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Rear View: How Rajiv had a

great fall
Written by Inder Malhotra | Published:January 5, 2015 12:00 am

Like the Bourbons, Rajiv Gandhi learnt nothing and unlearnt nothing from his
mistakes.
Instead, he went on compounding them disastrously. Shaken by the consequences of
his policy of simultaneously appeasing both Hindu and Muslim bigots (The era of the
politics of appeasement, IE, December 8, 2014), several of his trusted officials in the
PMO urged him to restrain the zealots on both sides and reassure the country that,
as Jawaharlal Nehrus grandson, he was duty-bound to preserve and promote
communal harmony. Unfortunately, this sound advice was brushed aside on the
insistence of those powerbrokers he had damned so eloquently in December 1985 but
whose services he now needed sorely.
They told him not to listen to his bureaucrats who knew little about politics and
much less about the Hindu sentiment. No wonder, communal discord and conflict
worsened by what followed. Amidst Hindu-Muslim riots at various places, the VHP
fixed a date for shilanyas (foundation stone-laying ceremony) for a Ram temple at
Ayodhya.
Instead of persuading the VHP to abandon or at least defer the plan, Rajiv entered into
secret negotiations with it through his home minister, Buta Singh, in search of a
compromise. The agreement reached was that the VHP would confine itself to laying
the foundation stone and build no structure on it, however small, and that shilanyas
would take place on land that was undisputed. On both counts, the VHP stabbed the
government in the back and communal tension worsened.
Before continuing the narrative, it must be explained that the prime ministers urgent
need to embrace those whom he had vowed to destroy was the direct result of another
of his unwise decisions to pick a fight with the republics president, Giani Zail
Singh, a past master in the art of political intrigue and infighting. Disagreement over
Punjab, where a virulent new insurgency had erupted after the collapse of the Rajiv-
Longowal accord, had much to do with this.
But Rajiv pettily stopped showing the president even customary courtesies. He
wouldnt report to him even on his own foreign visits. When the media asked him
why he was violating the established conventions and rules regarding relations with
the president, he retorted: Havent I broken so many other conventions also? One of
his biographers, Nick Nugent of the BBC, recorded that by this time he had become
his mothers son.
The wily Zail Singh bided his time and hit back only when Rajiv made in Parliament a
manifestly wrong statement that the president was being fully informed. He sent to
the prime minister a sharp rejoinder and quietly leaked it, further eroding Rajivs
already declining credibility. Zail Singh also started a war of nerves with Rajiv by
letting the word spread that he was about to sack the prime minister on charges of
corruption, as the vigilant Indian press was digging up more and more information on
Bofors.
Despite his monumental majority in Parliament, Rajiv remained nervous about what
the president might do, and heaved a sigh of relief only when Zail Singh retired and
was succeeded by the vice president, R. Venkataraman, who had masterminded
Rajivs selection as the successor to his slain mother.
Ironically, however, Rajiv suffered a serious blow to his reputation and authority
precisely at the time Zail Singh was leaving Rashtrapati Bhavan. As is well known,
when Rajiv came to power, his most trusted confidants were two Aruns Arun
Nehru, a cousin, and Arun Singh, a crony of Rajiv since their school days. After
enjoying great power and influence as a minister of state for energy first, and then as
minister for internal security in the home ministry, Nehru fell by the wayside. Rajiv
had started doubting his loyalty and sacked him before the end of 1986. By the time
V.P. Singh emerged as Rajivs principal political adversary in 1987, Nehru promptly
joined him. However, there was never any doubt about Arun Singhs fidelity to his
friend and boss.
When Rajiv decided to take over the ministry of defence (MoD), he shifted Singh
from the PMO to the MoD as minister of state. In the third week of July 1987, he
resigned. From that day until now, he has not uttered a single word about his reasons
for quitting. But most Indians believe that he was disgusted with the way the Bofors
scandal was being handled.
While the insurgency in Punjab was still raging, Rajiv created an even more
dangerous one in the more sensitive state of Jammu and Kashmir. It can be argued
that he had partly inherited the mess from his mother. But instead of cleaning it up, he
made it messier. On July 2, 1984, barely three months before her assassination, Indira
Gandhi ordered the dismissal of the state government, headed by Farooq Abdullah,
the towering Sheikh Abdullahs son. In his place, she appointed as chief minister
Farooqs bitterest enemy, who was also his brother-in-law, G.M. Shah.
Like the rest of the country, Rajiv discovered that this was a classic case of the
remedy being worse than the disease. But he erred in joining hands with Farooq again
and then rigging the fresh elections so brazenly as to infuriate the younger generation
of Kashmiris wanting fair elections and greater autonomy. A large number of them
went across the Line of Control to Pakistan, got training in the Pakistani armys
camps and were given a generous supply of automatic weapons. They returned,
together with Pakistani infiltrators, and created such murder and mayhem that it took
long years to bring the situation under a semblance of control.
While trying to contain various movements for secession within the country with
mixed results, according to journalists, scholars and historians Rajiv chose to
mediate in a vicious and vile ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka between the Sinhala majority
and the Tamil minority that eventually led to a barbarous civil war lasting a quarter of
a century. The highly professional Indian army also suffered because it was sent to the
island republic as a peacekeeping force. This long, complex and painful story has to
be told separately.
The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator