Natwar Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Makhan Lal Fotedar, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh and now Sharad Pawar. In the span of a year, six 'Congressmen' have published books. This is good news. Each has written a very different kind of book, but taken together they have all contributed to a better understanding of contemporary politics.
Four of the six gentlemen were key players in national politics for at least two decades. None of them has revealed all, opting for carefully crafted versions of what they know. Mukherjee’s reticence is understandable, given the constitutional office he occupies. Pawar’s cautious storytelling suggests that his political story remains unfinished.
Pawar’s On My Terms: From The Grassroots To The Corridors Of Power has only a couple of new revelations that have not been reported in the media. One of them is his account of how Sitaram Kesri aspired to head a coalition government in 1998, before handing over the Congress party to Sonia Gandhi. Kesri failed for the same reason that P.V. Narasimha Rao did when he tried to continue in office heading a coalition government in 1996. Rao’s nascent attempts were scuttled when Madhavrao Scindia, then general secretary of the party, went on national television, conceded defeat and announced that the Congress would sit in the opposition benches. Pawar rues the fact that Sonia Gandhi and her coterie opted for Rao in 1991, for Deve Gowda in 1996, for I.K. Gujral in 1997 and left him with no option other than to quit the Congress in 1999.
Whatever the shortcomings of Pawar’s account, he should be complimented for writing his version of what happened in the Congress and how the Indian National Congress became the Sonia Congress. Pawar has not pulled his punches in commenting on Sonia’s leadership of her party or on Rahul Gandhi’s ability to lead it.
For me it was rewarding and heartening to read Pawar’s book both because he corroborates several points I had made in my own book about the Manmohan Singh government and, more importantly, because by writing his account of what happened he establishes the value of such storytelling. The latter is particularly gratifying for me since I was surprised to see Pawar disapprove of my decision to publish The Accidental Prime Minister.
Illustration: Bhaskaran
People in public life not sharing with the public the facts about how governments function in a democracy was a peculiarly Indian trait till recently. Few within the Delhi darbar have done so. But then, as this book reveals, Pawar was never at ease in that darbar and was, in fact, kept out of it by the darbaris of the Congress.
The title of the book is revealing. Pawar entered the ‘corridors of power’ but did not manage to enter its sanctum sanctorum—the west side of the South Block on Raisina Hill. Even his tenure in the South Block’s east side, the ministry of defence, was short-lived. So near and yet so far. Why did Pawar not make it to the top? It is a question that must have rankled even his mentor, Y.B. Chavan. Neither the Maratha Peshwas nor their political descendants in democratic India have so far been able to rule from Delhi.
When Pranab Mukherjee sought the president’s job, some Bengali journalists made the interesting point that no Bengali had ever become either president or prime minister. Till 2007, neither had a Maharashtrian made it to either post. In 2007, Pawar played a key role in the sponsorship of Pratibha Patil for the president’s job, making her India’s first Maharashtrian head of state—a story he does not tell in this book.
Pawar’s real power lies in his power play. He has always maintained good relations with leaders across the political spectrum—a fact his book repeatedly draws attention to. Of all the ‘Congressmen’ in the country today, only he has the political base and capacity to revive the Congress as a national party and liberate it from the control of a family and its loyal coterie.
