Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  Madhu Limaye, Janata’s general secretary, who knew Morarji and Charan Singh well, could have probably sorted out things. He had however taken to his head that splitting the Janata was a historical necessity. It was dialectical materialism of sorts. Even after the return of Indira Gandhi he argued with me that the demise of the Janata Party was in the interest of the country.

  Devi Lal, a senior Janata Party leader and a close supporter of Charan Singh, rang me to convey that he was giving me a ‘scoop that the Morarji Desai government would fall in the ensuing parliament session’. Every day, he said, four or five MPs from the Lok Sabha would resign from the Janata Party government until it was reduced to a minority. And this is what exactly happened. The Congress sponsored motion of no-confidence came in handy to the Charan Singh group.

  When I checked with Congress leader Y.B. Chavan on how he assessed the prospect of the motion he had moved against the government, Chavan said: ‘Kuldip, maarne to chale they billi, lekin mar gaya sher [We began with the intention of killing a cat, but in the process a lion has got killed].’ What could they do? He was still not certain whether the Janata government would finally fall.

  When George Fernandes defended the Morarji government on one day and vehemently criticized it the next, I inferred that the game was over. I felt sorry for him because his role as a trade union leader and as a valiant fighter during the Emergency had been exemplary. I did not however know then that a person like him could change colours in 24 hours, first defending the government and then criticizing it with equal vehemence.

  When Jagjivan Ram stepped in to marshal support in his favour, he found it easy to muster a majority in the House. Morarji was not however ready to step down from the leadership of the parliamentary party. When I spoke to Morarji he said that as he did not enjoy a majority in the House he would step down from prime-ministership, but not from the party leadership. It was a convoluted way of viewing things but then Morarji was never known for logical thinking.

  The no-confidence motion was carried with the support of Charan Singh’s men, resulting in the resignation of the Morarji government. There was great pressure on President N. Sanjiva Reddy to invite Jagjivan Ram to form the government but he did not. He explained that as the government led by the Janata Party had been defeated in the House there was no logic in inviting another leader from the same party. Technically he was correct, but Jagjivan Ram might have saved the Janata Party government because Charan Singh had doubts about the support offered by the Congress.

  President Reddy asked Charan Singh to form government and prove his strength on the floor of the House. It was a real anticlimax because Charan Singh was seeking the support of Indira Gandhi who was not only his adversary but had imposed the Emergency. Charan Singh was the same person who had told me in jail that if they came to power, he would have the Congress leaders whipped at a public square.

  The Congress support to Charan Singh actually proved to be a ruse to break the Janata Party government and hold fresh elections. It was all Sanjay Gandhi’s doing. Indira Gandhi did not believe him when he told her about his first meeting with Raj Narain regarding the plan to unseat the Morarji Desai government but the stratagem did please her. Raj Narain, a bold fighter in the struggle against the Emergency and an experienced political hand proved to be naïve and played into Sanjay Gandhi’s hands. Strange, a socialist leader like Raj Narain with his ideological commitment, proved just as avaricious for office as anyone else.

  Charan Singh’s fears proved to be true. He told me that he did not call on Indira Gandhi as Sanjay had insisted. He was trying to convince me that he had ‘saved his honour’. He resigned before proving his strength on the floor of Lok Sabha.

  For a while the idea took shape to support Charan Singh when the Congress left him high and dry, but the Janata Party members were so bitter against him that the proposal was not implemented. The Janata Party government could have been saved and some adjustments made later, but politics, when dominated by anger and irrationality, is not given to rational tactics. The Janata government had lasted less than three years (Charan Singh was prime minister from 28 July 1979 to 14 January 1980).

  This was when President Sanjiva Reddy toyed with the idea of inviting Sheikh Abdullah to become the caretaker prime minister until fresh elections were held. Under the constitution, it was up to the president to nominate anyone he considered fit to lead a caretaker government. Eventually, President Reddy established a precedent by nominating (28 July 1979) the outgoing prime minister, Charan Singh, as the leader of the caretaker government.

  In the seventh general elections held in 1980, Indira Gandhi won with a clear majority in a 545-member Lok Sabha: 351 seats against the Janata Party’s 32. It was a huge debacle for the latter but this should not have come as surprise because as Vajpayee told me after campaigning, he saw anger on the faces of voters and predicted the party’s defeat.

  The cine world had floated the National Party to contest the elections in the Seventh Lok Sabha elections and had invited me to Bombay to address them. However, when the time for elections came they did not field any candidate. Indira Gandhi for her part made anxious inquiries about the National Party when she saw a host of advertisements on its behalf, but that was all.

  The Janata Party experiment failed. It was obvious that the persons who held the reins of government at the Centre and the states had neither the commitment to what JP had preached nor faith in the economic emancipation of the bottom tiers of the people. For them, the removal of Indira Gandhi was an opportunity to occupy positions of power and make money. Once that was achieved, they threw to the winds all talk of principled politics or a clean polity. In fact, they did not have it in them to lead a revolution for parivartan.

  The nation was disillusioned and had never imagined that the change would mean a change only in masters; new persons sitting in the emptied chairs, with no difference either in the polity or policies.

  I wish the Emergency had continued for a few more years. The rigours of detention and harsh rule might have tested the commitment of those in jail and thrown up leaders with real idealism and values. Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram, and Charan Singh had passed the age of idealism. They were angry but self-righteous and lacked any sense of accommodation.

  Some of us from civil society, Romesh Thapar, Nikhil Chakravarty, Mrinal Dutta Chaudhary, Rajni Kothari, George Verghese, Raj Krishna, and I, sat together to prepare ‘An Agenda for India’, to analyze what was happening to our society and to provide some answers to the questions that were plaguing the nation. Our analysis was that the crisis of the Indian polity was a crisis of change. It reflected the widening gap between the base of the polity and its structure.

  We stated:

  During the last decade, both political and economic processes had brought sections of the peripheral and deprived social strata into the active political community. Particularly in the north, the intermediate peasant castes had bettered their economic conditions with the aid of new agricultural technology and were no longer willing to accept a political dispensation weighted in favour of the traditionally privileged. This was a process earlier manifested itself in the south.

  The dalits, too, were now aware of their rights, thanks to the slowly-changing opportunity structure and the efforts by political parties to mobilize their support. They had begun demanding a change for the better in their conditions. Also, there was an enormous change in the social and political sensibilities in the rest of the active political community. There was a growing demand for purposeful and principled politics, a deep sense of revulsion against the politics of self-aggrandizement and a mounting anger over the neglect of public interest by the political parties and their leaders.

  After drafting the agenda we organized a larger meeting of intellectuals to enlist support. Some 250 attended the meeting and endorsed the agenda. Our initiative, however, came too late. Elections were held without any political parties considering our agenda in their manifestos. Indira Gan
dhi, after becoming prime minister, asked for a copy of the agenda, but I saw no signs of any of our suggestions being adopted by her after assuming power.

  Indira Gandhi dismissed the non-Congress governments in the states, following the precedent set by the Janata government. Even so, both she and Sanjay were cautious in their approach. Propaganda on family planning was completely stopped. Once, I asked my friend, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, then a central minister, to adopt steps to check the abnormal population growth. He said that no political party would be willing to take it up because it had been one of the major reasons for Indira Gandhi’s defeat. I think he was wrong: it was not family planning but forced sterilization that had angered people.

  My own stock slumped. I was now shunned. People linked me so much with the Janata government that its failure was considered my failing. More than criticism was cynicism for my ‘intellectual input’ against the Emergency. Not that it was not opposed but many thought it was preferable to the chaotic and quarrelsome rule of the Janata Party. Indira Gandhi was not a fallen woman but a person who had indulged in excesses and vindictive action because of the situation that protest and satyagraha had created. A minister from Rajasthan, now in the BJP, said that I had shaken the nation once but the rule that followed made people direly feel the absence of Indira Gandhi.

  Indira Gandhi had won convincingly at the polls but had not yet assumed power. Charan Singh was still the prime minister but had no idea how he should react to the attack on Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in December 1979. Foreign Secretary T.N. Kaul formulated a pro-Soviet policy. He sought Indira Gandhi’s advice and she wanted India to remain neutral as she saw in Afghanistan a war in the making between the US and the Soviet Union. At her bidding India abstained during the UN vote on Moscow’s aggression. This approach made New Delhi unpopular in the West.

  I recalled several memories associated with Afghanistan. Some years earlier when I had arrived from Delhi, a person whispered in my ear at Kabul airport that Murtaza Bhutto, son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had invited me to dinner that evening, and that he would pick me up from my hotel. I had gone to Afghanistan to interview President Mohammed Daud Khan.

  Murtaza told me at dinner that he had visited India several times and wanted to set up an émigré government in Delhi. He was disappointed that Indira Gandhi was opposed to his proposal, but was certain that she was otherwise willing to help. He said that his organization, Al-Zulfiqar, had conducted raids in Pakistan and wanted to increase their frequency. He gave me the impression that he was receiving assistance from India. I could not figure out why he told me all these things at our very first meeting. Ajmal Khatak, part of the Pakhtoonistan movement, too was there at the dinner. He had taken shelter in Afghanistan from Pakistan’s rulers and recalled his association with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

  When Murtaza was assassinated in Karachi I wondered whether he had been eliminated because of a family dispute or because of his past activities to which the Pakistan government was inimical. There were family disputes and it was an open secret that he hated Asif Ali Zardari, husband of his sister Benazir Bhutto.

  After interviewing Mohammad Daud Khan I could sense that he was over-complacent in his palatial palace and did not know much about the communist movement which was taking shape in Afghanistan with Moscow’s assistance. Kabul in those days was a typical middle-eastern town, bustling throughout the evening and resounding with loud music, garnished with sizzling kebabs with the crowd often breaking out into a traditional dance. There was an overall atmosphere of joy and abandon.

  When the local communists killed Daud, I thought that India had lost a friend and the day might come when the government in Kabul would be unfriendly to New Delhi. My misgivings proved unfounded.

  In fact, when A.B. Vajpayee, then minister of external affairs, visited Kabul he was taken aback at the suggestion of Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin, leader of the Khalaq Communist Party, that India and Afghanistan should jointly wage a war against Pakistan and divide the country between them.

  Indeed, Kabul was very hostile to Islamabad because Pakistan had repeatedly referred to Afghanistan as its strategic depth. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had visited Afghanistan several times, first as Pakistan’s foreign minister and then as prime minister to persuade Kabul to tailor its policies to suit Pakistan’s overall strategic policies. Amin told me during an interview that Bhutto had expressed his displeasure over the close relations between Afghanistan and India. That still remains Pakistan’s grouse.

  When Babrak Kamal, leader of another communist faction, Parcham came to Kabul aboard a Soviet tank on 24 December 1979, and overthrew the Amin government it was clear that Moscow had yielded to the request by local communists to station its forces in Afghanistan. As events unfolded, it became clear that Babrak’s impatience to achieve power proved the undoing of both Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.

  I was then working as a correspondent for the Times (London). They were keen that I interview Babrak. He did not mince words and wanted the Russian forces to be permanently stationed in Afghanistan. His plan was to convert the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan into a communist state within the Eastern bloc. This became evident when the government introduced in schools and colleges many books extolling the virtues of communism. This was against the grain of the Islamic ethos that Afghanistan had nurtured for centuries. People showed their resentment but had little recourse against the might of the State backed by Russia. When, however, the opportunity presented itself they revolted.

  Washington was concerned about the Soviet Union’s stranglehold over Afghanistan. Pakistan too felt uneasy but was helpless. This was when the Taliban made an appearance and felt confident. The US was able to convince General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s martial law administrator, that he create a force of fundamentalists, who would fight in the defence of Islam. Unconcerned by the motivation of these men, the US purpose was to bleed the Soviet Union. Blinded with its own goals the US thought nothing of creating a Frankenstein which would one day threaten the peaceful existence of the people living in the area its sole concern being to combat the Soviet Union. The US literally opened the vaults of its treasury to fund and arm Pakistan and the fundamentalist. Pakistan’s President General Zia-ul-Haq was able to exact the price having earlier rejected the limited US aid as peanuts and even obtain sophisticated arms for a fight against India.

  New Delhi’s neutrality or, for that matter, its tilt towards Moscow, infuriated the Afghans. Indians were hated at that time for doing nothing to securing Kabul’s sovereignty. Indian journalists coming from Kabul told me that the Afghans who went out of the way to shake their hands now kept a distance and even abused them.

  This was the time when an organization named Al Qaeda came into existence and formulated a philosophy of fundamentalism to fire up the Taliban. I did not ascribe much significance to either Al Qaeda or the Taliban because I was certain that the Soviet Union would never leave Afghanistan. In my book, A Report on Afghanistan (1981) I predicted that the Soviet Union would convert Afghanistan, like Finland, into a satellite state. I was proved wrong because the Taliban, after training in arms, converted their fight into a religious war and in the process won the support of the Afghan people. The supply of weapons by the US was crucial and it spared no resources to give the Taliban and Zia whatever they sought. No think-tank in the US imagined at the time that the day would come when the Taliban would become a menace for the rest of the world.

  Grounded in madrassas with no formal education other than religious, the young men coming from there were fanatics who believed that they must bring back the Islamic way of life which, according to them meant no music, no education for women, and no freedom of thought. As a force they came to be known as Taliban.

  Zia and Washington financed maulvis, brainwashed young men and fired them with Islamic fervour to die for a place in bhisat (heaven) to expel the communists, the infidels who did not even believe in God, from Afghanistan. The US’s interest lay solely in defeating
the Soviet Union, its adversary in the Cold War. Zia was well aware that the US was desperate to enlist Pakistan’s support given its location and he could dictate the price.

  Today Pakistan is fighting against the Taliban not because they are fundamentalists but because they have brought terrorism to the country. The nation was shaken when they captured the Swat Valley. Their closure of girls’ schools and ban on music horrified the people. They feared that they might occupy Islamabad. Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on the Pakistan military, who visited Delhi when Swat was under the Taliban, told me that if they were to capture Islamabad, lakhs of Pakistanis would cross into India. How many would you kill? She was well aware that the Pakistan army was mixed up with the Taliban and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) used them to further their foreign policy against India.

  There was no doubt in my mind that Zia’s creation in Pakistan of ‘Mumalquat Deen’ (land of religion) inflicted the greatest harm to his country. The seed of bigotism sown by him had sprouted in the form of the Taliban. It was unfortunate that even a progressive leader like Benazir Bhutto blessed the Taliban and proudly said: ‘They are my children.’

  Curiously, Zia felt so much at home with me that he invited me to Pakistan through his foreign secretary who came to Delhi within a month of my earlier visit. I declined the invitation but met Zia when I went to Pakistan. He once hosted a lunch in my honour at which there were some ministers too. I told him that if he were to hold free elections, I would win. Many present at the lunch nodded their assent.