An outgoing diplomat is of little or no importance to a Leader of the Opposition (LoP). But when, in the July of 2000, just before moving to Colombo, I sought to call on the then LoP in the Rajya Sabha, Dr Manmohan Singh, I was surprised to get a date at once. As I entered Dr Singh’s modest Room 43 in the old Parliament House, I saw there was no one fussing over him, no one hinting to me that I should do this or not do that. The leader rose warmly from his seat and showing me to a chair, congratulated me on my appointment and asked: “So, Gopal, what would you advise the Congress to do or say?” I was aware that I was going as a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) appointee, identified for the post by Prime Minister (PM) Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and here was an Opposition stalwart asking me to advise him on Sri Lanka.
Politics need not always politick, nor diplomacy speak in whispers. I said what I thought was the right course, namely that the rights of the Tamils in Sri Lanka should not be conflated with the demands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and that India must press for a political solution that meets the aspirations of the Tamil people with the sovereignty of Sri Lanka staying intact. By the time we finished, I had spent 45 minutes with one who I would never have imagined would be PM of India, four years from that day. He had asked me the most incisive questions, made me think through crucial aspects of India-Sri Lanka ties. I was moved when, as I left, he said, “Gopal, you go with my blessings.”
Governors rank high in protocol, low in political priorities. I had no illusions about where I stood in the pecking order of value when Dr Singh and Gursharan Kaur came to Kolkata, early in 2005. The few minutes of exclusive glory that governors get when driving with a visiting PM from the airport to Raj Bhavan, are coveted by them. There is a sense of exclusiveness to the conversation in the hush of that vehicle. I cherished every moment of that drive for I was new to my job, as he was to his, and I wanted to be mentored in my responsibilities, in a crash course by this man who was in politics but not of it, in power but as its handler, not exploiter.
I got the lessons I expected in the first few minutes of that drive. Not a harsh word was said, but every “stroke” of his descriptions of things in West Bengal was a masterstroke. As we neared Raj Bhavan, he asked me who the last British governor of Bengal was. When I told him of Sir Frederick Burrows, a railway union leader appointed by PM Clement Attlee, he was most interested. And he laughed as audibly as anyone ever heard Dr Singh laugh when I told him of Burrows saying at a party of Calcutta burra sahibs, “When you gentlemen were huntin’ and shootin’, I was shuntin’ and hootin’.”
I can well imagine Jawaharlal Nehru, on a visit as PM to Calcutta, calling on a veteran politician from outside his own party. Manmohan Singh called on former chief minister (CM) Jyoti Basu. This was a courtesy visit, not a political thing and certainly not a party-politics affair. And so, I accompanied him and Mrs Kaur to the octogenarian Marxist. “Please advise us,” the PM said to one who could well have been PM himself, listening to the sage counsel that he got, as a student might from a teacher.
Civility in public affairs need not be in the nursery class of politics. Dr Singh asked me to my complete surprise: “Would you like to go to Gujarat (as governor)?” I said without a moment’s hesitation, I would not, for I would not like to go to a state where my appointment would be seen as a counter to the CM. He indicated that he saw the point by a faint and silent smile.
He told me that he valued the then CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s political integrity. It is a thousand pities that the Indo-US nuclear civilian deal combusted the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) much-needed collaboration with the Left, a break that has cast a long and lengthening shadow over India. Impulse can be good in the service of human relations, not always so in political ties. Frank consultations could have averted the break.
On another visit, Dr Singh was invited to inaugurate a football tournament in Kolkata. The ball was placed near but not too near the goalpost for his inaugural “kick”. With one determined move of his right foot, he sent the ball tearing into the net. The city that loves Diego Maradona applauded.
At dinner with my wife and me in Kolkata’s Raj Bhavan, no politics was even thought of, much less discussed. And the fare was frugal, exactly as the visiting couple wanted. When all of us had done, he rose and waited for my wife, his junior by some three decades, to pass the dining room door before exiting himself.
Civility has shrivelled, decency withered, in the departure of a great economist and a greater ethicist loaned to politics for its redemption. Dr Singh was in office, not in a war -room. His table was a desk, not a battle-board. His pen wrote, not decree. The world is clever but is no fool. Though liable to err, it knows who is who and what is what. It admires the powerful for it must deal with power, but it respects the honest. Siyasat is the Hindustani for politics, sharafat for honesty. Manmohan Singh showed that sharafat could be at home in siyasat, and siyasat in sharafat.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former administrator,is a student of modern Indian history.The views expressed are personal
