Najma Heptulla: One who flew over the cuckoo's nest

It is very difficult to slot Manipur Governor Najma Heptulla. She is an interesting mix of diametrically opposite worlds: Congress is in her blood, but she represents the BJP. She was handpicked by Indira Gandhi, but had a fall-out with her daughter-in-law Sonia. She is related to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, but says she was mentored by Atal Behari Vajpayee. She expected to be felicitated by the Congress, but it was the RSS who conferred an award on her, following her election as Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) president. Therefore, to say where she actually belongs is a bit tough. In a way, Najma is a bit on her own.

Before she was packed off to Manipur as governor, there was speculation that the BJP might nominate her for the vice president. It is common knowledge that Najma had been vying for the post for some years now, but neither the BJP nor the Congress were willing to oblige. She was also positioning herself to run for office of the president, but that remained a pipe dream.

For her part, Najma denies it all by saying that the BJP did its bit by including her in the Union cabinet in the first round, and later elevating her as governor. That she was sent to a state so far removed from the power centres of Delhi is another matter. Those were predictions that it was the end of the road for this zoologist-turned-politician. But her supporters continued to indulge in wishful thinking. Therefore, till Venkaiah Naidu’s name was announced as vice president, her supporters kept the pot boiling.

Najma’s Muslim minority credentials have proved to be a double edged weapon. If it has often helped her achieve all the prized positions, it has also created roadblocks. For instance, when A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was named president, she was automatically out of the race. Recently, when Hamid Ansari’s tenure ended and her supporters were running from pillar to post for her nomination, it was clear that having two Muslims in quick succession was bad politics. In fact, Najma’s grievance has been about her being “labelled” a Muslim: “I don’t understand why I am being bracketed as a Muslim rather than as a person?” In fact, when she told Sonia Gandhi that she should see her as “a woman rather than a Muslim” it did not cut ice.

This, Najma says, was one of the reasons for her “heartbreak” with the Congress. She snapped her 30-odd year relationship after she felt “let down” by Sonia Gandhi: “Sonia Gandhi did not promise me anything, but I expected her to back me for the vice president’s office. She could have made it happen, but she did not. When I spoke to her about it, she said that the party will not accept two Muslims”. APJ Abdul Kalam was then India’s president.

This time around too, when Hamid Ansari stepped down after two terms, nominating yet another Muslim was out of question. Najma was automatically out of the race even though her supporters tried to clinch it on grounds that her experience, running the Rajya Sabha as deputy chairperson for over 16 years will come handy, particularly because the BJP is short of numbers in the Upper House.

Even though she denies it now, she says there is no moratorium on hope: “Expect karne mein kya jaata hai”, she said.

This was one of the many reasons for her parting ways with the party she was “born into”. As grand-niece of Maulana Azad, Congress was the only party she knew: “I did not join the Congress. It was the only party I knew and grew up with”.

It was Indira Gandhi who handpicked her. Before Najma could say Jack Robinson, she was in the thick of politics. Had P.N. Haksar, Indira Gandhi’s right hand man, not told her to “sell” her study on “grass root developments” to politicians, Najma may have spent years working her way up as a zoologist or remained a homemaker looking after her three daughters. She looked Haksar straight in the eye, picked up the thesis and said: “I will not sell it to a politician but become one myself”. By 1980, Najma was an MP. Within a span of five years, she became the deputy chairperson of Rajya Sabha.

If Indira and Rajiv Gandhi helped Najma’s ascent, Sonia stymied it: “I think my being elected as Inter-Parliamentary Union President was the final nail in the coffin. When I called Sonia Gandhi from Germany to tell her the news, she did not take my call. As against this, Atal Behari Vajpayee, then prime minister, immediately came on the phone line and said that I had made India proud.”

Najma was the first woman to be elected as president in IPU’s 110-year history. It was the RSS and not Congress that conferred her with an award: "After I got that award from the RSS, I was told by Sonia Gandhi’s people that she wanted  me to return it. I refused." That, perhaps, was the last straw.

For someone who often drove to Vajpayee’s house for a cup of coffee, Najma told him about her “unhappiness” with the Congress. He said she was “always welcome” in the BJP: “Join anytime,” Vajpayee reportedly told Najma. That did it and she took a 180 degree turn and joined a party whose ethos was diametrically opposite to the Congress. It was all the more ironic because Najma, by her own admission, hated being pigeonholed as a Muslim. As against this, the BJP hinged its politics on it, something that Najma refutes.

True to her grain, Najma interprets this quite differently. The BJP, she says, is a political party and does not play the religious card: “Had the Congress not played vote-bank politics, the BJP may have also refrained from it. The Congress is like a banyan tree under which nothing can grow. It sowed the seeds of divisiveness and left no space for others”.

As for communalism, Najma says it is the Congress that “started it all” and thrived on it: “Congress created a rift between Hindus and Muslims and tried to keep Muslims within its fold. It created a fear psychosis and projected the BJP as a hydra that will eat up the Muslims. If the Muslims did not join the BJP, it is because of the Congress. I flew over the cuckoo’s nest so to say and I am surviving”.

On the issue of BJP being anti-Muslims, Najma says “it takes two to clap”.

Najma bristles at the very suggestion that she has gained from being a minority and a woman. Whatever be one's opinion on that, no one can deny that she is an achiever, despite her critics branding her as a “go-getter”.

A five-time member of the Upper House, Heptulla presided over as deputy chairperson for 16 years. She was the general secretary of the Congress, vice president of the BJP, Union minister and currently governor. In 2007, she contested for the vice president’s post as a BJP-led NDA candidate but lost.

Internationally, she positioned herself enviably and led several delegations,  including one to the UN Commission on Status of Women. She was nominated by the United Nations Development Programme as its human development ambassador. But the feather in her cap was being elected as IPU President.

Back home, controversy has dogged her. During her tenure as ICCR chief, Najma is alleged to have morphed a photograph with Maulana Azad in an ICCR publication, something she is unwilling to talk about at this juncture: “It is over and I don’t want to dig up what is long buried” she said.

The other is about her role in influencing Rajiv Gandhi to yield to the fundamentalists and enact a law overturning the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case wherein she was entitled to receive a monthly allowance from her husband who divorced her. Arif Mohammad Khan, then minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet, has stated on record that Najma facilitated meetings between fundamentalists and Gandhi: “I did arrange the meetings but to suggest that I influenced Rajiv Gandhi to backtrack is nothing short of absurdity”.

A politician to the core, being a governor has not inhibited Najma. She is quite at ease talking politics. It is part of her DNA, so to expect her to keep off it is a bit of a stretch. Therefore, even while going against convention, Governor Najma Heptulla declares: “I am a politician through and through”.