NEW DELHI: P. V. Narasimha Rao was India’s ‘first BJP prime minister’, former Congress minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has said in a book that also advocates friendly relations with Pakistan.

Rao emerged as a compromise candidate to lead the Congress party after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination during an election rally in May 1991, and was famously absent from public view the entire day as the Babri masjid was razed by Hindu fanatics in December 1992.

Speaking to The Wire at the launch of his autobiography Memoirs of a Maverick: The First Fifty Years (1941-1991) on Wednesday, the former diplomat said that he discovered “how communal” the former prime minister was during a discussion on secularism.

“When I was on my Ram Rahim Yatra from Rameshwaram to Ayodhya, I was summoned from Odisha to come back to Delhi and Narasimha Rao said to me, ‘I don’t disagree with your yatra but I do have a disagreement with your definition of secularism’,” he told The Wire.

“So I asked him, ‘Sir, what is wrong with my definition of secularism?’ and his reply which has remained engraved in my heart and on my soul was, ‘Mani you don’t understand that this is a Hindu country’. I sat up in my chair and said, ‘This is what the BJP says. (But) this is not a Hindu country. We are a secular country and in this secular country we have a huge majority of Hindus but we also have nearly 200 million Muslims and several other Christians, Jews, Parsis and Sikhs. So how can we be a Hindu country? We can only be a secular country.’”

“It is because Narasimha’s mind was so partisan, was so sectarian that he led this country from the secular path to the communal path.”

Rao served as the prime minister from 1991 to 1996.

He was succeeded by Atal Bihari as BJP’s first prime minister. While his term is usually associated with the initiation of economic liberalisation reforms in 1991, his tenure also saw the demolition of the Babri mosque and ensuing communal riots, in which thousands lost their lives. Mr Aiyar’s views echoed Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s assertion that the mosque could never have been destroyed had a Nehru-Gandhi been in the saddle.

Aiyar’s book tracks his journey as a diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service with a significant stint in Pakistan (as consul general in Karachi from December 1978 to January 1982); and his relationship with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The book also traces his observations during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 – following the assassination of Indira Gandhi – and questions government decisions taken during that time to control the violence.

“I had been very skeptical and I had gone to the voting booth to vote against him because of the Sikh pogrom. But fortunately or unfortunately, my name was not on the voting rolls so I could not vote against him. But despite that, he summoned me to his office and then over the next five years I saw what a wonderful man he was. And that wonderful character of the man has been hidden from public eyes by the media particularly – and also by all these traitors who cheated him and went away. And it is they – the Left, the liberals – who brought the BJP back.”

“Because the BJP at that time had two seats. Because of V. P. Singh, they got 88 seats. And now for the last nine years, we have been suffering this awful majoritarian, authoritarian rule. I only pray… but alas I can’t pray, because I am an atheist. But I pray to the forces that this awful era of the last nine years is brought to an end one way or the other in 2024.”

Earlier, while speaking to senior journalist Vir Sanghvi during the launch, Mr Aiyar recalled his experiences in Karachi while he was posted there. He said that dialogue with Pakistan is crucial to ending the demonisation of Indian Muslims.

“Is Pakistan an enemy country? My answer to that is: Pakistanis are not enemies. The government of Pakistan does a lot of things which make it an enemy of ours. In many ways, they are reacting or provoking us. When it comes to Pakistan, we have the courage to do surgical strikes but don’t have the guts to sit across a table and talk to them. Why don’t we have the courage to talk to them?” he asked.

Mr Aiyar said that Pakistan is ceasing to be a foreign policy issue in present day India. “Pakistan is ceasing to be a foreign policy issue and is becoming a domestic issue.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2023