory of the country so that it would be recognized as an emerging
powerhouse. Not that the external environment was particularly hospitable,
despite Vajpayee’s best efforts to tell the ‘free world’ that their hopes of
China evolving like one of them was going nowhere; instead, it was with
India that there was a convergence of interest and values. If Vajpayee was not
taken as seriously as he should have been, it was not just because of the
minuscule size of the Indian economy but also because of the doubts about
Vajpayee’s longevity as a PM and his ability to push India forward, weighed
down as he was by the political baggage of a fractious alliance and intra-
party challenges. Lahore and his assertion domestically was potentially a
game changer.
The NDA Coordination Committee met yet again on 2 February 1999. This
was meant to be one more attempt at trying and salvaging the government. On
the one hand, there was a certain ambiguity about what the stance of the
BJP’s ideological partners—the members of the Sangh Parivar, like the VHP,
Bajrang Dal, Swadeshi Jagran Manch or even the RSS—would be on
economic policies. Even before the terrible murder of the Staines had
occurred, the narrative that minorities, especially the Christians, were under
attack had gained considerable traction. The level of communal violence was
actually quite low, but perceptions are important and the BJP was lagging in
this. The Coordination Committee made it clear that the onus of keeping its
ideological cousins under control was on the BJP. However, the meeting
balanced this by calling upon all coalition partners to ensure that none of
them ‘shall publicly voice its opposition/dissent to any policy or order of the
government’.
As expected, Jayalalithaa did not attend the meeting, and Thambidurai,
who did, was not authorized to sign any document. A few days later, when
Fernandes met Jayalalithaa, she refused to endorse the agreed statement of
the meeting, highlighting the part about partners agreeing not to go public
with their disagreement about government policies and actions. She clarified
that she did not object to it but had her reservations. However, though
Chandrababu Naidu also did not attend, he was not about to withdraw his
support to the government. Mamata Banerjee had walked out of the
Coordination Committee in November 1998 in protest against the ‘neglect’ of
West Bengal, particularly in terms of railway projects, and refused to budge.
But she, too, was not likely to pull down the government. Responding to the
demands of its allies, the government had rolled back wheat and rice price
hikes in the public distribution system (PDS) for the below-poverty-line
(BPL) families but managed to retain it for others. The extra burden was a
steep Rs 1800 crore.
Though Vajpayee’s Lucknow press meet was noted more for his
announcement of accepting Nawaz Sharif’s invitation to visit Lahore, he had
also used this platform to inform the media that there were to be no further
rollbacks. He called for a fresh look at the economics of subsidies and
clarified that the government was willing to take tough decisions. Vajpayee
was forced to say this, as there were persistent questions about his
government’s inability to say ‘no’ and stick to doing what it had announced.
The tensions within the coalition were best expressed in a Hindustan Times
editorial of 4 February (‘Back from the Brink’), which said that this was a
case of one step forward, two steps back. The editorial also said that there
was a distressing pattern of the allies and the organizational wing of the BJP
pushing the coalition to the edge of the precipice and then pulling back in the
nick of time.
With the pendulum poised to swing to the other side, no wonder Sonia
Gandhi wrote, in an article published in the Congress’s in-house journal and
widely reported in the media, that the government was in danger of
collapsing and that her party was ready to discharge its responsibilities to the
country, which, she said, ‘would fall on the Congress (I) sooner than later’.
She also wrote that there was ‘competitive populism’ between the BJP and
other members of the Sangh Parivar, that the government’s credibility was at
its lowest ebb and that Vajpayee’s one-day symbolic fast, prompted by the
Staines murders, was not going to solve anything as ‘fundamentalism was an
inherent part of the ruling party.’ The gossip in the media was that the
Congress (I) would prefer to form a government with or without the
participation of other ‘secular’ parties, and then go in for a mid-term poll,
the assumption being that the BJP’s graph would only go down. The
composition of the Lok Sabha simply did not allow for a stable government
to emerge. And yet, few would have bet that the government would go so
soon.
Vajpayee decided to call a meeting of the National Development Council
(NDC) for 19 February in response to Naidu’s request, or should one say
‘demand’. The NDC was chaired by the prime minister, and its members
were key economic and development ministers of the Union government and
all chief ministers. The main official agenda was to discuss and approve the
draft Ninth Plan and criteria for the allotment of funds under major rural
poverty alleviation programmes. Naidu’s main focus was to discuss issues
such as the price of rice and wheat in ration shops under the public
distribution system as well as the contentious issue of urea and fertilizer
prices. Of the parties supporting the government, from within or without, it
was actually Naidu who put the maximum pressure on the government, but it
was never a public tantrum. In fact, it was never public at all. But he would
always have a list of demands and grievances ready. Likewise, Yashwant
Sinha used to have a note ready on all that had been done for Andhra
Pradesh, or what could not be done. The pressure was relentless, even unfair,
but the government’s handling of it was sophisticated.
Mamata was mollified by a number of railway projects announced for
West Bengal. She expressed happiness and said that her party would continue
to extend support to the NDA. Not just that, she added that ‘no political party
or group is in a position to replace this government and nobody wants
another election’. What was left incomplete was Mamata rejoining the
Coordination Committee, but that had to do with her becoming the railway
minister in Vajpayee’s government, which would have to wait for some time.
Similarly, Pawan Chamling, the chief minister of Sikkim, clarified that his
party, the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), was not withdrawing support
from the NDA, but he wanted a complete rollback on wheat and rice prices,
and not just the limited one announced by the government.
Even as the supporting parties were pressuring the government to go slow
on economic reforms because of the short-term costs, the others were
highlighting ideological issues. Jaipal Reddy accused the government of
saffronizing broadcasting. The Congress (I) agreed with this charge and
added that Prasar Bharati was being converted into ‘Prachar Bharati’. It was
a relief to see some creativity in politics, even if those making the allegations
always judged the usefulness of state organs in relation to their commitment
to the ruling dispensation. When Advani met VHP leaders Giriraj Kishore
and Ashok Singhal at his office, the Congress (I) smelt a hidden agenda.
Predating Arnab Goswami by decades, their spokesperson was clear that the
‘Nation has a right to know what transpired at the meeting’.
 The pressure on Vajpayee was not just domestic. The US Congress wanted
India to protect minorities. It appreciated Vajpayee’s visit to Gujarat, the
arrest of the accused in the Odisha murders case, the government’s
condemnation of violence, but was ‘concerned about your government’s
inability to protect the basic human rights of Christians in India . . . while
political organizations such as the World Hindu Council, which has been
allied with your political party, continues to foment violence and call for a
ban on conversions’.
The poet Javed Akhtar said in an interview that he had told Vajpayee, ‘You
may intend to have a secular society, but will the forces you have released,
allow you?’ Vajpayee had replied that he would manage. Akhtar was
sceptical and told the interviewer to see the headlines all over the front
pages. He clarified that he had accepted the Padma Shri earlier that year, in
January, because this honour was from the government of the country and not
from the BJP. He would soon accept Vajpayee’s invitation and travel to
Lahore on the bus.
Deve Gowda publicly called upon the Congress to pull down the NDA
government and said that he would support an alternative, despite his
differences with Lalu Yadav and the RJD. The media reported that the
Congress was confident that Mamta would ditch the government; P.A.
Sangma and Santosh Mohan Dev were reportedly in touch with her. The
Congress’s assessment was that the government’s announcement of railway
projects in West Bengal would only slow her departure but not stop it, since
she was basically afraid of losing Muslim votes.
The Jayalalithaa saga, too, continued to dog the government. Despite the
Ministry of Personnel’s order transferring Jayalalithaa’s cases from special
courts to regular courts, the judges trying the cases decided to ignore the
notification. The special courts judges said that the Madras High Court had
upheld the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to set up special courts, and
though an appeal was pending before the Supreme Court there was no stay.
The DMK was quick to jump into the fray, saying that the PM had been
bullied into agreeing to this order by Jayalalithaa. Despite the Centre going
out of the way to help Jayalalithaa in her legal travails, she still refused to
either attend the Coordination Committee meeting or sign its statement. The
left parties and the Janata Dal attacked the BJP, calling the action
unprincipled. It was, they said, the government choosing both the judge and
the court. Interestingly, the Congress was mum on the issue. Their stand was
that the matter was sub judice and that, therefore, it would not be correct on
their part to comment. In fact, the Congress (I) went further and said, ‘We do
sympathise with the way she has been treated in jail and outside. It is not
right.’
The BJP came out in support of the government, explaining that the
decision was taken at the highest level of the government after consulting
with the attorney general. This did not impress the others. The Rashtriya
Loktantrik Manch, a platform that brought together the Rashtriya Janata Dal
and the Samajwadi Party, attacked the Congress on a number of grounds.
One, that it was prolonging the life of the government. Lalu accused the
Congress of being complicit in what he called ‘the atrocities against Muslims
and Christians’. Mulayam Singh Yadav, in fact, held the Congress
responsible for the Ayodhya imbroglio, tracing the dispute back to 1949 and
the installation of the Ram Lalla idol.

THOUGH VAJPAYEE TRAVELLED TO TRINIDAD, and later to Jamaica, in the second

week of February 1999, political developments in India continued to occupy
his mind. Om Prakash Chautala, whose party, the Indian National Lok Dal
(INLD), had four members of Parliament, threatened to withdraw support if
the government failed to completely roll back the price hikes of wheat, rice,
urea, fertilizer and cooking gas within forty-eight hours. Interestingly, though
this was an ultimatum, he said that he did not want the government to fall.
However, newspaper articles reported otherwise.
It was at Montego Bay in Jamaica that we received the news of yet another
terrible massacre of Dalits, in Narayanpur near Jehanabad in Bihar, where
eleven persons had been shot dead. Narayanpur was not far from
Manoharpur, where another massacre, of twenty-three Dalits, had taken place
on 25 January. This was numbing, and the government could not just sit back
and watch. Sonia Gandhi’s first reaction encouraged the government that a
consensus could be reached on handling this shameful incident. About the
Bihar government, she said, ‘Any government which is helpless in preventing
such heinous acts forfeits its moral right to rule.’ Ironically, the Rabri Devi
government was then in minority, propped up by Congress’s support.
This statement by Sonia Gandhi was seen as clearing the way for
President’s rule, which the Vajpayee government had attempted earlier, in
September 1998, but was stymied by President Narayanan. The President had
returned the government resolution on 25 September, pointing out that the
government had not followed the procedure laid down in Article 256 of
issuing a warning to the state government of its failure to protect the
constitutional order. This time, the government obviously fell for Sonia
Gandhi’s statement that the Rabri government had lost all moral authority to
rule, a belief strengthened by her subsequent visit to Manoharpur, the scene
of the crime. In Vajpayee’s absence, Advani chaired a cabinet meeting, which
considered the governor’s report. The cabinet’s decision was sent to
Montego Bay for Vajpayee’s endorsement and then to the President for
acceptance.
Bihar was brought under President’s rule. But would Parliament ratify this
decision on imposing President’s rule? Pramod Mahajan, the government’s
crisis manager, seemed to think so. He was sure that in the changed political
environment, nobody would oppose the move. Barely was the ink on the
notification dry when the first rumbling of dissonance was heard, and it
wasn’t from Lalu, who was on the defensive then. It was the Left Front
(whose component CPI was demanding just such a step only a few weeks
earlier) that opposed the use of Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss the
Bihar government. It wanted to know why the government had not used this in
Gujarat, and accused it of double standards. The left, it was said, was
consistently against the misuse of Article 356, forgetting that it was a Union
home minister, Indrajit Gupta, of the CPI, who had moved to impose
President’s rule in UP during the United Front government.
The Congress seemed to waver, just a bit. Senior leader Shivraj Patil
conceded that the Rabri government ‘was not conducting itself in the manner
it should have’, but Ajit Jogi, seen as very close to Sonia Gandhi, was
equivocal. When Sonia Gandhi decided to visit the site of the massacre, it
was reminiscent of Indira Gandhi’s famous elephant ride to Belchi in August
1977, seen as the beginning of the revival of her political fortunes which had
nose-dived after the Emergency and her electoral defeat just months earlier.1
Sonia Gandhi chose a helicopter instead and while she conveyed her outrage
very strongly, there was no mention of President’s rule. This was despite the
fact that the state Congress (I) president, Sadanand Singh, had welcomed the
imposition of Article 356. Lalu, quick to sense an opening, asked the
Congress to clarify its stand. Would the Congress collude with the BJP? The
minority question was brought in, unsaid.
Over the next few days, Congress started distancing itself from Article 356
in Bihar. Sushil K. Shinde agreed that the Rabri government had failed to
maintain law and order but added that ‘the BJP invoked Art 356 for political
gains. Only Congress has stood up for the people.’ When the issue came up
before Parliament, he said that the Congress Working Committee would
decide the party’s stand but reiterated that his party stood with the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes. According to Jogi, ‘governor’s rule is not a
substitute for good governance’. The BJP tried to put the Congress (I) on the
defensive and said that it owes an explanation to the people for supporting
the Rabri government.
It was not as if all was well in the BJP itself or even that it was united.
Kushabhau Thakre, the BJP president, had to tell the media that the RSS and
Vajpayee were not at war; that Vajpayee had been with the RSS since 1939;
and that there was ‘bound to be differences in perception amongst our
leaders but that does not mean everyone is at war with each other and trying
to disown our long-standing association.’ Thakre clarified that the Vajpayee
government was a coalition government and not a BJP one. It was guided by
the National Agenda for Governance.
The Madan Lal Khurana story refused to die down as well. Thakre was
clear that Khurana had resigned from the government and from the national
executive of the BJP, and that these resignations had been accepted.
Countering Khurana, Thakre asked, ‘Why should we engineer attacks on
Christians and give ourselves a bad name?’ He said that there had been no
deaths or even serious injury to anyone in Gujarat and that the BJP did not
‘believe in vote-bank politics’. As far as he was concerned, the Khurana
chapter was a closed one.
But it was not going away. The Delhi Akali Dal announced that it would
not support the BJP in the two assembly by-elections scheduled for that year
and in Delhi, because of the Khurana episode. They expressed anger at what
they said was ‘unfair treatment’ meted out to him and recalled his courage in
1984. The Delhi Akalis expressed their disappointment that Vajpayee had
accepted Khurana’s resignation. Prem Singh Chandumajra, an Akali MP
close to Gurcharan Singh Tohra and therefore a dissident, even wrote to
Vajpayee on the Khurana episode. In fact, analysts now linked Chautala’s
threat of withdrawal from the government to Khurana, reasoning that it was
the latter who was the main interlocutor with both the Akalis and Chautala,
who were very close to each other.
This was a weak moment for the BJP. The party seemed to have been
caught on the wrong foot. Khurana repeated his charge that he had resigned as
minister and from the party’s national executive on the issue of violence
against Christians, and that he had been prevented at Bangalore by the BJP
leadership from defending Vajpayee against attacks emanating from the RSS.
Sonia Gandhi asserted the seriousness of her response to the gruesome
murder of the Staines by removing J.B. Patnaik, till then the longest-serving
chief minister of Odisha (later, Naveen Patnaik broke his record and remains
in office as chief minister). J.B. Patnaik had had a controversy-ridden tenure,
which included multiple charges of corruption. He had a tough time dealing
with the Anjana Mishra case, where he was alleged to have protected his
advocate-general from allegations of rape, but he rode overall attacks till he
was asked to step down. He was later able to ensure that his replacement
was not among those seeking his ouster. The new chief minister was Giridhar
Gomang (now Gamang), a lightweight, but who would soon emerge in the
limelight for reasons that had nothing to do with Odisha.
The controversy over the Odisha attacks was not just limited to domestic
politics; the UK Parliament, at the initiative of a Labour MP, discussed the
subject, at which thirteen MPs were present. Mary Robinson, the United
Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, would visit India soon after, for a
conference organized by the National Human Rights Commission. She met
Vajpayee and other leaders and, in her interaction with the media, said that
she hoped ‘the Indian government would take all necessary steps rapidly to
stop atrocities against Christians and other minorities’. Interestingly, while
Sonia Gandhi’s use of the term ‘merchants of death’ or maut ka saudagar is
associated with the 2007 Gujarat assembly elections, she had first used it
against the BJP in February 1999 itself, at a meeting of the Youth Congress,
blaming the BJP for violence against Christians.
Realizing the gravity of the political challenges facing his government,
Vajpayee, on his return to India, reached out to allies. Mamata met him,
assured him of her support, but she felt that it was not a good time to join the
government. The reason cited was that the government was in the midst of
preparing the budget and should concentrate on revenue maximization.
Before any momentum on strengthening the government could gather force,
a new controversy arose. After a meeting with George Fernandes and Nitish
Kumar, Home Minister Advani made an announcement that seemed eminently
sensible but became a bombshell. He said that S.S. Bhandari would be
replaced as Bihar governor. He explained that the government was
committed ‘to speeding up developmental works and show results to provide
for the much-needed social harmony through a non-political dispensation
based on merit and experience’.
The decision was taken ‘to prevent Lalu making the point that Bhandari
was a defender of upper and intermediate castes interests’. This seemingly
innocuous statement implied accepting Lalu’s criticism against Bhandari that
the latter was out to have the Rabri government dismissed, or so the analysts
and Opposition accepted. It was seen as a ‘sop to the Congress’ so that it
would support the imposition of President’s rule. Advani’s meeting with
leaders of the Samata Party and his announcement should be seen against the
backdrop of these developments in Bihar, where Bhandari had carried out
important shifts in civil service appointments. It was said that the chief
secretary, director general of police and entire top brass of the Patna district
were from the upper castes.
 Even before firefighting could begin, there were more shocks on the way.
Chautala met Vajpayee as a last-ditch attempt to find a compromise, but as
Vajpayee was no longer willing to roll back the modest price increase, the
INLD withdrew support. According to Chautala, Vajpayee expressed his
‘helplessness’ in agreeing to the demand. Chautala, however, added that his
party would continue to extend issue-based support to the government.
There was considerable churn within the BJP. Four MPs, namely Madan
Jaiswal, Lalmuni Choubey, P.S. Gadhavi and Janardan Yadav, raised the
Khurana issue. According to them, the points raised by him were in the
interest of the party and the government, and should have been squarely
addressed. The reason for Chautala’s withdrawal of support was also
intensely discussed. The accepted view was that it was due to internal party
pressure, specifically the continuance of BJP’s alliance with the Bansi Lal-
led HVP in the Haryana government, what with the HVP and INLD being
strongly opposed to each other. Added to this were factors like a by-election
loss in Haryana and poor performance of the BJP and LD(D) in the Rajasthan
assembly elections, with the final straw being the increase in fertilizer/urea
prices.
Ajit Jogi, commenting on the withdrawal of support by Chautala, said that
the ‘government would fall under the weight of its own contradictions’. He
also said that Chautala’s reasons for withdrawal confirmed the Congress’s
stand that the government was anti-poor and anti-people. He added that the
Congress was looking at an ‘interim, secular government before the general
elections’.
Closer home, Dattopant Thengadi, founder-president of the Bharatiya
Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) and a senior RSS leader, said that Vajpayee was a
‘petty politician’ playing into the hands of his ‘policy advisers with doubtful
credentials’. According to Thengadi, previous governments had followed
policies of globalization on the diktats of Western powers and he had hoped
that the Vajpayee government would be different, but it had ‘belied the
expectation of the nationalist forces’. Thengadi, who was Vajpayee’s
contemporary in the RSS, repeated the allegations raised by the Swadeshi
Jagran Manch that Vajpayee was surrounded by ‘self-serving advisors’
specifically when those ‘top bureaucrats advising Vajpayee were from the
past regimes and had their own agendas’. These charges were made by him
in a speech at an annual meeting of the BMS, held at the Hedgewar Smriti
Bhavan, the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. This was the second such attack on
Vajpayee by Thengadi.
Even as fast-paced developments were taking place in Indian politics, and
just three days before Vajpayee went to Lahore, there was a moment of
personal joy and satisfaction for me. Vajpayee attended the centenary
celebration of my alma mater, Hindu College, on 17 February. It provided
much-needed respite from the grind of day-to-day firefighting.

IN BIHAR, BHANDARI WAS NOT one to take things lying down. He packed his
bags, said his farewells, left Patna by train and quit later. He refused to use
any government transport. Bhandari said that he was ‘embarrassed and hurt’
by Advani’s statement, which he heard for the first time on TV. The Samata
party had made public its preference for replacing the governor. Nitish
Kumar said that he supported Advani’s statement and that the governor
should be a non-political man, one who ‘inspires confidence with an
impartial image’. According to senior Congress leader Rajesh Pilot,
Vajpayee and Advani were working at cross purposes, and he said that this
reminded him of the tensions between Morarji Desai and Charan Singh
during the Janata days of 1978–79.
Due to these missteps by the government, the Congress was now in an
advantageous position. There were serious doubts that the decision of
replacing the governor would satisfy the Congress and persuade it to support
the government’s decision on Bihar. The Congress was quick to embarrass
the government by explaining that while it was their stand that the Rabri
government had lost the moral authority to rule, it had not called for its
dismissal!
At a time when Vajpayee’s impending visit to Lahore should have been
grabbing all headlines, domestic issues refused to subside even temporarily.
Vajpayee was able to persuade Bhandari, his old friend and colleague, to
stay on as governor. The feedback from Bihar was that most Congressmen
wanted Parliament to ratify the Article 356 proclamation because though the
idea of a ‘saffron’ administration made them tense, Lalu raj made them
afraid. There were feelers that since the Congress (I) could not be seen to act
in support of the BJP, abstention would be the way out.
The National Development Council (NDC) met on 19 February, just a day
before Vajpayee departed for Lahore. The one message from the states was
that competitive populism had left them bankrupt. In 1997, the politically
weak UF government had notified new pay scales for Central government
servants, for the first time, in excess of what the Pay Commission had
recommended. These new scales were gradually adopted by all the states,
and because these were to come into effect retrospectively, once payments
for salary arrears had been made, the states were looking at scraping the
bottom of the barrel. At the NDC, Yashwant Sinha agreed to move for
increased devolution of funds, but this did not satisfy the states, which
wanted immediate cash. The compromise was that the RBI would allow
states a higher degree of overdraft.
Politically, the situation was becoming interesting, in all sorts of ways.
Jayalalithaa issued a statement, which in retrospect is intriguing. She said
that their ‘support is for a Vajpayee-led government and not for a BJP-led
government’. She pooh-poohed the Congress claim that the government was
going to fall on its own and, enigmatically, said that ‘such a scenario does not
exist now and the government will not fall now’.
On the day Vajpayee went to Lahore, Chautala met the President and
handed over his letter of withdrawal of support to the government. It was no
longer only about not supporting the government; Chautala went further and
said that he would support a no-confidence motion against the government in
Parliament. Reflecting the general perception of the BJP being a divided
house, Chautala advised it to ‘better set their own house in order as all their
senior leaders including Home Minister LK Advani are speaking in different
voices even on issues of national significance’.
Interestingly, Chautala ruled out support to the Congress either and was
also not in favour of mid-term polls. But he left the door slightly open in
regard to the BJP, saying that while he was against the ‘anti-farmer, anti-poor
policies’ of the Vajpayee government, he was prepared to support specific
pro-farmer measures. It wasn’t Chautala alone who was uncomfortable with
the prospect of a Congress-led government. Sharad Pawar, still in the
Congress and in fact the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had
expressed himself in favour of mid-term polls were the Vajpayee government
to fall.
As part of the Opposition parties’ efforts to portray the Vajpayee
government as a threat to minorities, the CPI(M) organized what it called the
‘People’s Convention against Communalism’ on 20 February, the day
Vajpayee reached Lahore. There was a considerable attendance of top
leaders, with I.K. Gujral, Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Yadav,
G.K. Moopanar and Murasoli Maran besides those belonging to the CPI and
CPI(M), present at the event. The convention came to the conclusion that the
‘government’s complicity in deepening the communal divide, disrupting
social harmony amongst people belonging to different faiths and consequent
insecurity, is gravely endangering our country’s unity and integrity’. It held
the BJP’s allies as equally guilty since they ‘were also encouraging
communalism by extending support to the government’. The domestic
political developments seemed to remain in firm control of those opposed to
the government, inspiring Jyoti Basu to predict that the government would
fall any day.

ONE OF THE TRAGEDIES OF Vajpayee as prime minister was that he was denied
any kind of honeymoon period, neither when he took office in March 1998
nor after his Lahore visit, which should have been followed by days of
basking in the sun. Parliament was to meet from 22 February, and Bihar
would be at the top of the agenda. However, the headlines of the day were
not about the boldness of Vajpayee’s gesture towards Pakistan but about
Sonia Gandhi’s decision that the Congress (I) would vote against the use of
Article 356 in Bihar.
This decision seemed to bear out Mulayam Singh Yadav’s prediction that
the government’s use of Article 356 was a blessing in disguise, since it
forced the Congress to take the lead in mobilizing the Opposition parties.
Arjun Singh’s cynical explanation of the Congress’s decision was that Sonia
Gandhi’s earlier position on the Rabri government having lost the moral
authority to rule was essentially the expression of the party’s outraged feeling
over the Jehanabad killings. On the other hand, the Congress (I) saw the
government’s decision to invoke Article 356 as being dictated by the RSS!
This was despite the Bihar Congress (I) shouting from the rooftops for the
party to support the government on this.
Sonia Gandhi’s decision challenged the government’s ability to get the
Article 356 motion approved even in the Lok Sabha. Would the TDP, Akalis,
National Conference or even the Trinamool Congress vote in favour? The
Akalis were historically against the use of Article 356. The Congress (I)
obviously saw that the government’s position was shaky. The TDP and DMK,
which both used the same language, had, as members of the UF government,
gone along in February 1999 with Mulayam as he went about trying to topple
Kalyan Singh in the midst of parliamentary elections. In any case, it was now
certain that the government would fail to get parliamentary approval since it
simply did not have the numbers in the Rajya Sabha.
Yet Vajpayee was not about to go without putting up a fight. Realizing the
gravity of the situation, Vajpayee saw that his partners were raising
theoretical issues unnecessarily, when the survival of the government was at
stake. He made it clear to the BJP and its allies that the government would
fall if it did not get the Lok Sabha’s backing on the Bihar issue when the
voting takes place. The BJP rallied behind Vajpayee as never before. The
Bahujan Samaj Party announced that it would support the government on this
issue as Dalit lives mattered. Ram Vilas Paswan tried to persuade the Janata
Dal not to vote against the imposition of President’s rule in Bihar. The voting
was set for 26 February, and there wasn’t simply enough time available to
satisfy every party’s past stand on President’s rule.
To add to the confusion, and vindicating the government on his dismissal,
Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat claimed in a media interaction that on 9 May, when
the three chiefs were briefed on the nuclear tests, they were specifically told
not to inform George Fernandes. This was pure nonsense, since George
Fernandes and other senior Ministers were also briefed about the tests. And
if true, why did Bhagwat wait so long to say it? Why did he wait for the eve
of parliamentary session to reveal it? The suspicion was that Bhagwat had
reinserted himself into the public domain so as to allow the Opposition an
issue to attack the government. He was not about to fade away that easily.
As Parliament met, there was a lot in the air. The finance ministry
presented its Economic Survey, which listed the government’s reform
priorities. Significantly, other than promising to relook at subsidies, a task no
government has attempted to do seriously, it mentioned the amendment to
insurance laws to allow for private sector participation and FDI, spoke of
opening up pension funds to private players and having a cap on fiscal
deficit.
The general feeling, and not just among Vajpayee’s acolytes, was that
Sonia Gandhi’s decision on opposing the imposition of President’s rule in
Bihar was linked with the perceived success of Vajpayee’s Lahore trip. If
unchecked, the optics of the Lahore initiative would have firmly established
Vajpayee in office, making it much more difficult to dislodge him. There was
also the lingering fear that if the Vajpayee government was beset by fewer
distractions, like trying to hold its coalition together, it would focus attention
on the Bofors inquiry. There were also doubts that Madan Lal Khurana
would use the opportunity that Parliament allows ministers who have
resigned or been thrown out: to make a statement. If so, whom would he
embarrass more?
The final victory margin in the Lok Sabha, of twenty-nine votes, was
almost double of what Vajpayee had secured in the confidence vote eleven
months ago. This was achieved in the typical manner of Indian politics, some
would say. On the one hand, it did mean that negotiations with Chandrababu
Naidu, Jayalalithaa and Mamata descended to what could be described as
‘the level of bazaar’. There was brinkmanship, and there was face-saving.
Once it was clear that the Rajya Sabha would not endorse the government’s
action and that the government would fall if there was no affirmation vote in
the Lok Sabha, things fell into place.
The Akalis and the Telugu Desam said they would have no difficulty
voting in support of the government. Those of the allies who wanted the
dismissal of state governments, like Mamata and Naveen Patnaik, seemed
quite pleased with the vote; Jayalalithaa was probably not thrilled, but since
she wanted Article 356 used in Tamil Nadu, she went along. Vajpayee’s
assertion worked and the government seemed to tide over the crisis. Rather
than face even a symbolic defeat in the Rajya Sabha, the government chose to
withdraw the proclamation under Article 356 and the Rabri government was
restored. It was an embarrassment, and the Opposition went to town, but it
was seen as a game of numbers more than that of propriety.

THE BUDGET PRESENTED BY YASHWANT Sinha was generally well received.

Unlike in 1998, when the government was in its early stages and all of us
were groping in the dark for some clarity, his budget preparations this time
were far more thorough. Yashwant Sinha and his top officials, including
Vijay Kelkar (finance secretary), Dr Shankar Acharya (chief economic
adviser) and others, met with Vajpayee five or six times. Contrary to the first
budget, when all Vajpayee wanted was more money for agriculture and rural
development, this time around, aspects like economic reforms and taxation
were on top of the agenda. This was clearly reflected in the budget, which
saw an overhaul of the excise duty structure; there was an attempt to make
productive use of gold, and it provided for incentives to equity-oriented
mutual funds while also allowing write-offs to facilitate corporate
mergers/demergers. What was most heartening was the budget’s clear
indication of the direction of future trade policies. Far from giving into
protectionist lobbies, it talked of bringing down customs tariffs to ASEAN
levels by 2004.
Even if the high-profile anniversary event organized by Pramod Mahajan
didn’t go down very well, I thought that Vajpayee had achieved a lot in one
year as prime minister. Domestically, the fact that he was able to balance the
competing demands of the parties in the coalition, including the BJP itself,
was commendable. Frustrations about the inability of the government, indeed
of Vajpayee himself, were regularly commented upon, but what these
criticisms did not take into account was the lack of a decisive mandate. It
was one thing to say that even Jayalalithaa had campaigned for a mandate for
Vajpayee, but this fact was not enough as a viable argument to counter her
unreasonable demands. Vajpayee’s ability to get the state governments of
Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to find a solution to the Cauvery dispute has not
been given the importance it deserves. The 1999 budget and the scores of
economic reforms that preceded it—patents, the introduction of insurance
bill, the scrapping of Urban Land Ceiling Act, share buyback, sweat equity,
etc.—set the economy on a path of sustained growth that lasted till 2008.
Vajpayee’s decision to go ahead with the nuclear tests and his courage in
engaging diplomatically with Pakistan had suddenly lifted India’s standing
internationally. It was not so obvious then, with many doubting both the tests
and the efforts to improve relations with Pakistan. But it was soon clear that
both were required—the first, to demonstrate India’s determination to defend
its interest and not be boxed into a corner of the world called South Asia;
and the second, to signal that India was prepared to extend its hand of
friendship and not be dragged into an endless cycle of fending off Pakistan’s
attempts at low-intensity conflicts. Even if the effort failed, India would go
on to establish its credentials very effectively, but that was not evident in
April 1999.
There were disappointments too, beginning with the first, direction-less
budget. The failure to control retail prices of fruits and vegetables, as
exemplified by the onion crisis, was more bad luck than bad governance, but
Vajpayee and the BJP had to pay a huge price. The Bhagwat affair should
have been nipped far earlier and not been allowed to reach a stage where a
confrontation became inevitable. Using politicians, including influential
ones, to bring recalcitrant officers under control, was probably a bad idea.
Lastly, so was the decision on Bihar, which was essentially sound but
handled badly afterwards, with cynicism and political opportunism
ultimately prevailing over any notion of justice for the Dalit victims of mass
murders.
In an interview to Prabhu Chawla (India Today), Vajpayee, though known
for his interest in international relations, listed the improved economic
situation first in his list of his government’s achievements. Again, on regional
parties he was far more understanding than what could be expected in view
of what he had been going through. According to Vajpayee, ‘… it is natural
that they would seek redressal for regional grievances that have long been
ignored. My job is to fit these into a mosaic of national interests.’ It was this
attitude that led him to lead a successful coalition for the next five years,
practising what was called ‘coalition dharma’. He was unsparing of the
Congress (I), telling Chawla that the ‘Congress is free to think that they have
embarrassed us. The truth is that they have let down the Dalits of Bihar.’
Vajpayee’s psychological victory in establishing his numbers in the Lok
Sabha, and therefore consolidating his control over the BJP and the alliance,
could not go unchallenged. The Lahore visit, efforts to get Bihar rid of the
Lalu raj and a decent budget, made the government look much better than it
ever had. Would Vajpayee emerge as another Narasimha Rao, who not only
lasted a full term but also succeeded in converting his minority government
into a majority one?
There was palpable pressure to bring down the government. With its
success in thwarting Vajpayee’s move on Bihar and its success in mobilizing
almost all Opposition parties behind it, the Congress aggressively took up the
issue of Bhagwat’s dismissal. They were also helped by allegations against
Vajpayee raised by Mohan Guruswamy, adviser to finance minister, when he
was dismissed by Yashwant Sinha. Some of the allegations were personal,
others systemic. Guruswamy specifically targeted Vajpayee’s grand
announcement of building the six-lane North–South–East–West corridor, the
most ambitious national highways scheme of its time. Till then, most national
highways were two-laned, sometimes less, and incapable of giving the
economy a big push by facilitating logistics and reducing its costs. According
to Guruswamy, Vajpayee ‘was proposing highways from nowhere to
nowhere’. He was happy that the ‘highway project has now being given a
quiet burial’.
As the Congress launched its aggressive attacks on the government, senior
leaders like Manmohan Singh, Sharad Pawar and Pranab Mukherjee were not
seen to be involved in the daily fracas in Parliament. They were probably
viewed as old-fashioned and not aggressive enough, so other leaders were
used. It was a novelty to see Congress MPs rushing to the well of the house
and disrupting parliamentary proceedings. Their impatience to get power
was obvious. It was no more the case that the government would fall on its
own contradictions; it needed to be pushed.
However, what complicated their calculations was that unlike Sharad
Pawar, most MPs did not want a mid-term poll. The issue was no more about
just bringing down Vajpayee, whose government had only a slender majority
(283 MPs at best), but to win over the MPs supporting the government,
including the AIADMK. Were the Vajpayee government to fall, would its
replacement be a Congress-supported one, a Congress-led one or a Congress
government itself? The thought that it may be none of the three was possibly
too remote to consider.

THE SECOND FORTNIGHT OF MARCH saw increased political momentum (not that
the preceding year had ever been dull). And yet, at that moment it seemed that
the politics of recrimination, positioning and jostling would just carry on.
Clearly, the danger signs were ignored or maybe had not emerged.
Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, power minister in the Vajpayee
government, organized a massive rally in Tiruchirappalli, which he
represented in the Lok Sabha. This was followed by a public meeting, the
likes of which the BJP had never organized in Tamil Nadu. It was the
culmination of the state-level party meeting. Ranga, as Kumaramangalam was
called, was exuberant and could hardly contain himself on the viewing
platform where Vajpayee and the other leaders sat. His political base was
Salem, which had been represented by three generations of his family, but the
Congress, where he came from, had become a minor party in Tamil Nadu,
and the BJP was still a fledgling party.
The show was an impressive one. Not surprisingly, the AIADMK, the
senior ally in the state, kept away. But the other NDA partners participated,
indicating that Jayalalithaa had lost her ability to keep the alliance together.
She was not going to take this lying down, but these three smaller parties
seemed ready to stay with Vajpayee and take her on. The Trichy event and the
public meeting in Kolkata, where again the local senior partner (Mamata)
stayed away, demonstrated that Vajpayee’s popularity was not just intact but
was on the rise in states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, where the BJP
was a minor player. This should have sounded a bell.
Bhagwat gave Jayalalithaa the opening she needed. Not satisfied with his
press meet on 21 February, he released a so-called affidavit on stamped
paper, listing his allegations and charges, on 14 March, the eve of the
Parliament session. Was the timing simply coincidental? It gave just the
opportunity that the Congress (I) and Jayalalithaa wanted, to create the
perfect storm for Vajpayee to sail into. They both demanded that a joint
parliamentary committee be constituted to look into the Bhagwat dismissal.
The government was only open for a debate in Parliament. Vajpayee made
his position very clear; Bhagwat’s insubordination was too severe for any
compromises to be made.
With the Congress demanding that Fernandes be sacked from the
government, and Jayalalithaa demanding that he at least be shifted to a
‘minor’ ministry, Vajpayee saw the attack on Fernandes, baseless as it was,
as an attack on the government. Though he did not say it, he was clear that
there would be no compromise on these demands. It was not as if this was a
case of regional/state grievance or even of helping Jayalalithaa out of some
legal tangle. There would be no compromise on issues of national security,
including on civilian control over armed forces, and certainly politicization
was the worst way to repair the damage already done. It was clear that as far
as the Bhagwat issue was concerned, there was no going back.
The situation now inexorably moved towards the climax. It was the time
for tea parties, the main purpose of which lay in their symbolism and
signalling effect. Jayalalithaa travelled to Delhi to, among other things, attend
what would be her last meeting of the NDA Coordination Committee. Even
though there was unanimity at the meeting on all issues except one, all
attention was on Jayalalithaa’s stand on the Bhagwat issue. All others
disagreed with her, and some, like Mamata and the Samata Party, quite
strongly. This was despite Mamata’s earlier patch efforts to patch up with
Jayalalithaa. In her meeting with Vajpayee, Jayalalithaa raised many demands
—e.g., the inclusion of nine ministers from the AIADMK, including
Subramanian Swamy; the sacking of Ramamurthy and his replacement as
petroleum minister by one of her nominees; and the appointing of twenty-five
bureaucrats in specific posts. Contrary to her public posture, she did not
press either on Bhagwat or on Fernandes. On Ramamurthy, her stand being
that the latter was a Minister from her quota, which was factually correct.
Ramamurthy had to be made to pay a price for shifting out of her camp. Later
that evening, Delhi MP and future minister Vijay Goel organized a grand tea
party for Jayalalithaa, which Vajpayee and the entire BJP top leadership
attended.

IT WAS THE OTHER TEA party, hosted by Swamy on 29 March, that got far more
attention, since both Jayalalithaa and Sonia Gandhi were present there,
though not for very long. There was no substantive discussion between the
two, but that was to be expected as their intention was more about sending
out a signal than anything else. Besides a whole host of Congress leaders in
attendance, three ex-prime ministers— Narasimha Rao, Chandra Shekhar and
Deve Gowda—also attended the party. Interestingly, the Pakistani high
commissioner and Chinese ambassador were also present.
Speaking about the tea party, Jayalalithaa said that it ‘can be termed as a
political earthquake’. She had to later retract the statement, since it was
insensitive to use the word ‘earthquake’ in jest, given that the Uttarakhand
Himalayas had just suffered a real one at a huge human cost. Ever irreverent,
Vaiko described the meeting as a ‘storm in a tea cup’. Possibly indicating that
the Congress (I) should not take her for granted, Jayalalithaa, at another event
in Delhi, attacked Nehru’s Kashmir policy, calling it a ‘Himalayan blunder’.

THE BJP’S NATIONAL EXECUTIVE, WHICH met in Panaji, Goa, on 2–4 April,
strongly endorsed Vajpayee’s leadership. The party highlighted four key
achievements of the government in the past one year: the bomb, the bus, Bihar
and the budget. It was difficult to believe that less than six months back
political analysts were speaking of how sections of the BJP and the larger
Sangh Parivar were working at cross purposes and undermining Vajpayee.
But if in-house bonhomie was on the mend, dissensions outside were
growing. Vajpayee had refused to entertain Jayalalithaa’s latest and, as it
turned out, last set of demands since accepting them would have meant
sacrificing Samata and other allies. The AIADMK ministers stopped
attending cabinet meetings and said that they would send their resignations to
Vajpayee. The public attacks by Jayalalithaa and her party members, against
Vajpayee and their erstwhile allies in Tamil Nadu, picked up in intensity, but
there was still a perception that Jayalalithaa would continue to raise the pitch
without actually withdrawing support, which would have weakened her
position.
The end of the BJP’s alliance with the AIADMK was actually on the
horizon, and the numbers were stacked against Vajpayee. But how would
events eventually unfold? Would the DMK cross the aisle and support
Vajpayee, and if so, would its five MPs make up for the loss of AIADMK’s
eighteen? Where would the BSP go? Congress sources were confident that
the Samata Party would break? What about the Janata Dal? Or the TMC?
Would the Akalis split? Which way would Chautala go? And if Vajpayee fell,
would Sonia Gandhi be able to meet Jayalalithaa’s demands? Did the latter
want an alternative government in Delhi, or did she want to precipitate state
elections in Tamil Nadu? There were too many questions, and no one was
able to confidently predict what would happen.
On 6 April, the AIADMK ministers sent in their resignations to Vajpayee,
and after two days he sent those to the President for acceptance. Another day
later, the AIADMK withdrew from the Coordination Committee. With this,
the die was cast in all but name. It was clear that major changes were in the
offing. I detected bad omen but kept it to myself. Vajpayee visited Anandpur
Sahib on 8 April for the celebrations of 300 years of the Khalsa panth.
Sharad Pawar, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, accompanied
him. I remembered Deve Gowda’s last trip out of Delhi as PM about two
years earlier; he’d gone to Shantiniketan, and Sharad Pawar, as leader of the
Congress party in the Lok Sabha, had accompanied him. Would history repeat
itself?
In Anandpur Sahib, the function itself was joyful, and the spirit of equality
and participation inherent to Sikhism seemed so natural as the rich and poor
mingled together. Tarlochan Singh, member of the National Commission for
Minorities and later Rajya Sabha MP, pointed out a man who he said was
‘California’s fruit king’ and who was happily serving the congregation. In his
speech, Vajpayee recalled Guru Gobind Singh’s fight against injustice. The
shadow of Jayalalithaa was never far away. She was also supposed to visit
Anandpur Sahib after a few days but cancelled her visit.

A FEW DAYS LATER, JAYALALITHAA came calling and checked into a Delhi
hotel, reportedly with forty-eight pieces of luggage. There were hectic
parleys over the next few days, and on 14 April, at 11 a.m., she met the
President and gave him the letter of withdrawal of support. Parliament was
due to resume its budget session the very next day. President Narayanan
immediately asked Vajpayee to seek a vote of confidence. This, I felt then
and still feel, was absolutely improper. With Parliament in session, the right
way to bring down a government would be either to bring in a motion of no
confidence, or, since it was the budget session, to defeat the government on
any money bill due in the session.
Vajpayee’s opponents cited precedents of 1990 and 1997, but in neither
case was Parliament due to meet the next day, with several money bills listed
to be passed. Those who felt that the government had lost majority could
have moved a no-confidence motion. But this they were loath to do, since a
no-confidence motion meant prior agreement among Opposition parties on
alternative arrangements, which they would propose while moving the no-
confidence motion. Also, if such a motion failed, parliamentary rules
precluded another no-confidence vote for six months. It was obvious that if
the AIADMK moved a motion of no confidence, the Tamil Maanila Congress
would not go along with it. If, on the other hand, the Congress moved it, then
the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party would have
problems going along. Similarly, would the Bahujan Samaj Party have
supported any motion moved by the Rashtriya Loktantrik Manch, of which the
Samajwadi Party was an important component? It was much easier for most
Opposition parties to vote against any motion moved by Vajpayee than to
support another party’s motion.
 The debate in the Lok Sabha was as thrilling as it was tense. There was
forceful manoeuvring and floor management, but in the end the Vajpayee
government lost by one vote. The newly appointed chief minister of Odisha,
Giridhar Gamang, appeared in Parliament at the time of the vote. Though he
was a member of the Lok Sabha and had not yet resigned, the fact that he had
taken over a full-time political appointment in a state whose legislature he
would have to be a member of, it was expected that he would not take part in
a critical vote in Parliament. The speaker was asked to rule, and based on the
advice given to him by the secretary general, S. Gopalan, the matter was left
to Gamang’s conscience. His conscience told him to follow his party’s
orders, and so he voted against the confidence motion. Many criticized the
speaker’s orders, seeing a conspiracy in Gopalan’s advice. Gopalan had
been appointed to the post by the previous speaker, Purno Sangma, but
legally speaking, the speaker’s orders were sound. At best, the speaker could
have asked Gamang to withdraw but without being able to actually enforce
this.
I saw a bigger role in the BJP’s failure to manage small parties and in the
tendency for regional parties to be converted into family-held, private
companies. Three specific cases would illustrate this. The ruling party in
Arunachal Pradesh had split in January 1999, and Gegong Apang, the chief
minister, was unseated after a long stint in office, replaced by Mukut Mithi.
Of Apang’s Arunachal Congress party’s two MPs, Wangcha Rajkumar was
with Mithi. Rajkumar met Vajpayee and told him that though his party had
split and he was only against Apang, his support for Vajpayee would remain.
At that moment, there was no immediate threat to the Vajpayee government.
Unfortunately, when the moment came, no one remembered to approach
Rajkumar, and he voted against the government, being an old Congressman. I
don’t think the BJP’s floor leaders were aware of his existence.
The second case would be that of the National Conference (NC). It had
two MPs in the Lok Sabha: the veteran Saifuddin Soz; and the young Omar
Abdullah, the son and grandson of previous chief ministers and himself a
future CM. Farooq Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and
head of the NC, pushed his son hard and sidelined Soz in an extremely petty
manner. Every year, the Government of India sends an official delegation for
hajj. Since numbers are limited, there is pressure from all sides to include
persons of choice. Soz had suggested the name of a certain person, and when
Farooq Abdullah found out he had the name removed.
When Vajpayee visited Srinagar on 6 December 1998, he was supposed to
meet ministers of the local government at the Sher-i-Kashmir Convention
Centre. Since we were running slightly late, Farooq Abdullah dismissed the
meeting in what I thought was an extremely cavalier manner. Vajpayee paid
the price. While Omar Abdullah voted for the confidence motion, Soz voted
against.
The third case, of the Janata Dal, is the most intriguing. Former prime
minister I.K. Gujral could get elected to the Lok Sabha only because of the
Akalis, yet he voted to bring down the government, of which the Akalis were
a part. Ram Vilas Paswan did not want the Janata Dal to vote with Lalu
Yadav and play a part in bringing down the government, but the party
persuaded him to be patient. He would later walk away, and with that the
Janata Dal ceased to exist in its original form. Gamang wrongly got the wrath
for bringing down Vajpayee; there were too many others who’d played their
part. Ironically, Gamang is now in the BJP!
Two other parties were being closely watched. Vajpayee had spoken to
Kanshi Ram on the phone on the morning of the second day of the debate, and
the latter had told Vajpayee that he was on his way to the airport as he was
flying out of Delhi, and that while the BSP could not support Vajpayee’s
government, it would not vote against it. Kanshi Ram did not leave Delhi and
the five-member BSP voted to bring down the government. Interestingly, the
person who triggered the whole process of withdrawing support, Om
Prakash Chautala, came back and his party voted in favour of the government.
Ultimately, it was the fear of the Congress’s resurgence in Haryana that made
him retreat.

I HAD NEVER SEEN VAJPAYEE more distraught than when he walked back into
his room in the Parliament House after losing the vote of confidence. He was
crestfallen and in tears. But that moment passed, and he was off to
Rashtrapati Bhavan to submit his resignation. Very soon it became obvious
that it was easier to vote out a government than replace it with an alternative.
The questions that immediately came up were: Which parties would come
together and form a government? Who would lead it?
His short-sightedness in asking Vajpayee to seek a confidence vote became
clear within two days of the fall of the government when President
Narayanan asked Vajpayee, only a caretaker PM, to get the budget (not just
the vote on account) and the railway budget passed by Parliament.2 This was
bad parliamentary practice and Vajpayee resisted, but the nationalist in him
overruled the politician, and he agreed that Parliament could meet and pass
the necessary legislation—which it did, without discussion, as agreed by the
leaders of important parties.
With the budget out of the way, efforts at formation of an alternative
government gathered steam, but the going wasn’t easy in the least. The BJP
met the President and insisted that he obtain formal letters of support, as he
had done when Vajpayee formed the government in March 1998. They also
said that they, too, should be given a chance, for which they would need
support from non-NDA parties and persons. The situation that emerged was
that other than the left, all other non-BJP parties were uncomfortable with the
Congress (I) either forming or even leading a government.
There were further complications. The Tamil Maanila Congress,
Revolutionary Socialist Party and Forward Bloc refused to be a part of, or
even support, any government in which the AIADMK was involved. In fact,
the RSP and FB were reluctant to even support a Congress government. For
its part, the RLM, which constituted of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP and Lalu
Yadav’s RJD, wanted a third-front government with the Congress’s support,
but they were not willing to support a Congress (I) government. Mulayam’s
stand showed his apprehensiveness about losing Muslim votes. A Congress–
BSP combination would be a powerful force in UP, drawing support from
even the BJP’s ‘upper-caste base’, thereby making it even more attractive to
Muslim voters.
The CPM/CPI were the most flexible and were even agreeable to the
AIADMK’s participation, though their preference seemed to be for a
Congress government. The Janata Dal, for its part, was against any
government which had Lalu Yadav’s RJD in it. Contrary to expectations,
there were no defections from the NDA. The Congress’s game plan seemed
clear, which was to form and lead a government—whatever it would take—
consolidate, and then go in for elections by the end of the year. Unfortunately
for them, only a part of their wish list fructified, and that too went against
them.
On 21 April, Sonia Gandhi met the President and formally staked her
claim, citing the support of 272 MPs. This was despite the RSP and FB
making it clear that there was no question of supporting any Congress
government, even before Sonia Gandhi had met the President. She said that
she wanted some time to produce letters of support. Around that time,
Mulayam had mooted the idea of Jyoti Basu as PM; and the CPM would have
been willing to bite, unlike in 1996. But now the Congress wanted to lead the
government.
Vajpayee kept up the pressure on President Narayanan, and the latter was
forced to issue a long press note, detailing the process of consultation with
different parties that he had adopted. At the same time, Vajpayee received
feelers from Buta Singh and others, but I guess by then exhaustion had set in
and he was not interested in petty bargaining.
The Narayanan–Vajpayee dynamic was an interesting one. Narayanan was
serving as a foreign service officer when Vajpayee was the foreign minister
(1977–79). Later, Narayanan quit, joined politics, became a junior minister
and, later, vice president. When the presidential vacancy arose in 1997, the
United Front was in government; it was not clear who was in power. Once it
became clear that Narayanan would be the candidate supported by the UF
and Congress, the BJP too decided to support him and filed nominations
papers for him, among others.
His efforts to make it difficult for Vajpayee to form a government in March
1998 have been described before. In fact, as Natwar Singh writes in his book
One Life is Not Enough, President Narayanan was very much involved in
trying to engineer an alternative government when the Vajpayee government
fell. Gopal Krishna Gandhi, then his principal secretary and a serving officer
of the government, was sent to meet Congress leaders and convince them on
the need to support Jyoti Basu as PM, but he was unsuccessful. Natwar
Singh’s point about Gopal Gandhi being used (misused?) as a political
emissary to prevent Vajpayee from coming to power has not been denied by
any of the protagonists.
It soon became clear that Sonia Gandhi had the support of only 233 MPs,
not 272 as she had claimed. By contrast, the NDA had the support of 270
MPs. Therefore, fresh polls were the only option left. President Narayan
again issued a long press note explaining how and why he came to this
conclusion. The implicit logic behind asking Vajpayee to seek a confidence
vote—that those who’d organized the fall of the government would agree on
an alternative—now proved hollow. Vajpayee was summoned to Rashtrapati
Bhavan and asked to recommend the dissolution of Parliament; the cabinet
duly complied, ‘in deference to President’s assessment of the situation’,
while making it clear that it (the cabinet) had no moral authority to do so on
its own.
What I find really interesting about this period was that despite all the
political upheavals, the government went ahead on 11 April with the testing
of the intermediate-range ballistic missile Agni-II. Its range was 2000 km,
and it used solid fuel. Vajpayee addressed the nation, since it was necessary
to avoid chest-thumping, and explained that this test was a purely defensive
one—a natural follow-up to the Pokhran-II nuclear tests.
And unlike the Pokhran II tests, this time around, not only were the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council (the P5) informed, but so
was Germany, Japan and Pakistan. In fact, the Pakistani high commissioner,
Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, a professional diplomat, had been called in and told by
Brajesh Mishra, in Vajpayee’s presence, that the Agni-II was not directed at
Pakistan. The missile had been ready for testing earlier, but things were held
back because of the talks with the US, Vajpayee’s Lahore visit, etc. This was
India’s first missile test after 1994. The missile’s range covered all of
Pakistan, the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Qinghai as well as Tibet and
Xinjiang. In seeking minimum deterrence, this was a good restart to India’s
missile programme, but it was clearly not enough.
 The Pakistani response was quick in coming. On 14 April, it fired the
Ghauri-II, and a day later, the Shaheen. The claimed range of Ghauri-II was
2300 km, but experts said that the actual figure was 1500 km. The claimed
range of Ghauri-I was 1000 km, but the actual range was 700–800 km. On the
other hand, the range of Shaheen was put at 600 km. This meant that other
than extreme south and the north-east, the rest of India was now within the
range of these missiles. There was, and remains, a general belief based on
good evidence that the Pakistani nuclear and missile programmes are not
home-grown. Its missiles are largely of North Korean origin, with the
Ghauri-I identified as the Nodong-1. The Ghauri-II was probably the
Taepodong-1 or Nodong-2, and the Shaheen was a Chinese M-9, a well-
documented transaction that Pakistan had entered into a few years ago.
Unlike the hysterical reactions of less than a year ago, at the time of the
Pokhran-II tests, the Agni-II tests were greeted by China and the big powers
most calmly. India’s argument, that it needed a minimum deterrence, was
accepted by all. Only Japan was an outlier, understandably concerned
because of its fears over the North Korean missile programme.
The domestic reaction was even more surprising. Sitaram Yechury thought
that Vajpayee’s motivations were similar to Bill Clinton’s, when the latter
ordered the bombing of Iraq when he was faced with impeachment
proceedings. He was possibly half-right. There was no doubt that the Indian
test date had been postponed after the Lahore visit, and could have been
further postponed but for threat to the government. But here’s what Yechury
got wrong. For years since 1994, successive Indian governments had held
back the missile development programme because of American pressure.
There was legitimate fear this time that if India did not test, future
governments could be browbeaten into holding back the programme, a key
element of India’s security preparations.

THE STORY OF THE FALL of the Vajpayee government couldn’t be complete

without the mention of some other developments that flowed from the
circumstances of its fall. Becoming wiser by experience, the NDA decided to
fight the elections as one entity with one manifesto. Vajpayee also made it
clear that Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin would not be an issue, nor would the
NDA run a personality-based election; he said that it should, instead, lay
emphasis on the real issues and on the achievements of the Government.
Though Vajpayee had announced in Parliament during the 1998 confidence
vote that he had contested his last elections, he was going to be a candidate
in the mid-term polls, the logic being that the Lok Sabha had a truncated term.
Despite the NDA’s decision to fight the elections as one nation-wide
alliance, Mamata’s desire to forge a separate agenda for West Bengal was
agreed to.
Vajpayee might have expressed the wish to not make Sonia Gandhi’s
foreign origin an issue, but everybody else did not share this view. There
was a revolt in the Congress itself, with Sharad Pawar, Purno Sangma and
Tariq Anwar writing to Sonia Gandhi and asking her to step aside from being
the prime ministerial face of the Congress. They not only made her foreign
origin an issue but also drew attention to her lack of experience. According
to them, this country of 980 million could only have ‘an Indian, born of
Indian soil, to head its government. Our inspiration, our soul, our honour, our
pride, our dignity, is rooted in our soil. It has to be of this earth.’ The letter
also added that the ‘person who is to take up the reins of this country needs a
large measure of experience and understanding of public life . . . the average
Indian is not unreasonable in demanding that his Prime Minister have some
track record in public life.’ This revolt, while manageable in terms of the
members who walked out and joined the newly formed Nationalist Congress
Party (NCP), jolted the Congress and gave the BJP extra space in order to
project Vajpayee as a tried-and-tested person whose tenure had been
unjustifiably curtailed.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s quashing of the notification transferring
all forty-six of Jayalalithaa’s cases back to sessions judge from the three
special courts did little to moderate Jayalalithaa’s belligerence. People who
knew her, or had covered Tamil Nadu politics, explained that Jayalalithaa
was just not accustomed to an atmosphere of free-and-frank debate, where
somebody could challenge her point of view. That possibly explained her
anger at the time of the finalization of the National Agenda of Governance,
when Ramakrishna Hegde had questioned her demand to declare Tamil as a
classical language. It was clear to everybody that Jayalalithaa had a single-
minded personal agenda, and that if events did not go her way, she felt that
there was a conspiracy ranged against her.
Sadly, the complete breakdown of governance continued in Bihar, with yet
another massacre, which left twelve persons dead. This brought the total
deaths in massacres in Bihar to over 300 in the previous two years.
When Vajpayee passed away in August 2018, there was considerable
outpouring of grief. For those who were uncomfortable with the BJP’s hold
on power, this grief seemed to spring more out of a sense that the times had
changed, for the worse. There was nostalgia for Vajpayee’s moderation and
for his ability to keep the ‘extremists’ on his side of the ideological fence
under control. I found such nostalgia misleading as I remembered the hostility
and allegations that Vajpayee had to face. The following extract from an
editorial of Frontline (24 April–7 May 1999), written as an obituary to
Vajpayee’s government when it fell, is revealing:
. . . [I]t was communal and divisive with a vengeance. It enabled, and colluded with the
RSS’s longstanding project of minority-baiting, allowing the most virulent and thuggish
constituents of the saffron brigade to unleash a new level of hate politics and terrorise
especially India’s small Christian minority. The regime managed to put tremendous pressure
on the system’s commitment to secularism and the rule of law.
 9
The Failed Snare

Politically, the weakest moment in a country’s life is when it is run by a

caretaker government. What made the situation worse for India was that the
caretaker status of the Vajpayee government was going to be a long one. It
had lost the vote of confidence on 17 April and mid-term polls would not be
concluded till early October, a period of nearly five months. What worried
us greatly was that economic decision-making would suffer. An economy that
had been in a downward spiral since 1996–97 was finally turning around, or
at least the shoots of revival were visible. What impact would a caretaker
government have on the emergent growth momentum? Under such conditions,
the last thing that Vajpayee and those around him could have expected to
worry about was a possible threat to national security which would pull the
country into a state of war. But, as fate would have it, that is exactly what
happened.

IT WAS MID-MAY, POSSIBLY THE seventeenth, when Brajesh Mishra informed

Vajpayee, in my presence, that there were cross-border developments in
Kashmir that might become a cause for concern. The exact nature was not
clear, but Mishra seemed anxious and said that the army was soon to provide
a detailed briefing about the situation on the ground. The next day, we went to
the Ops Room in South Block, where the then director general of military
operations, Lt Gen. N.C. Vij, later to be the army chief, conducted the
briefing. Apparently, groups of Mujahideen had crossed the Line of Control
(LoC) that separated India and Pakistan in the then State of Jammu and
Kashmir.1
While infiltration of jihadi terrorists from Pakistan had been going on for
years, what was different this time was that these groups of Mujahideen were
larger in numbers and had occupied the heights of Kargil. At this point, the
army had not been able to determine the places where these intrusions had
taken place and the numbers of fighters involved. As the story emerged then,
two Ladhakhi shepherds had gone up the snow-clad mountains to look for
grazing lands when they spotted a group of men in salwar kameez, popularly
known as Pathan suits. This was reported to the local army units, which sent
up a patrol to investigate. The patrol did not return. However, the situation
was not assessed to be very serious, since the army chief, General Ved P.
Malik, had proceeded on a ten-day foreign tour and was not cutting it short
and flying back. It thus seemed at the time that while the situation may not be
normal, it wasn’t critical either.

THIS WAS A SHOCK, ACTUALLY, in retrospect the first of many, even more
serious ones. After the success of the Lahore visit, the general view was that
even if normal, peaceful relations between India and Pakistan would take
time to establish, a good beginning had been made. Between the two main
parties of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML) was
seen as having an Islamic character, as against the more secular-inclined
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Sharif and the PML were, in fact, creations of
the Pakistani Army, though Sharif had tried to make himself an effective chief
executive. So if Sharif was trying to mend relations with India, it could be
presumed that Indo–Pak relations would certainly not deteriorate.
From Colombo and New York to Lahore, Vajpayee and Sharif had built a
good equation. After the Kargil infiltration, there was anger in India at
Pakistan and at Sharif, though there were some doubts right from the
beginning about how much the latter was actually involved. In any case, an
angry frame of mind could not have been the starting point for decision-
making. The orders were clear: the intruders had to be evicted. The initial
estimate was that it would be done in a matter of a few days, or at most in a
couple of weeks. But, as subsequent developments were to show, these
estimates were completely off the mark.

THE MISSION WAS MUCH MORE complicated than just throwing out a group of
Mujahideen. Both armies had followed the standard drill of vacating their
posts high in the hills when they became snowbound and went back to those
altitudes in spring, around mid-to-late-May. What made the Mujahideen
narrative a little difficult to digest was the geography of their chosen altitude
of attack and their tactics. The Himalayan middle range separates the
Kashmir valley from Ladakh; they are connected by a single national highway
(NH1), which uses the Zoji La, a high mountain pass, to cross over. The pass
is approximately midway between Srinagar and Kargil, now the headquarters
of a district of the same name. The Srinagar–Leh NH1, as it comes down the
Zoji La, lies quite close to Drass, whose heights, occupied by enemy forces,
were perfect for interdicting traffic movement on the highway. Drass and the
nearby Mushkoh valley, south-west of the Kargil town, represented the
western-most extremity of the Ladakh region.
It was soon clear that the infiltration was substantial. The first intrusion by
the shepherds had been in Batalik, north-east of Kargil. The Drass–Leh–
Batalik line running from south-west to north-east is about 160 km, and the
intrusions were 2–10 km deep, 6–7 km on an average. The question that was
bothering us the most was simple: Why would the Mujahideen occupy snowy
heights with no habitation, when their supposed strength lies in carrying out
hit-and-run/suicide missions in populated areas? A Mujahideen action is
normally meant to generate wide publicity and frighten the population,
forcing their governments into conceding to the certain demands. But if the
Kashmiri Mujahideen were occupying unpopulated areas along the LoC,
could it be possible that they were trying to actually win territories from the
Indian state? And if this were true, how did the Mujahideen have the
necessary logistical capacity to place these many fighters and occupy
hundreds of square kilometres of the Indian territory? While these and other
related questions did bother us at the time, in retrospect, nothing much was
done to seek their answers.
Vajpayee belonged to a tradition that believed India’s perceived pacifism
had hurt the nation, cost it its independence and allowed invaders to
subjugate it. Further, he held that independent India had not done enough to be
able to defend itself militarily. This meant, among other things, that the armed
forces had to be given a free hand in battlefield tactics. As it is, the priority
of the government was to ensure that the intruders were evicted, and this
required us to be patient and not distract the army’s attention with questions
about the nature of the intrusion.
With the return of General Malik, we received another detailed briefing in
the Ops Room. This set the trend for the daily meetings of the Cabinet
Committee on Security (CCS). Even though the extent of incursion was
becoming clearer to us, we were being told that only the Mujahideen were
involved. I am still amazed at how we accepted this. There were stories
about how intelligence agencies had reported that groups of Mujahideen had
collected in the northern areas of Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir,
and how this had actually been predicted in mid-1998, etc. But frankly, these
looked like after-the-event media plants—the usual fare in open societies.
Initially, the CCS decided that only the army should handle the situation, as
it was not clear until then how the air force could contribute, there being no
strategic locations (arms dumps, airfields, railheads, ports, ordnance
factories) that could be taken out. The Kargil conflict was an unusual one for
the air force, since it lacked conventional battlefields. The possibility of the
air force providing the usual tactical support to the infantry was therefore
minimal.

May meeting, authorized the use of air power after the three
THE CCS, AT ITS 26
service chiefs—General Malik, Air Chief Marshal Anil Y. Tipnis and
Admiral Sushil Kumar—came to an agreement on the operational principles.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) swung into operations the very next day but faced
grief. A MIG-27 suffered a flameout and went down. The MIG-21 that went
in search for it was hit by a missile, and the pilot had to bail out. It later
came to our attention that while the first pilot Flight Lieutenant K. Nachiketa
was taken prisoner of war (POW) after he bailed out, the other, Squadron
Leader Ajay Ahuja, who’d parachuted and landed in enemy-occupied area,
was tortured, shot and killed, which was a gross violation of the Geneva
Convention that governs battlefield behaviour.
But this was not the end of our woes. The very next day, 28 May, an MI-17
helicopter gunship, with four persons on board, was brought down by an
American-supplied Stinger missile; there were no survivors. The media
reported that the Mujahideen had scored a success in downing an Indian
aircraft, with some pointing out that in the Afghan jihad, the Mujahideen had
mastered the use of Stinger missiles, which had been accepted as the single-
most important factor in changing the tide of war against the Russians. There
was speculation that veterans of the Afghan jihad had been inducted into the
Kargil sector to support the Kashmiri Mujahideen.
While Sqn Ldr Ahuja and the MI-17 helicopter were brought down on the
Indian side of the LoC, Flt Lt Nachiketa was across the LoC. This conduct of
the war could not sustain itself, since the media had started grilling the
government over the casualties and for overlooking the causes that led to
such a situation. It was fortunate that at this stage the army’s casualties were
also, relatively speaking, low, since the main operation to dislodge the
infiltrators had not yet picked up. The only retaliations that the Indian Army
had mounted till then were meant to basically identify the enemy positions on
the peaks, so that the artillery forces could target them. On the one hand, the
IAF went back to the drawing board, while the political leadership led by
Vajpayee went into a huddle. Now that it was decided to alter the approach,
the results were not far. The IAF modified its tactical approach, and soon,
with the induction of laser guided bombs, the ground situation started
changing.
Much more important from the point of view of the conduct of the war, the
political objective of clearing all intruders from our side of the LoC came
with a rider—the military was not to cross the LoC. While my memory may
play tricks, I do not recall any objection being made to it. Subsequently, after
the war was long over, Vajpayee has been criticized for this caveat, which, it
is said, had crippled the ability of the military to regain territory. Much more
specifically and with graver consequences, it is said that these restrictions
led to higher casualties on our side. These objections are extremely serious
and should be addressed, but for that it is useful to understand how the war
was progressing and how the world was reacting to it.
Around the end of May, the expectation was that the war would last a few
weeks, delayed only by the army’s limitations in moving men and material to
the battlegrounds. The LoC east of the Kashmir valley was never seen as a
weak spot from where infiltrators could sneak in, and rightly so, for there
was no local support for them, essential for allowing them to travel and stay
undetected. Hence, it was lightly guarded. Further, high altitude warfare
requires acclimatization, so there was no question of ramping up numbers at
short notice, or even of equipping them with high-altitude gear necessary for
survival at these heights. In short, we were caught napping.
The daily meetings of the CCS meant that while the top leadership was in
the loop always, the service chiefs could, and did, push through decisions
that were necessary and could not wait detailed examination. These meetings
were held invariably every evening, in the enclosed veranda of 7 Race
Course Road. Vajpayee sat at the head of the table, and on one side were the
ministers—Advani (home), George Fernandes (defence), Jaswant Singh
(foreign) and Yashwant Sinha (finance). On the other side sat the officers—
Prabhat Kumar (cabinet secretary), Brajesh Mishra (national security adviser
and principal secretary to PM), the three chiefs, defence secretary and, when
necessary, the chiefs of both the intelligence agencies, Shyamal Dutta
(Intelligence Bureau) and Arvind Dave (RAW). The discussions were open
and frank, with the chiefs in the lead. What brought the war close to the
decision-makers was the screening of videos that our planes were recording
as they carried out operations. This was first used in an Ops Room briefing
and later at CCS meetings, when required. The ski track markings near enemy
posts showed that jet skis were being used, hardly something that the
Mujahideen would use.
 Vajpayee and the other members of the CCS were appreciative of the
difficulties the army was facing in trying to climb up steep mountains at that
attitude and fighting an enemy who had occupied prominent posts on ridges
and could—did—shoot at the Indian Army units downhill. The presence of
heavy guns and the strengthened posts meant that it was extremely difficult to
dislodge the intruders. The mass movement of troops and heavy guns could
only be done using the exposed highway; it was necessarily slow and
difficult. At no stage did I feel that Vajpayee had any doubts that the Indian
military would succeed, and their resolve and capacity were seen as heroic.
Effectively, they were given a carte blanche in operational matters.
This expression of confidence in the services could be seen, for example,
in how the navy fashioned its response. The idea that the navy could play a
role in helping the army evict the Kargil intruders is itself mindboggling. We
all know that the navy played a major part in the 1971 war, but little is
known about its role in Kargil, which was a land-based conflict. Admiral
Sushil Kumar was quick to understand the precarious nature of the Pakistani
economy and India’s ability to dominate the waters. After the morale-dipping
crash of two fighter jets, the Indian Navy adopted arm-twisting tactics until
Pakistan withdrew from Kargil. Immediately after the downing of the Air
Force jets, Indian warships were mobilized across the Arabian Sea to
Karachi and air surveillance was increased.
As the situation became tense on the battlefields of Kargil during the first
week of June, the Indian Navy began deploying more weapons and troops.
By the second week of June, the eastern fleet, based in the Bay of Bengal and
headquartered at Vishakhapatnam, had reached Cochin and soon joined the
western fleet targeting Karachi. With the most important oil ports of Karachi
coming within direct range of the naval fleets, Pakistani Navy got defensive
and ordered the shifting of their ships from Karachi Port to Omara. The
Indian Navy continued to push more ships into the Arabian Sea off the
Pakistani waters while firing some missiles on its own waters under
weapons testing projects.
The Indian Navy also sent its personnel to the high altitudes of the Kargil
area with GPS tracking systems, in order to help the infantry and artillery
forces fix enemy positions for attack. Significantly, the amphibious unit based
in the Andaman Islands was shifted to the Arabian Sea in order to put off the
Pakistanis, who felt that a sea-based attack was imminent. The LoC caveat
was not in the public domain, and even those who knew felt that if things did
not go well, India retained the right to change it. This was made clear to the
three chiefs also by Brajesh Mishra.

THE FIRST CRACK IN THE Mujahideen story was the recovery of pay slips and
other standard documents from the bodies of a few enemy dead that the
Indian Army recovered. This was in the first week of June. With this, our
understanding slightly changed and we now knew that the intruders were
Pakistan Army irregulars and Mujahideen—irregulars because they belonged
to the Northern Light Infantry (NLI), which was actually commanded by
Pakistan Army officers and was later formally made a part of the army.
However, the belief that it was still largely the Mujahideen who were
responsible for the attack continued to prevail among the media, and even
among the decision-makers. I think that Vajpayee and others found it difficult
to fathom that the Pakistan Army would push their regulars inside Indian
territory and risk an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between two nuclear
powers, whose nuclear command and control structures were still
rudimentary.
In his address to the nation on 7 June, and again as late as mid-June (when
Vajpayee visited his parliamentary constituency, Lucknow), he spoke about
throwing out the Pakistan Army and ‘intruders’ from Indian territory. The
failure to accept that it was the Pakistan Army alone which was involved
was not difficult to understand. Ultimately, this dangerous move by the
Pakistan Army went in India’s favour in a major way.

WHAT COMPLICATED DECISION-MAKING FOR THE Vajpayee government during

the Kargil war, and more so later in the year when it had to handle the
hijacking of IC 814, was the media. If the first Gulf War (1990–91) was the
world’s first televised war, signalled by the rise of CNN, Kargil was India’s
first televised war. There was a difference though. The Americans had media
units imbedded in army units, thereby allowing only such messages to go out
as they wanted. But there was no such restriction or organized flow of
information during the Kargil war. The media was reporting live from the
locations where actual action was taking place, e.g. the firing of Bofors guns,
which, many alleged, revealed their locations. Further, reporters had access
to junior officers, other ranks and even troops. The reporting ranged from the
realistic to the imaginative, putting considerable pressure on the government
to act, sometimes even when the time wasn’t ripe.
To some extent, this was rectified with the daily joint press briefing at
Shastri Bhawvan, by the then joint secretary (external publicity, Ministry of
External Affairs) Raminder Jassal and Brig. J.J. Singh, who later became
army chief.2 Where necessary, representatives of the air force and navy were
present. This was possibly the first time that the Indian government went on a
media offensive, with detailed information instead of bland platitudes. But
this was the public part, important enough as it was; the other part was to
keep foreign governments informed. I realized that much as we in India
believe in self-reliance and strategic autonomy, India does not live on an
island all by itself. Our proactive diplomacy was directed at telling key
decision-makers across the world that it was India which was the victim of
aggression and that we did not want to change the status quo unilaterally.
There is nothing more comforting to an established player than to be told that
its position is not being challenged and that its position is actually being
respected. But I am going ahead of my story.
To illustrate how ill-informed, or inadequately informed, we still were in
the last days of May, just when Vajpayee was telling India that the situation
was more serious than previously expected, we were offering the
Mujahideen a safe passage. This was not because India was uncertain and
wanted an early end to conflict, but because it was expected that the
Mujahideen would not have the stomach for a long fight. Thus, while on the
one hand, it was realized that the situation serious, it was still unclear as to
how serious it would get. Unfortunately, the Pakistanis saw it as a sign of our
innate ‘defensiveness’, and the point of providing a safe passage was rightly
not pursued by us. Slowly, the tide would change as the army and the air
force would get their act together by marshalling their resources and
adjusting the battle plans to suit the geography of the high-altitude war they
were fighting.
The pendulum started swinging our way not just because of the battlefield
action but, more importantly, because of an intelligence breakthrough that
suddenly galvanized India and made the Pakistan Army look devious. Arvind
Dave, the RAW chief, came up with two telephonic recordings between the
Pakistan Army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, and his chief of the general
staff, Lt Gen. Mohammed Aziz. Brajesh Mishra and Dave brought the tape to
Vajpayee, and we heard the conversation. There was stunned silence. It was
clear that the Pakistan Army was involved, with the Mujahideen playing a
minor role, if any. The Indian Air Force aircraft had been brought down by
the Pakistan Army, though they got the Mujahideen to claim it. Musharraf was
not happy that the helicopter had crashed on the Indian side of the LoC.
Lt Gen. Aziz then said something that indicated his correct understanding
of India’s resolve to up the ante if things did not go its way. He told
Musharraf that a few Indian bombs had fallen on the Pakistani side of the
LoC, and that this was deliberate. They did not hit any targets but the point of
the strike, as understood by the Pakistanis, was that India could hit targets
across the LoC. Though Lt Gen. Aziz mentioned that Nawaz Sharif had been
briefed at a meeting on 27 May at his office, it was unclear how much the
latter knew. The Pakistan Army’s stand, which it wanted their foreign office
to propagate, was that while they were located within their side of the LoC,
there might have been certain border crossovers due to lack of clarity in the
line’s actual demarcation.
The Pakistan Army was happy that the Kashmir issue was being
internationalized, with the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, calling on both
sides to exercise restraint. The Pakistan Army was also clear that in his
forthcoming negotiations with India, Pakistani foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz,
should not accept a ceasefire, since that would allow the Indian Army to use
the Srinagar–Drass–Kargil highway to move men and material. It was then
expected that the two foreign ministers would meet on 30 May. But the
meeting was ultimately held on 12 June, by which time a lot of water had
already flowed down the Indus.
Though the CCS was made aware of them, the Musharraf–Aziz tapes were
not circulated outside this small group initially. Vajpayee wanted to find a
peaceful solution; or to put it differently, he wanted to give Nawaz Sharif a
chance to bring the conflict to an early end. R.K. Mishra—a veteran
journalist and editor of the CPI-leaning Patriot and Link, former Congress
MP and head of the Reliance-funded think tank, Observer Research
Foundation— was drafted to activate back-channel diplomacy with Pakistan.
His interlocutor on the other side was the veteran diplomat Niaz Naik. While
the war was on, Mishra made three trips to Pakistan to meet Sharif, with
Naik making one trip to India. Mishra carried the tapes and transcripts to
Sharif. As Mishra reported to Vajpayee, Sharif had turned ashen while
listening to them. Was it because he had been caught red-handed? Or was it
because he wasn’t fully aware of the extent of the audacity, and adventurism,
of Gen. Musharraf?
Subsequent evidence suggests that Sharif was not consulted or informed
about Operation ‘Koh-i-Paima’, under which troops of the NLI were
inducted into vacated Indian Army posts; and when Sharif was finally briefed
during the first meeting about the operation, the army had refrained from
giving him the entire picture. However, his foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, and
defence secretary, Lt Gen. Iftikhar Ali Khan, had caught on and advised
Sharif to caution the army, at which point, the army won him over by saying
that post the success of their operation, Sharif would be remembered as the
‘Victor of Kashmir’.
However, Sharif’s position was a tenuous one, and in a later meeting, he
indicated to Mishra that they should take a walk in the garden, obviously
suspecting that his own house was tapped. When Mishra reported this to
Vajpayee, the latter took this as an indication that Sharif was more a prisoner
of circumstances than anything else. So Vajpayee continued to pin his hopes
on Sharif, counting on his help in de-escalating the situation between the two
nuclear powers. Vajpayee must have spoken to Sharif 5–6 times during the
one and a half month period from mid-May to 4 July, when the Pakistani PM
publicly committed to President Clinton that Pakistan would withdraw its
forces to its side of the LoC.
One of these calls was made in mid-June, from Srinagar, after Vajpayee
had made a visit to the town of Kargil. Sporadic Pakistani bombardment was
on, and we saw from the helipad across the river some shells hitting areas
near the highway. On his arrival in Srinagar, Vajpayee asked me to connect
him to Sharif. My small team and I tried, but we just could not get through.
Then one of the local officers present informed us that dialling Pakistan
(+92) from Jammu and Kashmir was barred. The telecom authorities were
told to open the facility for a short while, so that the two prime ministers
could talk.
Back-channel diplomacy, which generally means using non-officials in
developing basic common understanding before formal talks could be held,
was not without its peculiar challenges. How do we send across R.K. Mishra
at short notice with the tapes and without airport security at either end getting
too nosy about what he was carrying? The answer was to make him
accompany Vivek Katju, who continued as our point person on Pakistan.
Since the legal fiction of Pakistan not being in the picture anywhere in Kargil
was accepted, almost till the end of the conflict, normal communications
between the two countries continued. Hence Vivek’s tour to Pakistan, with
diplomatic bags immune to checks, was nothing unusual.
Later, this pretence of normalcy was not required as long as the Mishra–
Naik talks were not publicized. It also had its humorous interludes. Once,
Mishra rang up very agitated and said that he was suspicious about an
Ambassador car, with a few occupants, parked near his house in Vasant
Vihar. Since he was carrying out a sensitive assignment, he feared the worst.
I was asked to have it checked. The Delhi Police promptly moved in and the
car and its occupants were removed. No sooner had this happened than an
angry Shyamal Datta rang me up on the government’s secured phone system,
complaining that some IB personnel, who were keeping a watch on
somebody else, had been removed by Delhi Police on instructions from the
PMO!
THE NEXT PHASE OF THE efforts at peace was something I could not understand
then, nor is the logic clear to me still. I have mentioned Vajpayee’s long rope
to Sharif, and this seemed to fly in the face of it. Sartaj Aziz’s visit was
finally fixed for 12 June. Jaswant Singh seemed quite inflexible about
allowing any latitude to Pakistan, not even on trying to creating a rift between
Pakistan’s civilian and military leaderships. A day before Sartaj Aziz’s visit,
the Indian cabinet was briefed about the Musharraf tapes, which were later
played before the media, who were also given the transcripts. The result was
that the story of the tapes overshadowed the meetings.
On 12 June, Jaswant Singh went to the Delhi airport to receive his
Pakistani counterpart and hosted a lunch for him after the talks, but his whole
demeanour was frosty. The agreed boilerplate for us was that complete
withdrawal must take place before any substantial dialogue could begin.
Contrary to what Lt Gen. Aziz and Gen. Musharraf had agreed upon during
their telephonic conversation, recorded in the tapes, Pakistan now changed
its stand and started asking for a ceasefire, using the excuse that since the
LoC was ‘unclear’, some inadvertent transgression might well have taken
place. Their plan was that once peace was established, their positions
occupied on the ground could be validated. Clearly, believing that causing
confusion was good tactics, the Pakistan Army had obviously bargained for
our falling for this childish trap. The Suchetgarh Agreement of 1972 had
clearly delineated the LoC all the way up to NJ9842, or the southern point of
Siachen. The locations of intrusion clearly fell within the demarcated areas
along the line, and hence there was no scope for confusion. Further, if the
Pakistan Army was not involved in the intrusion and it was the Mujahideen,
then why were they asking for a ceasefire? And since when were the
Mujahideen bound by India–Pakistan agreement? Their stupidity was
breathtaking and audacious. Did they actually think the rest of us were fools?
The anger at the Pakistani deceit was understandable, but was Sartaj Aziz
the right person to be facing this onslaught. He was clearly the messenger, not
the decision-maker. Therefore, the message had to be conveyed to his
principals. Vajpayee, in his address to the nation on 7 June, had made it clear
that India would not rest until all the intruders had been evicted. His message
to Aziz was measured but clear: How did the Lahore bus reach Kargil?
However, the tapes had shown that Musharraf had not kept Sharif in the loop
about the extent of involvement of the army, nor about the extent of the
intrusion. The tapes had also made it clear that Musharraf and his group were
thinking very simplistically and had no idea of the consequences of their
dangerous adventure.
Could Aziz’s visit be used to widen the wedge that had developed
between the military and the elected government of Pakistan? This is what
Vajpayee was doing, and continued to do, using the RK Mishra–Niaz Naik
channel, and ultimately it was this diplomatic chess move which helped end
the war. But Jaswant Singh was adamant that Aziz, and by implication his
boss, Sharif, were not to be given even an inch.

VAJPAYEE’S VISIT TO THE KARGIL town, in the face of constant bombardment,

was a first for an Indian prime minister. It was meant to bolster the morale of
the troops and reassure them that the whole country was with them; it was
also aimed at convincing Pakistan that India would not rest till victory was
achieved. Frankly, I was worried about this visit since the town was within
the range of the Pakistani guns, and they knew the lie of the land, having hit
an underground ammunition dump there on 9 May. The Pakistanis would not
know where Vajpayee was in the town at any given moment of time, and a
major mishap or tragedy could always happen. I urged Brajesh Mishra to
instruct the director general of military operations (DGMO) to convey to his
counterpart to be careful.
This was an unusual war, in that Pakistan did not acknowledge its
involvement, due to which normal diplomatic and military communications
had continued between the two countries. The two DGMOs talked weekly
and more frequently when needed. Diplomats flew to each other’s countries,
and the train as well as the newly started bus services continued operating.
Flt Lt Nachiketa, who was a POW, was handed over to us in early June, as
were the dead bodies of the Indian patrol which had disappeared in early
May, investigating reports of intrusion across the LoC. Fighting a real war,
with heroism, death and causalities, and continuing normal relations at the
same time was bizarre to say the least. Both countries had a reason to
maintain this fiction. Pakistan, as mentioned, wanted to hide its involvement.
Vajpayee had his compulsions. He was afraid that there would be pressure to
end the war before India’s political and military objectives of recovering the
territory had been achieved.
From about the second week of June, the contours of the war started
changing, with the army and air force better prepared and equipped to fight
the war, which had them placed in extremely disadvantaged positions from
the beginning. The deployment of long-range, heavy-duty Bofors guns and the
use of laser-guided bombs/missiles by the air force supplemented the brave
action of the infantry and turned the war in India’s favour, but incrementally.
The assaults were better coordinated and the results bore this out. Tololing,
near Drass, was secured first, and then, as the engagement intensified on the
battlefield, more heights on Tiger Hill fell to the Indian Army. The air force
wiped out the big logistics-cum-ammunitions depot at Munto Dhalo and was
also able to interdict replenishment efforts by the Pakistan Army.
Against their expectation, the Pakistan Army was pushed into a corner and
was now seriously suing for peace. The US had been Pakistan’s big brother
for over forty-five years, had rescued it out of the hole Pakistan would dig
itself into each time, and had equipped and trained the Pakistan Army against
the alleged threats from the Communists. Those troops and equipment were
now being employed against India. This time, however, Pakistan had dug
itself into a hole which was deeper than the US rope could help them out of.
When the Pakistan Army and the country’s political leadership both
requested the US to intervene and help bring about a ceasefire, Vajpayee, in
his telephonic conversations with Clinton, made it clear that the Pakistani
adventure was dangerous and could not be condoned. Either they could
vacate Indian territory on their own, or India would throw them out the way it
deemed best. There would be no ceasefire till the sanctity of the LoC was
respected. Surprisingly, Clinton did not have much choice but to eventually
publicly rebuke Pakistan and call upon it to withdraw its troops back to the
LoC at the earliest.
 India’s intense diplomatic and media efforts seemed to be paying off. The
moniker ‘rogue army’ to describe the Pakistan Army caught on. Digital media
was in its infancy but it played a role, so did full-page advertisements in
national and international press. The NRI community rose to the occasion and
put their money where their mouth was. Extensive tours of the US by senior
leaders like Sushma Swaraj and the then-upcoming BJP general secretary,
Narendra Modi, helped increase pressure on US Congressmen. As a result of
this lobbying, what followed was the US imposing sanctions on Pakistan,
which included blocking all assistance from international institutions like the
IMF and World Bank. In fact, the House of Representatives subcommittee,
led by Congressman Jim McDermott, had agreed on a far lower level of
sanctions, but the thousands of fax messages that his office, and those of the
other members, received, thanks to the efforts of Narendra Modi, forced a
rethink, to Pakistan’s detriment.

WE WERE NERVOUS WHEN THE head of the US Central Command, Gen. Anthony
Zinni, visited Pakistan in the last week of June. The US military and the CIA
were known to be very close to the Pakistan Army, and Gen. Zinni and Gen.
Musharraf were supposedly very close. Zinni met both Musharraf and Sharif.
We did not know what transpired in those meetings, but subsequent evidence,
in the form of Zinni’s book (Battle Ready) and Bruce Reidel’s writings
(‘American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House’),
indicates that Musharraf realized that the Americans would not bail him out.
The Americans made it clear that they knew there was no confusion about the
delineation of the LoC. What did come out publicly was that Musharraf
announced at the end of his meeting with Zinni that Sharif would soon be
travelling to Washington, D.C. to meet with Clinton. In fact, it was Musharraf
who had pushed for the Sharif–Clinton meeting.
Vajpayee politely refused to travel to Washington, D.C. for a trilateral
meeting, since we had nothing to offer till the aggression was completely
reversed. Despite our scepticism of America’s initiative, the latter seemed to
understand the reasons for Vajpayee’s reluctance to travel to Washington.
Sharif’s desperate ‘flight’ to Washington, with his entire family, seemed to
suggest that he knew how out of control the situation was. Unusually, Clinton
met Sharif on 4 July, which is more than a national holiday in the US. It is
this one day when the entire country comes to a complete halt. People
abandon their homes, come out with their hampers of food and beverages,
and park themselves at strategic locations to watch fireworks done on a
grand scale.
We were gathered in the drawing room of 7 RCR around Vajpayee.
Jaswant Singh, Brajesh Mishra, K. Raghunath (foreign secretary), Vivek
Katju and Prabhat Shukla were all in attendance. Clinton called in between
to brief Vajpayee on the progress of the talks. Sharif had agreed to a call
back of the Pakistani forces, and this was going to be released in a joint
statement. The next morning, when full details of the statement were
available, Prabhat Shukla and I were sceptical and could not help but point
out the ambiguity in its language.
The statement deserves to be quoted in full:
It was agreed between the President and Prime Minister that concrete steps will be taken
for the restoration of the Line of Control in accordance with the Shimla Agreement. The
President urged an immediate cessation of the hostilities once these steps are taken. The
Prime Minister and the President agreed that the bilateral dialogue begun in Lahore in
February provides the best forum for resolving all issues dividing India and Pakistan,
including Kashmir. The President said he would take a personal interest in encouraging an
expeditious resumption and intensification of those bilateral efforts, once the sanctity of the
Line of Control has been fully restored.

So did Pakistan actually concede that their armed forces were involved, by
committing to restore the sanctity of the LoC? What were the implications of
Clinton taking a personal interest in moving relations between India and
Pakistan further? Vajpayee overruled our scepticism, and as time would tell,
he was much more nuanced in his understanding of the shift in global balance
that this statement indicated towards. In retrospect, the shift was indeed
tectonic, but we were too close to the event to analyse it with the right
perspective.
The Pakistani reaction reminded me of Gen. Yahya Khan’s famous speech
after the Pakistan Army had surrendered to the Indian Army in Dhaka in
1971, which culminated in the creation of Bangladesh as a free country.
Yahya Khan told the Pakistanis in his last speech as the head of the
government: ‘Abhi jang jari hai [the war is still on].’ There could not have
been a bigger lie, or so I thought. This time around, after meeting the army
chief and other senior commanders, Nawaz Sharif convened a meeting of the
defence committee of the cabinet (DCC).
The DCC expressed ‘satisfaction’ that the Clinton–Sharif joint statement
had incorporated the ‘main elements’ of Pakistan’s position. Maintaining the
fiction, which I was afraid they would do, the DCC ‘decided that Pakistan
should appeal to the Mujahedeen to help resolve the Kargil situation’ as was
mentioned in the subsequent statement issued after a cabinet meeting on 10
July, which said, ‘The Cabinet noted that the Mujahedeen have responded
positively to the appeal of the Government of Pakistan to help resolve the
Kargil situation.’ If this was not enough, the cabinet further said that it
believed that Sharif’s ‘peace initiative had helped to internationalise the
Kashmir issue in a manner that had never been done before while peace in
the region had been preserved’. The proverbial cat was out of the bag, rather
slipped out of it, in order to salvage some credit for what was a monumental
failure.

TECHNICALLY, THE WAR WAS OVER after the joint statement by Clinton and
Sharif was released, but not as far as the larger picture went, because the
developments on the battlefield were still unfolding. At the time the
agreement was being finalized, Tiger Hill fell to the Indian Army. The air
force had played its role in softening the targets, but ultimately it was raw
courage, with hand-to-hand combat, that won us this battle, like many others.
A few days later, on 7 June, significant progress was made in the Batalik
sector, but the area was not secured for another week.
In the meanwhile, the two DGMOs of India and Pakistan met to work out
the modalities of withdrawal. But then again, if the Pakistani leadership was
withdrawing and conceding at the diplomatic level, the reality at the ground
differed. There were fierce counter-attacks still taking place as the retreating
Pakistani soldiers would withdraw from some posts but occupy others. Even
at the locations they were vacating, they were leaving behind anti-personnel
mines. What was more horrifying, however, was that even the dead bodies of
Pakistani soldiers were booby-trapped to inflict last-minute casualties on the
Indian side. Thus the actual conflict with the retreating Pakistan Army ended
only on 26 July, which we now celebrate as the Kargil Vijay Divas.

THE VIDEO FEEDS WE WERE receiving from the battlefield made me feel like I
was right there. But of course, I was hundreds of kilometres away, in the
safer environment of Delhi, closest to the policy battlefield of decision-
making. Though even from this angle, a few things stood out.
One was the bravery of our troops and young officers, some of whom
knew that they were never coming back and were yet willing to lead their
men. In a world full of avarice and personal aggrandizement, it was sobering
to know that such people existed. And their bravery was matched by the
courage and determination of their families. Fortunately, these acts of
heroism, and these fatalities, were being broadcast and not hidden away.
Such levels of transparency had never been seen during the previous wars
and helped bring the country together as well as made people appreciate the
heroic efforts of our soldiers.
Two, the government’s decision to send the remains of the soldiers who’d
been killed in Kargil to their respective homes and accord state funeral to
them. It was the first time this had been done, so the defence ministry had to
purchase the coffins in a hurry. The use of coffins in India was itself limited
and procuring them locally was just not possible. Instead of appreciating this
gesture for what it was, opponents of the government tried to give it the spin
of a scandal. Much worse, stories were planted that with the increase in
‘body bags’ being brought down, there would be loss of support for the war
effort. The use of the term ‘body bags’ was itself incomprehensible, and to
trivialize a society’s gesture of according public honour, or samman, to
someone who had made the supreme sacrifice, was in bad taste.
Vajpayee’s understanding was that even a gesture like a state funeral was
not enough. Therefore, he immediately approved a rehabilitation package for
the widows/parents of those who had laid down their lives. This would not
bring back the lost ones, but at least the families could cope with their lives
better. In fact, the allocation of petrol pumps and gas agencies to the martyrs’
families had started when hostilities were still on, a most unusual step for a
system regarded as slow and unresponsive.
Three, what I found rather extraordinary was the attitude of the armed
forces to the enemy casualties, despite the odd circumstances and bad faith in
which the war had been initiated. Since Pakistan was not prepared to own up
to their involvement, they refused to collect the bodies of the fallen from the
Indian Army. So the army conducted around 145 funerals, dug graves at
altitudes of 15,000 feet, flew in maulvis and conducted the last rites.
Four, while on the one hand the war effort was being monitored and led
single-mindedly with no attempt spared to ensure victory, on the other hand,
the routine functioning of the government continued as before. What made this
situation more impressive was that this was a caretaker government,
handicapped in its abilities to take decisions. No new legislation could have
been contemplated, since Parliament stood dissolved and it was
unprecedented for a caretaker government to try and use the ordinance route.
The routine working of the government meant that normal functions went on,
and new initiatives could be taken up imaginatively. On 2 June, Vajpayee
flew to Mumbai for the commissioning of the INS Mysore. General Malik
flew with us on the PM’s aircraft, and the opportunity was used to suggest
technological upgrade of the army, which would lead to a leaner but more
effective force. Admiral Sushil Kumar was the perfect host, though the
weather gods’ bountifulness meant that we were all drenched.

LATER THAT MONTH, VAJPAYEE VISITED Dhaka, from 19–20 June, to mark the
inauguration of the Kolkata–Dhaka bus service. This was a momentous visit,
since, unlike the Atari–Wagah border which sees very few people crossing it
every day, the Petrapole border is a busy one, both in terms of the people and
goods crossing it. But the Indian media and even policymakers are so Delhi-
centric that the Atari–Wagah gets a disproportionate amount of publicity,
while Petrapole is relegated to the footnotes. (At present, dozens of buses ply
on the Kolkata–Dhaka route via Petrapole–Benapole every day.)
 At Vajpayee’s request, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu joined the
delegation. He was quite a hit in Dhaka, and the accompanying Indian media
credited it to the friendship between President ‘Bangabandhu’ Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman and Jyoti Basu. This seemed improbable, since the two
could not possibly have met, other than on some formal occasion. Jyoti
Basu’s ancestral village was in east Bengal, and having been such a long-
serving chief minister (twenty-two years by 1999), he had become a
legendary figure in the region.
The visit was not without its share of hits and misses. We were to leave
for the airport directly from the last function. As soon as it ended, we were
asked to wait a couple of minutes, so that the Bangladeshi prime minister,
Sheikh Hasina, could leave for the airport and be there when Vajpayee
reached. Being an informal person, Vajpayee suggested that the two prime
ministers travel together, which Sheikh Hasina immediately assented to.
Except that it caused chaos. I remember running and shouting loudly, ‘She is
travelling with the PM!’ How do you combine two motorcades into one?
How to make sure everybody got into some car, any car, and none was left
behind? Somehow, we managed and reached the airport together. All this,
despite the fact that our attention was on the war . . .

THERE ARE TWO CRITICAL ISSUES that analysts still debate about. One: Why did
the Pakistan Army embark on such a risky gamble that could easily have led
to the two countries crossing the nuclear Rubicon? Two: What impact did
Vajpayee’s diktat on not crossing the LoC have on the war efforts? To me, the
two questions are interlinked.
It is often suggested that Pakistan occupied what became known as the
Kargil Heights to avenge for what India did in 1984, when it had taken
possession of the Siachen glacier, the Saltoro Ridge to its west and important
passes of Sia La, Bilafond La and Gyong La. Subsequently, Pakistan made
many attempts, including one led by then Brigadier Musharraf. But India not
only retained possession, it also took control of some Pakistani posts. In the
eyes of the Pakistan Army, this occupation amounted to perfidy and a
violation of the Simla Agreement. The Kargil action is explained as
Pakistan’s revenge for Siachen, a bargaining chip to get Siachen back.
Yet this view is wholly erroneous. Without going into the details of the
origin and developments of the ceasefire line (CFL) in Jammu and Kashmir,
which broadly evolved into the LoC post the 1971 war, one thing should be
clear: While Pakistan was no doubt issuing permits to mountaineering
expeditions in the area, the Pakistan Army was never in actual occupation of
the Siachen glacier. When the Indian Army moved into Siachen and the
Saltoro ridge and passes, it was to pre-empt the Pakistan Army, not to
displace it.
Secondly, occupying Siachen did not impact any area outside it, while
occupying the Kargil Heights meant that Pakistan could interdict the National
Highway 1A, particularly in the Drass–Kargil sector, the vital road
connecting Ladakh to the rest of the country. (The alternative, Manali–Leh
road via Khardung La was then not in a position to substitute for the
Srinagar–Kargil–Leh highway.)
Thirdly, Pakistan could not have seriously thought that India would meekly
accept the occupation of its territory and sue for peace without making a full-
blown effort to throw out the intruders. It was their mistake to underestimate
Vajpayee’s resolve. The Lahore Declaration was the extension of the hand of
friendship, not a show of friendship.
Why then, did Pakistan embark on this dangerous adventure? Vajpayee was
a man of few words, and if he did speak in small gatherings, he was never
garrulous. Yet, in the snatches of discussions about what was happening and
what India needed to do, it was suggested that Musharraf’s risky gamble was
linked to Pokhran and the Kashmir imbroglio. Pokhran had made India almost
an international pariah. As we saw post-Pokhran, the developed West was
using harsh language against India, taking specific steps to humiliate India
and its leaders, and painting Pakistan as an unwitting victim of India’s
deviousness. Suddenly, all past reports of Pakistan as a proliferator, of
people going to jail for illegally helping the Pakistani nuclear programme, or
of the invidious nature of the China–Pakistan nuclear and missile cooperation
were forgotten.
 It was well known that neither Pakistan nor India had begun their nuclear
programme in 1998, and yet India’s test was seen as provocative and a game
changer. Clinton, Madeleine Albright and others had literally pleaded with
Pakistan not to test, which they said would vindicate India. Don’t fall for the
Indian trap, Nawaz Sharif was warned. Yet, even after Pakistan’s test, the
kid-glove treatment continued. The Americans made it clear that the impact
of sanctions on both countries should be asymmetrical, obviously to India’s
disadvantage. The US acquiesced in the release of the IMF loan tranche to
Pakistan without lifting sanctions. This was India’s weakest moment
internationally.
On the other hand, the Pakistani-inspired and -controlled insurgency in
Kashmir had run its course. People had seen through it and had started
participating in elections in large numbers. Time was running out for
Pakistan. The world had forgotten Kashmir, and Pakistan was getting no
traction from it. The emerging Vajpayee–Sharif partnership looked promising
from the point of view of establishing peace, and if there was one thing the
Pakistan Army was afraid of, it was normalcy in India–Pakistan relations.
Peaceful negotiations conducted by civilian interlocutors meant the
strengthening of democracy in Pakistan and the end of the army’s monopoly
over power and resources. This had to be stopped. And what better way to
achieve so many objectives than by simply forcing a conflict on India with a
sleight of hand? The Mujahideen had taken the initiative, and the only way to
stop the situation from deteriorating was through frightening the world into
calling on India not to escalate.
Vajpayee understood this and hence took the decision to forcibly oppose
the intrusion but without enlarging the conflict by taking it elsewhere. Once
the sanctity of the LoC, as the instrument that had maintained peace in the
region since 1972, was re-established, Pakistan’s game was over. Its
leadership had underestimated Vajpayee’s determination to not negotiate till
the LoC was respected, and to regain Indian territory even if it required the
investment of all resources necessary. The strength of Indian deployment in
numbers and guns, shocked the Pakistanis who did not expect this robust
fightback.
 By not crossing the LoC, India demonstrated in action that it understood
the dangers of a conflict between two nuclear powers. Unlike the Pakistanis,
who thought that they could get a good deal by pointing a gun at their own
heads, India’s responsible and mature behaviour won international acclaim.
A number of critics today question what such acclaim actually resulted in.
The answer is simple: had it not been for the stand India was taking, the US
would not have leant so hard on Pakistan and got them to withdraw. It was
obvious to us that it would have taken the military months to clear the area.
The war was brought to an early end only because of how India conducted
itself throughout the war. The danger that the reckless actions of Pakistan
posed were becoming obvious, and by contrast, India emerged as a
stabilizing force that understood the implications of a wider conflagration.
Arguably, the number of casualties would have been far higher had we not
taken the decision to respect the LoC. But nevertheless, Vajpayee had indeed
indicated that if the situation did not improve, the decision to not cross the
LoC would be reconsidered.
What made this decision historic was that for the first time ever, the US
had come out in favour of India when dealing with an India–Pakistan issue.
Our constant scepticism that the US would tilt against us, whatever the
circumstances, proved wrong. It was not that the relations between these two
nations had become hunky-dory; sanctions on loans to India from multilateral
institutions continued till almost the end of the Clinton presidency. But the die
had been cast. India had arrived on the international scene as a responsible
power and a potential economic powerhouse.
 10
Looking Back

‘A bogey is being created in this House that India is moving towards a Hitler type of
dictatorship and fascism is raising its head in the country. This sort of fear is being
created.’

—Vajpayee, replying to the confidence vote, 28 May 1996

From a study of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister in his first term,
1998–99, or as a political leader during the 1996–99 span, what can one
conclude about him? The problem is that like India, Vajpayee does not fit into
easy characterizations. Was he a liberal? But wasn’t he associated with the
RSS, an organization that is more commented upon than studied? Did he
believe in secularism? If he did, why was he so strongly opposed to
conversions? Weren’t economic reforms of his regime more by oversight than
by design? But would that explain his courage in actually going ahead with
the privatization of PSUs, a decision that was so revolutionary that the
successor government, of Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram, who
obviously understood its logic, lacked the political will to execute it? In fact,
they not only stopped it but undertook to criminally prosecute those who had
gone ahead with privatization.
 What makes Vajpayee difficult to understand is that he never seemed to
have articulated his beliefs in a systematic way. Therefore, if an analyst or a
critic, or even a fan, wishes to understand Vajpayee’s views on the economy,
for example, or on secularism, there are no primers available. It is also
Vajpayee’s failure that scholars have not made any efforts to study his life,
his politics, his words or his actions in a serious manner that would allow a
better understanding of the political leader that he was. In fact, but for N.M.
Ghatate’s pioneering work on collating many of Vajpayee’s speeches in
Parliament and presenting them thematically, it would have been impossible
to even know what Vajpayee’s stand was on important issues.1 Unfortunately,
this fate is not limited to Vajpayee only but extends to almost all political
leaders of modern India. The result is that there is either hagiography or
incomplete accounts.
How then does one better understand Vajpayee’s world view? An initial
exercise is being attempted here using two approaches. One, a quick look at
some economic initiatives of the Vajpayee government would help
understand his views, particularly as he never articulated them very clearly
in his speeches. Basically, to look if there are any consistencies in these
policies and approaches, or if they are simply episodic and ad hoc. Two,
examine his written and spoken words on subjects like the nature of the
Indian nation, Hindutva, secularism, the communal question and democracy,
to take a few key issues.
One can start by looking at his initial choice of finance minister, Jaswant
Singh. Rightly or wrongly, Singh was identified as a believer in economic
liberalization and the private sector. It is another matter that he could not
make it, having just lost the elections to the Lok Sabha. Yashwant Sinha, who
actually became Vajpayee’s first finance minister, was initially seen as a
candidate backed by the swadeshi lobby but whose actions very soon
showed him pushing the reforms agenda. Within weeks of becoming prime
minister, Vajpayee had reassured the private sector by telling them that he
came ‘from a political tradition that does not look upon commerce and
industry with distrust. When it was conventional political expediency to
decry entrepreneurship, we championed their cause.’
 As detailed in Chapter 5, ‘The Stumble’, Vajpayee was all for user
charges being paid for services provided by the government, and for the
government to be a regulator and not an active player in the economy. But he
added that the consumers should get the quality that they paid for. Sinha’s
first budget tried to rationalize petrol, diesel and fertilizer prices, but in the
face of revolt by parties within the ruling coalition, there had to be
substantial rollback. Later, the attempt to reduce subsidies on wheat and rice
bought by the non-poor went through but contributed to the collapse of
Vajpayee’s government in April 1999. In fact, when coalition partners
objected to this increase, Vajpayee told them that the Coordination
Committee must discuss the politics and economics of subsidy.
Two short but powerful examples of policy intervention in Vajpayee’s first
term (March 1998–October 1999) and a personal example would help
clarify Vajpayee’s approach to economic reforms. The first, already referred
to, was the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), including the
Golden Quadrilateral. For too long, Indian policymakers saw highways as
catering to the narrow elite of car owners, even as long-distance cargo
increasingly moved out of railways and went to trucks. Initially, the NHDP
was seen as a bid to revive the demand for steel and cement, and to create
construction jobs, but that was a narrow view. Vajpayee’s idea behind it was
the creation of one Indian market where logistics would not be a constraint;
the time and cost savings would be humongous and could help promote
investment and competitiveness in the economy.
Once the rural connectivity component, the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak
Yojana, kicked in, the effect on rural society, not just on its economy, was
almost revolutionary. It allowed small and marginal farmers to find a better
market for their produce; lacking holding capacity, they were earlier forced
to sell it locally at depressed prices. It allowed agricultural labour to move
beyond their villages and find better wages. India’s elementary school
enrolment increased markedly during this period. A lot of credit for this
should go to the launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. But would teachers
have shown up in rural schools if there were no, or poor, road connections?
Going beyond the budget and making users pay part of the costs, including for
rural roads, was again an ingenious idea.
Another shibboleth that had to be destroyed was that telecommunications
served the rich and the upper-middle classes. The Narasimha Rao
government had launched a telecom policy that allowed private players entry
in the mobile services market. Possibly due to inexperience and bad advice
by consultants, the initial demand was overestimated. Within a short period,
the licensees whose bids had been accepted realized that they had all
overestimated potential revenue. The massive mismatch between revenues
realized and fees payable to the government meant that adequate investment
did not take place. This, in turn, prevented licensees from lowering prices to
attract more usage. Caught in this vicious cycle, it seemed that the telecom
revolution would be aborted and become another case of missed opportunity.
The licensees had a legal obligation to pay up, since they had made the
bids and had entered into a contract with the government to do so. It was
argued that it was not the job of the government to rescue those whose
business models had failed. After all, had they made profits beyond
expectations, they would not have shared the windfall gains with the
government. The whole logic of economic liberalization was that the
government should not be involved in the business, and—as Joseph
Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction tells us—those who could not
compete should be allowed to die, so that underutilized resources could be
released and be better used by somebody more efficient.
But there were two factors that could help one argue for the opposite case.
It was not that a few individual companies were doing badly—as it was
almost all of them across the country. Many successful bidders did not even
begin operations. The Department of Telecommunications, which had to
hand-hold the process, was not just a reluctant partner; it mostly worked to
sabotage the entry of the private sector in what it saw as its own monopoly. It
even stymied the efforts of the regulator who sought to ease the birth pangs of
the telecom operators. In short, the issue was not of individual failure but one
with systemic issues at play.
 The second feature that made the case for a relook at the license conditions
was that there was a genuine fear that a single ‘knight in shining armour’
would emerge, buy up the distressed companies and effectively establish a
monopoly. Therefore, if the government was looking at making systemic
changes to help sustain the telecom providers, then it had to be done at a time
when there were multiple players rather than a monopoly operator.
A participative approach was taken up. The government task force, headed
by Jaswant Singh and comprising a large number of people representing
different interest, asked for suggestions. The unanimous suggestion was to
move to a revenue-sharing model, but this was not without its difficulties.
The telecom minister, Jagmohan, was completely opposed to it, arguing for
upholding the terms of the contract. There were lots of articles written
against the change, insinuating malfeasance. There was considerable
opposition to this move towards revenue-sharing even within the government
and in the cabinet. It was Vajpayee’s firm conviction and support that
allowed the proposal to go through.
But that was not the end, since economic interests looking to monopolize
the sector would not give up so easily. A writ petition was filed against the
proposal in the Delhi High Court. The court ordered that the government
could go ahead with it subject to parliamentary approval, even though in the
Indian scheme of governance, it is the executive that determines policies
exclusively. It is only when legislative changes are required that
parliamentary approval becomes necessary. The telecom policy of 1994,
which allowed private participation, did not go to Parliament. Since by now,
the twelfth Lok Sabha had been dissolved consequent on the fall of the
Vajpayee government, the actual change was affected only in late 1999.

THE INDIA OF 2019 TAKES its telecom revolution and highways as a given, but
these did not come about by chance. That Vajpayee was not into the nitty-
gritty of economic policymaking was well known; what is less well known
was his almost libertarian view of the role of the government in not hindering
the economic life of the community.
 My in-laws used to stay in a rent-control house in Allahabad. The landlord
used specific legal stratagem that allowed the release of such houses for self-
use and promptly sold it. When I related this to Vajpayee, his answer was
that the landlord, as the owner and investor, should have full discretion in
how he uses his property.

MOVING ON TO HIS LARGER world view, Vajpayee comes across as someone

quite rooted in the Indian milieu—its culture, civilization, traditions and
values. He was a liberal in the Indian sense but very different from the
classical Western liberal as defined by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
and John Stuart Mill. Western secularism arose in reaction to the Church’s
stranglehold over social life. This was absent in India, where secularism
meant equal respect for all faiths. This difference comes out clearly from
Vajpayee’s writings, speeches and actions.
His literary taste, too, was interesting. He elaborates it in great detail in a
biographical note he wrote for Bindu-Bindu Vichar2 as well as in Decisive
Days. Both of these long essays, though they cover a large span of time, were
coincidentally written in the 1996–99 period. Three of his speeches in
Parliament—when he moved a no-confidence motion against the Narasimha
Rao government on 17 December 1992, after the demolition of the Babri
Masjid; his speech on 27 May 1998, when he moved a motion of confidence
in his short, ill-fated government; and his reply a day later—present a fairly
clear exposition of his views of nationalism, Indian culture and traditions,
and secularism and its politics.
The Ramcharitmanas of Goswami Tulsidas had a profound impact on
Vajpayee, and he refers to it as his source of inspiration. According to
Vajpayee, the comprehensive view of life that it presents has no parallel in
the world. The Ramcharitmanas was even translated into Russian when
Russia was ruled by the Communist Party. Vajpayee had an eclectic taste in
his choice of literary works. However, Indian epics, folklore, patriotism and
the tales of heroic figures dominated his reading list. The writers and works
he has cited include Jaishankar Prasad (Kamayani), Nirala (Ram Ki Shakti
Puja), Mahadevi Verma, Ageya (Shekhar: Ek Jeevani) and Jaganath Prasad
‘Milind’ (Pratap Pratigya). Vajpayee stressed that Premchand’s writing
continued to be popular because it was rooted in a realism whose relevance
resonated with contemporary readers.
He approved of Jainendra Kumar, who, he said, captured the reader’s
imagination even as his works created controversies. Vajpayee was
particularly drawn to Vrindavanlal Verma and made references to a number
of his stories, like ‘Jhansi Ki Rani’, ‘Mrignayni’, ‘Virata Ki Padmini’, ‘Gad
Kundar’, ‘Kachnar’, etc. The historical settings of Verma’s writings and the
regional context of Braj drew Vajpayee to him. Surprising for a poet,
Vajpayee felt that while poetry captures the angst of an individual, fiction has
the potential to capture both the individual and society.
Vajpayee argued that literature and politics need not be two separate
compartments and felt that if politicians got interested in literature, it would
improve their sensitivities; a poet as a dictator would not shed innocent
lives! Authoritarian rulers were cruel because their sensibilities were not
developed. Vajpayee was upset that communists had misused the arts to
promote their ideologies and hoped that the literary arts would be allowed to
flourish without such political interference.
Vajpayee often mentioned in his writings and speeches in Parliament that
he should have remained a writer. He wistfully speculated giving up politics
and going to a quiet place where thinking and writing was possible, but then
realized that this could not happen. In that sense, his life in politics was a
dilemma which, as he wrote, he sorted out by expressing his
individuality/personality through the medium of his speeches. The writer in
him spoke through his speeches, but it was not as if the politician in him was
silent. He explained that the politician presented his thoughts to the writer,
and the writer reconsidered them and, after study and contemplation,
expressed them. The politician had gained a lot from the writer. The writer
did not let the politician cross the boundaries of dignity (maryada). It is
because of this vigilance that the writer was balanced in his choice of words.
The politician’s speech was bound by the writer’s discipline.
Again, for a full-time politician whose career spanned more than five
decades, he came across as someone quite critical of politics and political
life. He wrote that politics destroyed mental peace, affection (mamta) and
compassion (karuna). Political life created an unusual hollowness in the
practitioners as they lived from moment to moment and assumed that their
momentary glory was permanent. In politics, idealism had been replaced by
opportunism, and differences between ‘left’ and ‘right’ had become personal
rather than ideological. He was extremely critical of the politics of dynastic
succession, which had become all-consuming. Vajpayee lamented that
politics had become all about struggle for power, and that this was more so
within parties than among opponents. As a loyal party person, he said that he
felt happy that these evils were comparatively less in the party that he
belonged to, and quoted K.B. Hedgewar, the founder of RSS, who had
warned RSS members against seeking self-publicity.
Though Vajpayee did not always agree with his party, he never made his
differences public, and once a decision was taken, he went along with it.
Reacting to the statement that he was the ‘right man in the wrong party’,
Vajpayee always explained that the fruit was a product of, and drew its
qualities from, the tree. Similarly, he always rose to the defence of the RSS
when it was attacked. During the 1996 confidence vote, when a lot of
negative things were said about the RSS, Vajpayee strongly refuted them,
saying:
I regret that during the discussion, the names of such organizations were mentioned here
which are independent and are engaged in the task of nation- and character-building. I am
referring to the RSS. One can have differences with the ideology of the RSS but the
allegations levelled against the RSS are not warranted. Even the members of Congress and
other parties respect and admire the constructive work being done by the RSS and also lend
their cooperation for the same. If they go and work among the poor and work for the spread
of education in tribal areas, they should be felicitated for their endeavour.

Vajpayee’s world view seems to have been profoundly affected by the

communal poison that Jinnah and the Muslim League injected into Indian
society on the eve of Independence, the resultant tensions and riots, and the
Partition. Even in Lahore in February 1999, he publicly spoke against the
division of India but added that the reality of Pakistan had to be accepted.
During the 1946–47 period, Vajpayee was a student at DAV College in
Kanpur, coincidentally along with his father. The city was a stronghold of the
Muslim League. The times were traumatic, and as Vajpayee wrote, the more
the Muslim League opposed Independence, the angrier people got with them.
The result was communal polarization, tensions and riots. He described a
function held in his college to discuss the Noakhali riots, when a call was
made for volunteers to go to Noakhali to protect the Hindus.3 Though the call
drew lots of support, Vajpayee opposed it at the risk of offending the
majority, saying that youth would be needed in Kanpur itself to protect
people against riots instigated by pro-Pakistan elements. He then gave a
specific example of how many, including him, went near a Muslim-
dominated area one night and patrolled the area; after that, he said, there was
no more violence in that locality.
For Vajpayee, Independence Day, on 15 August 1947, came drenched in
blood—a freedom on whose altar the unity of India had been sacrificed.
There was both happiness and depression—happiness at the end of 1000
years of dependence; depression at the partition of the motherland. Vajpayee
wrote a dark poem to commemorate Independence Day, titled ‘Swatantrata
Divas Ki Pukar’ (The Call of Independence Day). He wrote that
Independence was incomplete, that dreams are yet to become reality, and the
oath taken on the Ravi was still to be achieved.4
With the new situation arising out of Independence and Partition, there
were new challenges and new questions. There were fears of the
disintegration of India, at the hands of forces inspired by outsiders who
sought to remake India on their terms. A massive communist insurgency had
broken out in Telangana just after India had to endure the challenge of
quashing the Nizam of Hyderabad’s bid for independence/joining Pakistan
and the consequent massacres of Hindus by the Razakars. This was also the
time that India was engaged in defending the then state of Jammu and
Kashmir from Pakistani invasion.
Vajpayee quit his studies without completing his legal education and
became the editor of a new publication, Rashtradharam, based in Lucknow
and established by the RSS. This effectively ended his literary career, to his
eternal regret. Vajpayee’s role model as editor was the noted writer
Makhanlal Chaturvedi, who edited Vishal Bharat. Its publisher was
Ramananda Chatterjee, famous for bringing out the Modern Review.
Chaturvedi was upset when Chatterjee became president of the Hindu
Mahasabha and attacked the move in the pages of Vishal Bharat. Chatterjee’s
response was classic. He said that he respected what Chaturvedi had written,
explained the circumstances that made him accept the position and requested
that his clarification be carried in Vishal Bharat. Vajpayee regretted that
there were no more publishers or editors like them.
Vajpayee’s assessment was that the rising popularity of the RSS, because
of the attractiveness of its ideology, irritated the Congress. Gandhi’s
assassination created an opportunity for the RSS to be banned. The RSS
realized that there was no one to speak for it politically. It therefore teamed
up with Dr Syama Prasad Mukherjee, who had broken off from the Hindu
Mahasabha due to differences with V.D. Savarkar. Dr Mukherjee had been a
minister in Nehru’s first government but later quit because of what he felt
was India’s failure to protect the minorities in Pakistan, and especially with
the Nehru–Liaquat pact. Dr Mukherjee’s wisdom and legislative skills were
well known, and it was in their coming together that the Bharatiya Jana Sangh
was established in 1951. The Jana Sangh contested the first Lok Sabha
elections in 1952, won four seats and was recognized as a political party
with the deepak (lamp) as its symbol. In April 1998, while inaugurating the
Konkan Railway in Ratnagiri, Vajpayee would recall that the Jana Sangh had
won the Ratnagiri seat in 1952.

ACCORDING TO VAJPAYEE, THE JANA Sangh believed in nationalism, positive

secularism and Hindutva. It made clear to the nation that the word ‘Hindu’
was not religion-specific (panth vishesh); it was not tied to any specific
mode of worship. It was a way of life that included different communities,
ideologies and modes of worship. The two issues that the Jana Sangh
identified with was the adoption of the uniform civil code (UCC), as
mandated in the Directive Principles of State Policy, and the complete
merger of Kashmir. Speaking on his confidence motion on 27 May 1998,
Vajpayee emphasized that it was from the Constitution that the idea of UCC
drew strength and that the Supreme Court had ruled in favour of its adoption.
The ideal of gender equality could only be achieved by adopting UCC.
Vajpayee held that it was up to the leadership of the Muslims to prepare their
community for it. Islamic countries had gone ahead with these gender-
friendly changes. In India, the Hindu society was dynamic and changes had
been made in their personal law.
He was clear that nobody should have a veto over change, and over the
adoption of UCC, Vajpayee was profoundly affected by Dr Mukherjee and
his supreme sacrifice. Mukherjee had entered Jammu and Kashmir without a
permit that Indian citizens required to access this part of their own country.
Twenty-two days later, at the age of fifty-three, Dr Mukherjee was dead.
Earlier, when he’d parted from Vajpayee and entered J&K, Mukherjee had
asked him to go to Delhi and tell the world that he (Dr Mukherjee) had
entered Kashmir without a permit. Writing in Bindu-Bindu Vichar, Vajpayee
could not suppress his anger at, and appreciation of, Mukherjee’s sacrifice.
Vajpayee called Mukherjee a victim of authoritarianism who died trying to
ensure that Kashmir remains the (biological) head of a united body (India).
Mukherjee had laid the foundation stone of liberty and democracy, he had
fought the forces of darkness and attained eternal light. Vajpayee added that
whenever he remembered Dr Mukherjee, Kashmir came to his mind.

A REFERENCE HAS ALREADY BEEN made to Vajpayee’s defeat in the 1962

general elections in Chapter 2, ‘A Hung Parliament’. Vajpayee attributed his
defeat to the communal tension created by his opponents and to the poison
being spread about the Jana Sangh and especially about the RSS. It was
insinuated that the RSS founder, Dr Hedgewar, had gone to Germany and,
inspired by the Nazis, had started the RSS. As Vajpayee told the Lok Sabha
on 27 May, it was not the demolition of the Babri Masjid—or the disputed
structure, as he called it—that gave the BJP, or its predecessor, the Jana
Sangh, the label of being communal. He explained that in 1991, Opposition
parties held rallies to oppose the BJP—rallies where the overwhelming
presence was that of Muslims. This tactic actually went in the BJP’s favour
and helped it win the subsequent UP state assembly elections.
 According to Vajpayee, Advani’s Rath Yatra in 1990, from Somnath to
Ayodhya—which ended in Samastipur, when Lalu’s government arrested
Advani—had not been organized to bring down the V.P. Singh government but
to create awareness and support for the rebuilding of the Ram Janmabhoomi
temple in Ayodhya. In this, the Rath Yatra was successful since it touched the
sentiments of the majority community. Vajpayee argued that the adoption of
policies and behaviour in the name of secularism by the Congress over the
past four decades had convinced the Hindus, rightly or wrongly, that they
were not being treated well. The Shah Bano case and the attacks on the unity
of the country in Punjab and Kashmir had offended them. The use of the
minority card by the Congress and left parties upset them. The Rath Yatra
symbolized these dissatisfactions.
In May 1998, Vajpayee also referred to the issue of illegal infiltration of
millions into India. Though he was careful not to name any country, the non-
BJP parties and leaders accused him of being anti-Muslim, presuming that he
was speaking about Bangladesh. Despite his clarification that it was not a
Hindu–Muslim issue, this accusation was repeated many times. Vajpayee
even suggested that no one should be thrown out; rather that illegal
infiltrators could enter India utilizing a system of work permits and go back
when their contract runs out. Yet he was pilloried. He argued that no country
could tolerate large-scale illegal immigration running into millions.
On 27 May, facing the issue of secularism, Vajpayee squarely reminded
Parliament that the word did not originally figure in the Constitution. The
assumption was that the Indian state can only be a secular one. Though it was
thought that the Preamble could not be amended, this had been done during
the Emergency, when the Opposition leaders were in jail. Two words,
‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were added to it. Vajpayee said that he agreed with
how Sardar Swaran Singh described ‘secularism’ when the latter moved the
Constitutional Amendment Bill in 1976 that added these two words.
According to Singh, since India was a multi-religious country, secularism
meant that there could not be any discrimination against followers of any
religion. The principle that all regions should be treated equally was, for
Vajpayee, the quintessence of the Hindu world view.
 Vajpayee told the Lok Sabha that the Indian belief was that no one religion
or prophet had a monopoly over truth. He quoted the old saying ‘Ekam sat
vipra bahuda vadanti’, meaning that the truth is one, but the wise know it
differently. In other words, all religions and modes of worship were equally
valid. Vajpayee said that he was secular and proud of India’s culture and
civilization. He had, in fact, been moulded by them. In this context, he quoted
Nehru at Aligarh Muslim University, shortly after the Partition of India.
Nehru told the students that he was proud of his inheritance and that he got a
strange thrill from knowing that he was the trustee and inheritor of this
civilization. Nehru added that both the Hindus and the Muslims owned this
common past. According to Nehru, ‘. . . the past holds us together whilst the
present or the future divides us in a split.’
Vajpayee reminded Parliament that the first mosque in India was built in
Kerala with the permission of the local king, as was the first church. The BJP
stood for diversity and accepted that India was a multi-religious, multi-
lingual and multi-ethnic country. The state should protect life, honour and
property of all, and there should be no discrimination. He explained that due
to actions of the governments and parties that believed in vote-bank politics,
Hindus had developed a minority-like felling, rightly or wrongly.
Vajpayee’s alleged role in provoking the kar sevaks to bring down the
Babri Masjid has lately gained currency based on his speech to a group of
them in Lucknow a day before the demolition, on 5 December. Vajpayee
asked them to remove stones and pebbles from the site so that large numbers
of people, who would gather there, could sing devotional bhajans together.
This call doesn’t come across as provocative. On the other hand, as Vajpayee
explained in Parliament on 17 December 1992, when he moved the no-
confidence motion, if the BJP and RSS had wanted the disputed structure to
be brought down, would it have collected almost all its top leadership to be
present on the site? Could the demolition not have been done quietly, away
from the public glare?
Vajpayee’s speech was actually quite defensive, and he was clearly upset
that the commitment given by the BJP government in UP to Narasimha Rao—
that the disputed structure in Ayodya would be protected—was not honoured.
This rankled him. According to him, people like Arjun Singh—a powerful
minister in the Narasimha Rao government and identified as being strongly
anti-BJP—prevented a negotiated settlement to the Ayodhya issue. In fact,
Vajpayee hinted at a conspiracy to bring down the disputed structure when he
said that while most of the kar sevaks were not involved, a small group
carried out the demolition, disregarding the pleas made by Advani to remain
peaceful.
Vajpayee said that if those devotees of Ram were so keen on constructing
the Janmabhoomi temple, they should be prepared to pay the price for
bringing down the structure. But he was not defensive about the Hindu claim
to the site. He cited the example of how when the Poles recovered their
independence from the Russians, they demolished a church that their rulers
had built.5 He also quoted the famous historian Arnold Toynbee, who once
said that he was surprised that Hindus had not demolished the mosques that
had been built by destroying temples. Vajpayee blamed the Indian political
leadership for not highlighting that Hindus and Muslims had been in dispute
over the structure in Ayodhya for over 500 years, and that both communities
had been using it for their prayers. He argued that if more people had been
aware of the complexity of the dispute, the reactions would have been
different. He added that the idols had been placed inside the structure when
there was no Jana Sangh, Vishva Hindu Parishad or Bajrang Dal.
Vajpayee started his speech in Parliament on 17 December 1992 by saying
that the BJP were unhappy with what had happened in Ayodhya on 6
December. Going back to that fateful day, the media reported that Vajpayee’s
first reaction to the demolition was one of deep sorrow, explaining that the
kar sevaks had gone to Ayodhya for the construction of the temple, not for its
destruction. Continuing in the same vein, he explained that since the disputed
structure was already being used as a temple and housed idols, the
‘militancy’ of the kar sevaks who carried out the demolition was not an act of
devotion. This ‘misadventure’, according to Vajpayee, would make the
construction of the temple difficult.
The assumption those days was that the court would soon rule on the
dispute and that it was just a matter of time before things would be sorted
out. But little did Vajpayee, or anybody else, envisage that the case would
reach the Supreme Court, whose final decision would take another twenty-
seven years. Incidentally, Kalyan Singh resigned as the chief minister of UP
on 6 December, since he had failed to protect the disputed structure. So the
BJP then had an absolute majority in the UP assembly. (It would not be till
2017 that the BJP was again able to form a majority government in UP.) The
demolition in Ayodhya would affect the BJP and the Ram Janmabhoomi
temple far more fundamentally than was imaginable in 1992.

THE TEMPLE ISSUE LED TO further controversy over whether Vajpayee was a
liberal in the classical nineteenth-century sense. But his critics were
forgetting the fundamental values of Indian traditions. The first problem, in
this context, arises conceptually from the meaning of the word ‘religion’. The
Abrahamic faiths have an in-built exclusiveness that sees only themselves as
the one true path. Therefore, if you are not with me, you are damned. Worse,
the concepts of blasphemy and apostasy strengthen this exclusivity.
Unlike Gandhi, who had detailed exposure of living in a non-Hindu milieu
and extensive conversations with Christian theologians, Vajpayee was very
much rooted in the larger Hindu traditions. Hence, for him, discrimination
based on faith was completely no-go, and the ruler was not to be concerned
with the belief systems of his subjects. This worked fine conceptually when
boundaries between faiths are fluid and faith is not seen as all-pervasive. But
can belief systems be equated with religion? Can Shaivism, Vaishnavism,
Nath Sampradaya or even Kabir Panthism be categorized as separate
religions? Going further, do marriages take place between Jains and non-
Jains? Vajpayee strongly argued for Vijayadashami to be a national event
since it symbolized the victory of good over evil and was, in his eyes, was
non-sectarian. The same logic would apply to Holi and Diwali too.
These assumptions would obviously not be acceptable to most believers
of Abrahamic religions, as the following incident makes clear. As cited
above, while moving the confidence vote on 27 May 1996, Vajpayee had
said that India was inherently secular, since Indians did not believe that any
faith or system of worship had a monopoly over truth. This, for Vajpayee,
was self-evident. Syed Shahabuddin, the diplomat turned politician and a
prominent voice articulating a Muslim point of view, disagreed with
Vajpayee’s description of the Indian philosophy. According to Shahabuddin,
it was his belief as a Muslim that his was the only true path. So could
Vajpayee say that Indians accept all faiths as true and equally valid? I
showed Shahabuddin’s letter to Vajpayee and asked him if a reply had to be
sent. He read the letter carefully and gave it back to me. His body language
suggested that no action was necessary. It was early days and our comfort
levels were not too high, so I did not ask him anything. I would hazard that
Shahabuddin’s logic would not have appealed to him. Nor would he have
really understood why many would see Vijayadashami as sectarian and not a
national event.
Religious conversions deeply offended Vajpayee’s sensibilities. He saw it
almost as a humiliation, a continuation of foreign rule, with the weaknesses
of Indians being exploited. It wasn’t that he was not aware of social evils
within Hindu society. In fact, when the former sarsanghchalak of the RSS,
Balasaheb Deoras, passed away, Vajpayee quoted him as saying that if
untouchability was not a sin, then nothing was a sin. This distaste with
conversions did not make him communal or discriminatory against those
belonging to other religions. In fact, he was very sympathetic to the
converted, accepting in his mind that it was economic or social desperation
that led to conversions.
A case had come to him as prime minister to cancel the appointment of a
young lady from Tamil Nadu who had been selected into the IAS as a
candidate belonging to the scheduled caste (SC). A complaint had been
received that she had written the civil services examination earlier as a
general candidate. The inquiry revealed that many members of her
community, who were Dalits, had converted to Christianity, while others had
not. The law was clear: if she was a Christian, she could not claim SC status.
However, Vajpayee decided to overrule the recommendation, understanding
that the motives for conversion often have to do with economic and social
gain. That, however, did not make him a proponent of extending the
reservation of the ‘Dalit Christians’ as a community, something he’d made
clear when a similar move was being made under the United Front
government. Vajpayee also wrote that conversion does not mean giving up
one’s culture and traditions. His ready acceptance of Nehru’s and Swaran
Singh’s logic would fit into this world view—a world view that the Western
liberal, with multiculturalism up the sleeve, would have difficulty
reconciling with.
It was not that Vajpayee was ambiguous about what he stood for; rather, he
was not an ideologue, which meant his world view was not rigid or
dogmatic. The context was always a factor, whether it meant dissolving the
Jana Sangh in the larger corporate identity of the Janata Party to rescue
democracy, or making Gandhian socialism the slogan of the newly formed
Bharatiya Janata Party, in order to distinguish it from the Jana Sangh and
widen its appeal. It also meant temporarily shelving three controversial
issues—abrogation of Article 370; establishment of the uniform civil code;
and the Ram Janmabhoomi—when the National Agenda for Governance was
negotiated in 1998, so that several non-Congress parties could come together
on the common platform of the NDA. In fact, when he was taunted during the
1998 confidence vote for having dropped these issues from the NAG,
Vajpayee said that this was done because the BJP did not have a majority. He
never disowned these fundamental issues. He laughed away the Opposition’s
charge by saying that they seemed upset that the BJP did not include these
issues in the NAG.
The trouble was not in Vajpayee’s world view but in what the observer
wanted to see in him. Many who saw him as communal, as a polarizer and a
cover for saffronization when he was in power, changed their view by 2014
—when the Modi government came to power—and began to regard Vajpayee
as a genuine ‘liberal’, a person who was accommodative and carried people
with him. To quote Cassius from Julius Caesar, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is
not in our stars, but in ourselves . . .’

VAJPAYEE WROTE THAT HE WAS not afraid of death, and he demonstrated this in
real life at least twice. On 22 January 1993, the Lucknow–Delhi Indian
Airlines flight, IC 810, was hijacked, with Vajpayee on board. Vajpayee
negotiated with the hijacker and got him to surrender. Later, it was
established that the hijacker’s threat to blow up the plane was hollow, since
he did not have any explosives on him, but this fact was not known when
Vajpayee was singly persuading the hijacker to surrender. There was real
fear, but that did not deter Vajpayee. On another occasion, he was quite calm,
even joked about a state funeral, when the small plane he was on, flying to
Dharamshala, lost its navigational aid and got enveloped in fog. The plane
somehow reached Kullu, over the Dhauladhar range. It was a providential
escape, but at no stage was Vajpayee frightened, while his fellow passenger,
Balbir Punj, was in a panic.
So when in the context of his cancer, Vajpayee wrote that he could not
understand how one could be afraid of death, which was as certain as the
North Star, this was no idle boast. In fact, his prose became almost lyrical
when he said that if death came to his door, he will leave without even
waiting for a moment; but if it wanted to play around, like a cat does with a
mouse, then Vajpayee would fight hard, till his last breath. After his bout with
cancer, Vajpayee did not suffer from any life-threatening diseases, and though
he was afflicted by a paralytic stroke when he was past eighty, with his
cognitive abilities slowly deteriorating, his innate strength ensured that he
did not yield easily, just as he’d predicted. It was therefore not a surprise that
his poem about death was a declaration of war, not a song of the defeated. It
was not a cry of hopelessness, but a call of one brimming with self-
confidence:
Haar nahin manunga, raar nahin thanunga,
Kaal kay kapal pe likhta-mitata hoon,
Geet naya gata hoon.
Vajpayee releasing P.V. Narasimha Rao’s book, The Insider, at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre on 20
April 1998. The easy camaraderie between the two leaders was on full display at the function.
At Governor’s House, Lahore, 20 February 1998. With journalists Ishan Joshi, Sheela Chaman and
Priya Sahgal.
First moments in office on 19 March 1998, having just signed papers appointing Brajesh Mishra as
principal secretary to prime minister, and me as private secretary.
 Vajpayee being introduced to the Pakistan team, at the India–Pakistan hockey test at Delhi’s National
Stadium (now Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium). This was his first official function, barely hours
into office.
 When Jayalalithaa came calling, on 2 April 1998, after the government had been formed. Easily the
most challenging of Vajpayee’s alliance partners in the March 1998–April 1999 government. Vajpayee’s
gaze says it all.
 With Chandrababu Naidu on 3 April 1998. Even when Naidu’s demands were unreasonable, which
kept Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha under pressure, Vajpayee’s personal equation with him was
always pleasant.
 Vajpayee at the CII Annual Meeting on 28 April 1998, trying to revive the ‘animal spirits’ of Indian
entrepreneurs. He inherited a floundering economy. Government formation and the initial weeks in
office were mired in controversies. The overall mood was gloomy.
 Vajpayee making the historic announcement of India’s nuclear tests (Operation Shakti) on 11 May
1998. Even as Pramod Mahajan and I stood away from the rostrum, so that only Vajpayee appeared in
the frame, we were caught on camera. A very momentous birthday for me.
Vajpayee at Pokhran with the heroes of Operation Shakti, Dr R. Chidambaram and Dr A.P.J. Abdul
Kalam, on 20 May 1998. Defence Minister George Fernandes is sitting next to Vajpayee.
 Vajpayee hosted a successful meeting on the resolution of the Cauvery River water dispute, with
chief ministers of Tamil Nadu (K. Karunanidhi), Karnataka (J.H. Patel), Kerala (E.K. Nayanar) and
Puducherry (R.V. Janakiraman), on 7 August 1998. Jaswant Singh was there to help Vajpayee shepherd
the CMs towards an agreement. A youthful Siddaramaiah, then a minister in Karnataka’s Janata Dal
government and later Congress chief minister, can be seen standing quite prominently.
Vajpayee with the prime minister of Mauritius, Navin Ramgoolam, flying back from Durban after the
Non-Aligned Meeting on 3 September 1998. Mauritius was the next port of call, and the only way
Ramgoolam could play host was by travelling with us. On landing at Port Louis, Mr and Mrs
Ramgoolam exited the plane first, in order to receive Vajpayee as he deplaned.
 On 28 September 1998, Vajpayee shocked his American audience at Asia Society (New York), as
well as most of his own team, when he referred to India and the USA as natural allies. Kissinger was in
the audience. A bold and audacious move at a time when India was facing the brunt of American
sanctions and lectures on good behaviour, post-Pokhran.
 Yevgeny Primakov, received here by Vajpayee at Hyderabad House on 21 December 1998, made an
equally bold announcement, asking Russia, India and China to act together as a strategic triangle in
order to balance America’s unipolar dominance of the world. This embarrassed China, which wanted to
do nothing that would upset the USA. The idea also did not find favour with Primakov’s boss, Russian
President Boris Yeltsin. Jaswant Singh is partially visible in the photo.
Greeting Sri Lanka’s President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, at Hyderabad House, prior to the signing of
the India–Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement on 28 December 1998.
With Brajesh Mishra, flying to Rabat from Port of Spain.
Vajpayee at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore on 21 February 1999. It was at this place in 1940 that the
Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, adopted its famous Lahore Declaration, asking for
autonomy for the Muslim-majority provinces of British India, which was seen as a precursor to
the demand for a separate homeland/s for Muslim Indians.

Photographs courtesy of Photo Division

 1
This section on Vajpayee’s political journey is partly based on a 1999
hand-written essay (‘I Recollect’) that he wrote for his friend and
long-time chronicler, Dr N.M. (Appa) Ghatate, who was editing a book of
Vajpayee’s speeches. The book, Decisive Days, edited by Dr Ghatate, was
published by Shipra Publications, New Delhi, in 1999.
2
The JP Andolan, named after Jayaprakash Narayan, the veteran
Sarvodaya leader, who brought the students and then the Opposition parties
on a single platform against corruption and authoritarianism and for political
change.
3
Shah Bano, a Muslim woman, had been divorced by her husband. Since
Islamic law did not have a provision for maintenance, she filed a petition
under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Court, which provides that a
magistrate may allow a monthly maintenance of up to Rs 125. Her ex-
husband contested this and went all the way to the Supreme Court, which
dismissed his claim that maintenance was against the Sharia. After initially
welcoming the judgment, Rajiv Gandhi went back on his word and, in a bid
to placate conservative Muslims, had the provisions of Section 125 amended
to exempt Muslims from its purview. This led to a backlash among a section
of the Hindus. So in order to placate them, the doors of the Babri Masjid,
sealed by a magistrate to prevent the breakdown of public order till the civil
dispute was adjudicated, were opened by the government.
4
The book was ‘Sauryam Tejo’ which he co-authored with a retired army
officer, Suraj Bhatia.
5
Pulok Chatterjee subsequently held the position when Sonia Gandhi
became the LOP.
 1
The Telugu Desam Party of Lakshmi Parvathi, a constituent of the
National Front, was wiped out. The other Telugu Desam Party, led by
Chandrababu Naidu, which ran the state government of Andhra Pradesh, won
sixteen seats. It then duly took its place in the newly formed United Front,
which was nothing but the NF and Left Front coming together.
2
Sama (discussion), dana (gift), bheda (dissension) and danda (use of
force) are the four upaya (methods) of handling external threats. According
to the Arthashastra, these must be applied sequentially in the order indicated
here.
3
Poorv means past, as does bhoot. The two terms are often joined
together to mean the same thing, but bhoot also means ghost.
4
One of them, T.N. Makan, died many years later in terrible
circumstances. He used to live in Malviya Nagar. Having stepped out of the
house one evening, he went missing, and his body was found in a pit dug up
by the municipal authorities.
 1
The family name was Thakre, but Bal Thackeray’s father, the social
reformer Prabodhankar Thackeray, was inspired by the India-born English
writer William Makepeace Thackeray into changing the surname.
2
Kanchan Gupta, ‘I Too Need to Speak Up Now!’, Abplive.in,
28 September 2017.
3
This is standard parliamentary procedure. The first business of a newly
elected legislature is to elect its speaker/chair, who then conducts regular
business. This was, however, violated when in December 2013, the first
AAP government was sworn in in Delhi, with the outside support of the
Congress party. Since the numbers were close, the Delhi Assembly on the
instructions of the Lt Governor, scheduled the confidence vote first. The
possibility of a clash between the partners in the choice of speaker, and the
need for every vote, motivated this departure from established parliamentary
procedure.
 1
NOTAMs are issued to warn planes and other vessels that a missile test,
or other similar activity, could pose a threat to those passing over the test-
path area, so that they could keep away.
2
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
3
Special Protection Group (SPG), a security organization responsible for
the personal protection of the prime minister, ex-Prime ministers and their
families. They wear safari suits in summer and business suits in winter and
are not to be confused with the Black Cats, who are drawn from the National
Security Guard (NSG), another security organization headquartered in
Manesar (Haryana), near Delhi. The NSG are meant for various specialized
duties, including counter-terrorism operations, etc.
4
The self-appointed Field Marshall Ayub Khan was the military dictator
of Pakistan who launched two operations against India in 1965, setting off a
fierce twenty-two-day war after Operation Gibraltar, which was premised on
Pakistani infiltrators engineering a banner of armed revolt in the Kashmir
Valley. Instead, some shepherds, who’d seen the infiltrators, promptly
informed the Indian armed forces, who nipped their designs in the bud. The
resultant war was fierce, with both sides making some gains at different
sectors, but which ended in a ceasefire that sent both armies back to their
original positions.
5
Interestingly, Namita’s daughter, Niharika, all of nine years old,
suspected something was happening when she saw army personnel installing
telecommunications equipment.
6
I.K. Gujral was elected from Jalandhar as an Akali Dal-supported
candidate. The Akalis and the BJP had an alliance in Punjab and were very
much a part of the Vajpayee-led NDA government.
7
He also did not seem to know that the US policy towards Cuba was
frozen because of the Cuban revolution of 1959, led by Fidel Castro, which
overthrew the pro-US dictator Fulgencio Batista. It was not till 2014 that the
US, under President Obama, reopened its embassy and allowed individuals
to travel between the two countries, though much of that was reversed under
President Trump.
8
The Pressler Amendment, named after Sen. Larry Pressler, who moved
the statute, was enacted in 1990. It required the US president ‘to certify that
Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the proposed
United States assistance programme will reduce significantly the risk that
Pakistan will possess a nuclear explosive device’. On President Bush’s
refusal to issue any such certificate, US had to limit its economic and military
assistance to Pakistan as required by the Pressler Amendment.
9
Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour (Rupa: New Delhi, 2006), p. 124.
10
Italics added
11
Cook, in a visit to Pakistan, reportedly made loose comments about
Kashmir and offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. Gujral, then on a
visit to Egypt, lambasted the British for Partition, which was the cause of the
problem, and called Britain a ‘third-rate power’ that should mind its own
business. Of course, both sides denied these statements but they were widely
believed to be true.
12
This is a diplomatic ceremony where a newly appointed ambassador
appears before her/his host country’s head of state and presents her/his
appointment order as ambassador, only after which she/he can function as
ambassador.
13
Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only
Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
 1
Rajya Sabha members are elected for six-year terms by state assemblies,
other than the twelve members nominated by the President. One-third of the
members retire every two years. As a result, Union governments often lack
majority support in the Rajya Sabha.
 1
In 2018, his sons, Sreenivasan Jain and Gopal Jain, filed a defamation
suit against one R. Mantri, who’d called L.C. Jain a ‘certified traitor’ for his
anti-nuclear stance.
 1
The Evacuee Property Act was legislated to deal with property left
behind in India by those who had migrated to Pakistan at the time of Partition,
and to settle the property claims of those who had to leave what became
Pakistan.
 1
On 27 May 1977, fourteen persons, including eleven Dalits, were killed
in Belchi village, Bihar. Indira Gandhi decided to visit the village on 23
August, almost two and a half months after the massacre. The road to the
village was impassable, so she rode on an elephant. The pictorial effect
across the country was electric.
2
A vote on account allows the government to collect taxes and spend
money for a limited period, normally three or four months, giving Parliament
more time to consider the full budget or allowing an expected new
government to present its budget. This has been standard parliamentary
practice. In fact, since a money bill is the test of a government’s majority,
technically, when Parliament approved Vajpayee’s full budget, it
demonstrated that his government enjoyed the confidence of the Lok Sabha.
 1
In the Jammu sector, the demarcation line where Indian control extends
up to the border is accepted as the international border. However, in 1947–
48, Pakistani troops disguised as irregulars and Afridi tribesmen, backed and
funded by Pakistan, attempted to seize the state for Pakistan, as the ruler,
Raja Hari Singh, prevaricated in choosing whom to accede to. This Pakistani
invasion happened despite Pakistan having signed a standstill agreement with
Raja Hari Singh. The Indian Army subsequently recovered some territory.
The two armies also fought two other wars, in 1965 and 1971, and the
present LoC was agreed to in the 1972 Suchetgarh Agreement. Both sides
committed to respecting this line pending peaceful, bilateral agreement on the
final status of the state.
2
Jassal, my senior in Hindu College and an outstanding diplomat, later
succumbed to cancer, which cut short a brilliant career.
 1
Four Decades in Parliament is a three-volume set containing Vajpayee’s
speeches in Parliament, edited by N.M. Ghatate (Shipra Publications, 1996).
It is also available in Hindi as Sansad Mein Char Dashak (Prabhat
Publication, 2004). Since this work only covers speeches made till 1996,
one can also consult Decisive Days, also edited by Ghatate, which has
speeches made by Vajpayee in Parliament in 1998–99 (Shipra Publications,
1999).
2
Edited by Dr Chandrika Prasad Sharma, Bindu-Bindu Vichar (Kitabghar
Prakashan, 1997) is an anthology of Vajpayee’s poems and excerpts from his
writings and speeches. Decisive Days (Shipra Publications, 1999) is a
collection of speeches by Vajpayee, edited by N.M. Ghatate.
3
Noakhali, in East Bengal (now Bangladesh), saw horrendous communal
violence organized by the Muslim League in November–December 1946,
marked by mass killings, rapes and forced conversions. This was the result
of a paroxysm of violence that had originated in Jinnah’s call for Direct
Action that saw Muslim League cadres carry out large-scale killings in
Calcutta on 14 August 1946. This led to a backlash. Shocked by the violence,
Gandhi went to Noakhali and spent four months trying to control the violence.
4
It was on the banks of the Ravi River that the Congress, at the Lahore
session, declared ‘Poorna Swaraj’, or complete independence, as its goal on
26 January 1930.
5
Vajpayee was referring to the Alexander Nevsky Church in Warsaw, built
by the Russians and completed in 1912. The Poles recovered their
independence from Russia in 1918. The Church was demolished in 1924.
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Books

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Kitabghar, 1998

A.B. Vajpayee, Decisive Days, edited by N.M. Ghatate, Shipra, 1999

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C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon, Viking Publication, 2003

Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour: In Service of Resurgent India, Rupa

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https://www.livemint.com/Politics/ILwFosJVS0x8oDd3mzMcZP/A-master-
of-details-he-gave-everyone-a-free-hand-to-speak.html

Shakti Sinha, ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Normal Person with Infinite Patience’,
Economic Times, 17 August 2018,
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nations/atal-bihari-
vajpayee-a-normal-person-with-infinite-patience-shakti-
sinha/articleshow/65433125.cms

Shakti Sinha, ‘Atal Ki Banayi Hui Sadake Par Hi Kulanche Bhar Rahi Desh
Ki Aarthik Raftaar’, Dainik Jagran, 16 August 2018,
https://www.jagran.com/politics/national-atal-will-be-remembered-for-his-
infrastructure-projects-and-diplomacy-18319713.html

Shakti Sinha, ‘Pokhran Anniv: Vajpayee’s Secretary Recalls Moments of

Tension & Tears on Nuclear Test Day’, ThePrint, 11 May 2018,
https://theprint.in/opinions/pokhran-anniv-vajpayees-secretary-recalls-
moments-test-day/57218/

Shakti Sinha, ‘The Uncompromising Patriot: Shakti Sinha on Working

Closely with Atal Bihari Vajpayee’, Hindustan Times, 16 August 2018,
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/the-uncompromising-patriot-on-
working-closely-with-atal-bihari-vajpayee/story-s34gPStkpp4jf04Pvn
KF6L.html

Shakti Sinha, ‘Vajpayee and India’s Foreign Policy: Early Articulation’,

India and World, vol. 2, no. 1, special edition, TGII Media Private Ltd, 2018

Shakti Sinha, ‘Vajpayee Was Popular Even among Citizens Who Didn’t Vote
for Him, Writes His PMO Aide’, ThePrint, 16 August 2018,
https://staging2.theprint.in/opinion/vajpayee-was-popular-even-among-
citizens-who-didnt-vote-for-him-writes-his-pmo-aide/99644/

Shakti Sinha, ‘Vajpayee . . . Orator, Economic Reformer, Affable Politician’,

Rotary News, vol. 69, issue 3, pp. 42–45, September 2018
 Acknowledgements

I would never have written this book but for Milee Ashwarya’s persistent
efforts. The idea was hers to begin with, which she quickly followed up with
a contract. In effect, I was presented with an offer I could not refuse. Over
the last two years or so, she has kept the project under her control. Her
encouraging push, very polite but persistent, was always there when I felt
that I had hit a dead end. So, thank you, Milee.
I gained a lot from reading the books and articles listed at the end, and
even though I may not have interacted with the authors personally, I
acknowledge my gratitude to them, like Eklavya.
I wanted to get my facts right as memory can play tricks. At the Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), Sonika Gupta was a big help in
locating the microfilms I was looking for, loading them on to the reader, and
frequently helping out by sorting technological problems associated with an
inept user and old tapes. In addition to Sonika, my thanks also to Dr Pankaj
Chaurasia and to their bosses, Dr Narendra Shukla and Dr Ajit Kumar.
NMML provided me with just the right environment to work in, and I must
thank everyone there for their efforts and support.
I also spent a week at the Indian Express archives in Chandigarh, and this
week was a very productive one, thanks to Raj Kumar Srivastava, who
ensured that everything I needed was made available to me. His courtesy
went beyond formality, and he made that extra effort to ensure all the creature
comforts, little things that actually matter so much. Thank you, Raj Kumarji.
Initially, two young researchers, Ratika Gaur and Abhinand Srinivas,
helped me by researching specific topics that I wanted to understand better.
Abhinand then found more productive employment, working on an NMML
project that involves getting together all the speeches and writings of
Vajpayee, which I hope would soon be made available to the public at large.
It is surprising how little Vajpayee is studied. We at NMML were grateful to
draft Vajpayee’s long-term Boswell, Dr N.M. (Appa) Ghatate, to lead this
project. I gained immensely by interacting with Appa and reading his edited
volumes on Vajpayee. Thank you, Appa. You have been, and continue to be, a
big source of information and support.
Abhinand’s notes, especially on the telecom policy of 1999, really helped
me understand the nuances so much better. His reflexes are very quick. I wish
he had hung around longer on this book! Thank you, Abhinand.
Ratika continued working with me and has been most helpful, especially
with her editing skills, particularly after I left NMML. A first-time writer,
unconsciously, makes a lot of assumptions when describing any incident or
circumstance. Facilitated mostly by email, Ratika’s meticulous comments on
names, acronyms and flow really helped make the narrative understandable
for someone who might not be very familiar with the 1998–99 period. Being
next-gen, her questions and doubts made me explain things with much greater
clarity. I realized the virtues of not making assumptions. She did the first-
round editing of all the chapters, sometimes more than once, contributing
greatly to the book. Her hard work remains unseen but was invaluable. Thank
you, Ratika.
At Penguin Random House, Vineet Gill proved to be a hard taskmaster.
The text changed visibly in the few weeks that he worked on the manuscript.
A lot of redundancies, general statements and irrelevant information was
weeded out. The language became tighter and the flow more coherent.
Working with Vineet, I realized the value of professional editing. I was happy
to accept his suggestions, mostly, as I could see how much better it read with
the changes. Thank you, Vineet.
This book is unusual because I do not list too many names outside the main
actors. Lest an impression is created that I was working alone with Vajpayee
during these years, particularly the 1998–99 period, I must mention that we
had a very good team at the prime minister’s house, with V. Anandarajan, the
additional private secretary, who, after I left, became the private secretary
along with Ajay Bisaria. Anand and I shared responsibilities, and without
him by my side, I would have collapsed with exhaustion in a few months. We
were ably supported by a number of persons—Venkat, Dilip Kumar, Shanker
and others.
At the PMO, besides Brajesh Mishra, about whom there are a lot of
references in the book, there was Ashok Saikia, who, as someone who knew
Vajpayee for decades, was able to convey the complexities and undercurrents
that people at the top are often not told. Ashok Tandon very ably dealt with
the media and conveyed feedback to the boss effectively. One cannot forget
Kanchan Gupta and his writing skills backed by a formidable political brain.
Sudheendra Kulkarni brought Mumbai and the business world so much closer
to political decision-making. He was ably assisted by the IIM graduate Harsh
Shrivastava. At a later stage, N.K. Singh, or Nandu babu, joined the PMO
and brought his grasp of economic policymaking and wide network,
something that the PMO had missed till then.
The PMO had very solid foreign-policy bench strength, what with Brajesh
Mishra himself heading it. The erudite Prabhat Shukla and Satish Mehta,
whom I mention in the book,
in the context of organizing the Lahore visit, were always available to help
me understand the nuances of diplomacy. Regrettably, Brajeshji and Ashok
are no more with us.
Interacting with friends and colleagues in external affairs—the
redoubtable Hardeep Puri, Vivek Katju and Rakesh Sood, to take only three
names—was always an intellectual treat. I must say thank you to all of them,
many of whom I have not listed here.
I learnt a lot from them, which decades later helped me write this book. I
may not have always agreed with their assessments, but
I definitely gained a lot from them.
Discussions over decades with close friends Pradeep Puri, Pradeep
Chhibber and Subhash Misra, particularly on political trends, have shaped
my own mental make-up. This actually requires a paragraph, but you will
understand. Thank you.
We have this terrible Indian English expression, ‘last but not the least’. In
fact, often, as in this note, the most important is reserved for the last. This
book, and a lot of what we take for granted in contemporary India in terms of
quality of life, India’s increasing importance to the world, etc., would not
have been the same without the vision and efforts of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
He did what many cannot achieve, which is make the transition from a
successful politician to a stateman. Do I uncritically accept what he believed
in or did? Far from it. As I said before, Vajpayee deserves to be studied a lot
more. Vinay Sitapati (Jugalbandi) has made a start, even if I do not agree
with a number of his propositions. Vinay’s effort must be appreciated. I have
learnt a lot while interacting with him. So thank you. I hope others pick up the
baton.
So much of my life and my learning would not have been possible but for
my professionally joining Vajpayee in 1996. ‘Thank you’ seems a small
phrase compared to what I have gained. But I shall nevertheless say it: Thank
you, Atalji.
In fact, I would not have joined Vajpayee in 1996 but for a person, my
mother-in-law’s elder sister, Bibi Masi to us, and Kaul Aunty to the world.
She radiated love and went out of her way to make me feel at home. She was
an immense source of support, far more than what words can describe. Thank
you, Bibi Masi.
Namita (Gunu) and Ranjan remain not just family but much more. I did not
tell you I was writing this book, but I had to pay my tribute to Baabji. Thank
you for your love and support, especially at difficult moments.
P.G. Wodehouse once thanked his daughter, Leonara, without whose help
‘this book would have been finished in half the time’. My experience has
been the opposite. My long hours at the table all evening, and on holidays,
were not just tolerated but encouraged. Surabhi, Kartikeya and Suhasini
ensured that I had the space to work. One could not have asked for anything
better. And yes, Surabhi read the manuscript after the first proof, and found
many errors. Erich Segal, in his epic novel Love Story, had this beautiful
line, ‘Love means not ever having to say you are sorry.’ He had nothing to
say about not ever having to say thank you. So, thank you, Surabhi, Kartikeya
and Suhasini.
 THE BEGINNING

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This collection published 2020

Copyright © Shakti Sinha 2020
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