In this Nov. 26, 2012 file photo, former external affairs minister Natwar Singh at Parliament House during the winter session, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo)
In the passing away of K Natwar Singh, the Indian Foreign Service has lost one of its most exceptional members. Exceptional because Natwar was never a run-of-the-mill officer, but someone quasi-political who smoothly made the transition from the IFS to frontline politics and rose to be external affairs minister until he was struck down suddenly at the height of his professional achievement. The reasons remain obscure despite his telling his side of the story in his autobiography, One Life is Not Enough.
His school days gave no hint of the role he was due to play. He spent most of his time running away from Scindia School, Gwalior. It was at St Stephen’s that he really came into his own, becoming a college legend even before he graduated. It was there that he struck up a strong friendship with Harsha Hutheesingh, son of Jawaharlal Nehru’s youngest sister, Krishna. This gave him an entrée to Panditji’s breakfast table presided over by Indira Gandhi. It was the beginning of an almost lifelong relationship with the Nehru-Gandhis.
He combined his political interests with literary flair. At Cambridge, where he was sent for a year as a probationer in the Foreign Service, he sought out E M Forster, author of the renowned novel, A Passage to India. It was a friendship that, like many Natwar cultivated, lasted forever. He picked Chinese as his compulsory foreign language and was in Beijing when Hindi-Cheeni bhai-bhai was at its peak, leading to another lifelong friendship with the Chinese writer, Han Suyin, who had written the best-seller, A Many-Splendoured Thingabout her love for an Indian journalist killed in the Korean war. This penchant for friendships with literary and artistic figures eventually drew into his net Mulk Raj Anand and M F Husain, among a galaxy of others.
As India’s representative on the Decolonisation Committee at the UN, his personality and India’s standing among the emerging nations opened the gates to warm connections with a series of African freedom fighters who were struggling to free their countries. They eventually became presidents of their countries at independence and never forgot the young Indian diplomat who had stood by them in their moments of challenge.
When Indira Gandhi became PM in 1966, she immediately flew him out of New York to join her PMO. I was then a very raw new entrant into the IFS and heard a lot of idle gossip as to whether he was really a talented civil servant or a courtier who had made his dizzy way upwards by flattery. Of course, people were jealous of his obvious closeness to the highest in the land and took him down behind his back, especially when he secured an out-of-turn posting as Ambassador to Warsaw and later Deputy High Commissioner in London with the personal rank of Ambassador.
While he was in London, the Emergency was proclaimed. As a diplomat, he was, of course, obliged to defend the negative reporting in the UK press, but he went about his duties with such zeal that he was targeted by Morarji Desai when the Emergency ended. He was sent on a “punishment posting” to Zambia. What Desai had not perhaps briefed himself on was that Kenneth Kaunda was an old friend from Natwar’s New York days. Natwar made the most of his punishment posting and earned a bonus when he introduced the godman, Chandraswami, to Kaunda.
Meanwhile, the Morarji government fell, and Natwar was back in favour. Indira Gandhi sent him to man our embassy in Islamabad. I was posted as Consul-General in Karachi and had had a remarkable run for two years with little interference from the ambassador in faraway Islamabad. Apprehensive that things would change with this high-profile new boss, I rang a close friend and colleague who had served with Natwar in London. He said I could continue being in the Karachi papers daily provided I ensured that Natwar alone would figure in Indian coverage. Armed with this advice, I flew with considerable concern to Islamabad to make Natwar’s acquaintance.
Natwar was friendliness, warmth and courtesy personified. He knew my affection for the people of Pakistan did not quite tally with his own perceptions and policy instructions, but he let me know that I was to continue doing my work as I thought fit while he got on with dealing with Ziaul Haq.
My admiration for him grew when he publicly announced that the 1980 Moradabad Eidgah police firing and the riots all over UP and Delhi that followed had “humiliated him as an Indian and diminished him as a human being”. He came to Karachi and, without standing on protocol, received in my office a delegation of incensed protesters, and listened patiently to their grievances.
He entered politics even as I entered Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO. Our friendship grew and survived differences when he became a founding member of the Tiwari Congress. He was most responsible for urging me to set my sights on a cabinet post when we won in 2004 and instrumental in backing me as minister of petroleum when I ran afoul of his senior bureaucrats.
I never quite understood what the Paul Volcker Committee report was all about. But he felt so badly let down that he walked out of the Congress and cut all his links to the Gandhi family. He urged me to do the same. I resisted.
I have lost a friend and a patron. It is heartbreaking that he did not live to see his centenary, as he confidently expected. May he find in the afterlife the peace that eluded him in his last two decades.
The writer is a former Union minister
