Jaswant Singh: A Brother, Gone

Among the host of letters that I received when my father General Enaith (‘Bubbles’) Habibullah, founder Commandant of the National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla passed away in July 1990, one letter touched me most deeply.

It was from a former cadet (1954-56) and then Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Barmer in Rajasthan. I had never met him but I was told by his former colleagues from the National Defence Academy, that he had been a favourite of my father’s. This was because of his riding skills, always a guarantee for catching the eye of the Commandant, himself a consummate horseman.

Jaswant Singh was among the initial group of cadets that journeyed with the Academy from its premises at Clementown in Dehradun to its innovative resurrection in Khadakvasla in 1955.

He was, therefore, until 1957, participant in the founding of free India’s flagship project that was to become the world’s leading tri-services training institution.

“We have never met,” wrote Jaswant Singh in his condolence letter to me, “but all that I have learned to value in life I have learned from your father who I have come to look upon as my own father. You are from now my younger brother”.

And so began a fraternal relationship, which was to endure a lifetime. I never had a brother, but Jaswant termed me his dharambhai and I was to call him, at his insistence (peremptorily repeated when he was minister and I tried to call him ‘sir’) ‘Bhai Saheb’. 

Upon my return from a tour of duty in Washington D.C. in 1999, Jaswant accosted my mother in the Central Hall of parliament to complain that I had not called on him. This was indeed so because I considered doing so unconscionably presumptuous.

When I hastened to make amends, he walked me down parliament’s circular corridor, from his chambers to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s, via the room of Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. En route, he introduced me to those that we met, which included Arun Jaitley and Gulab Ramchandani as his ‘dharambhai’.

Also waiting to meet the prime minister in his antechamber were my old acquaintances Shabana Azmi and veteran journalist Inderjit, both of whom on being introduced to me as ‘dharambhai’ were curious to know how I had earned that stature. Inderjit, in fact, asked whether I was the same Habibullah that he had met in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO.

Major Jaswant Singh Jasol (January 3, 1938 – September 27, 2020) of the Central India Horse, was an officer of the Indian Army of which he was proud. His reference to my father as a model of patriotism and of his own days in the army are described in one of his many books, In Service of Emergent India: a Call to Honor.

Also read: The Dates That Defined the Life and Times of Jaswant Singh (1938-2020)

Through the 1980s when my mother was MP and I joined Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Office as Director, my father who had retired to our family home in Lucknow, would on every visit to Delhi, take time to call on Jaswant.

With him, he would spend long hours, no doubt discussing matters of moment, although I have no idea what these might have been, to the consternation of my mother. This was because Jaswant was amongst the founding members of the BJP and mother, a committed Congresswoman, had her own political paraphernalia.

Also read: India Has Jaswant Singh to Thank for Close Ties With Saudi Arabia

But although I’d often drop my father at Jaswant’s and sometimes pick him up, he was usually dropped home by Jaswant. I never personally met the Hon’ble MP. Jaswant was to go on to become one of India’s longest serving parliamentarians, having been a member of one or the other house almost continuously between 1980 and 2014. He was NDA’s vice-presidential candidate in the 2012 Indian vice-presidential election.

His love for horses remained, making him Patron in Chief of the Indian Polo Association.

Elected to the Rajya Sabha five times (1980, 1986, 1998, 1999, 2004) and to the Lok Sabha four times (1990, 1991, 1996, 2009) Jaswant, between 1998 and 2004 rose in the Vajpayee administration, to top cabinet portfolios including External Affairs, Defence and Finance.

In 1998, I was serving as Minister Community Affairs in the Embassy of India in Washington D.C. India’s nuclear tests of 1998 took place on the very day that a Bill to install a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in Washington D.C. was to be debated in a House Committee, where Ambassador Naresh Chandra and I were in attendance.

It brought sharp criticism from the US government and public.

Jaswant, appointed as EAM was deputed by Prime Minister Vajpayee to smooth ruffled feathers and calm tempers through dialogue and persuasion. How effectively Jaswant did this is borne out in the book Engaging India by Nelson Strobridge ‘Strobe’ Talbott, US Deputy Secretary of State at the time, on matters related to nuclear policy and strategy.

The outcome of the sustained engagement was to leave Talbott a close friend and admirer of Jaswant’s, with whom he held consultations over long drives across the Metropolitan Washington countryside in an open air sports car. I was often personally witness to their comings and goings, which would go on to completely transform Indo-US relations.

Today the memorial to the Mahatma stands tall on Massachusetts Avenue, the diplomatic row of Washington D.C.

As Finance Minister in 2003, when he was called upon to answer a notice by Congress MP Jaipal Reddy on the issue of a letter of the Department of Consumer Affairs of which I was by then Secretary, Jaswant, in open House, referred to me as a person that he trusted, again calling me ‘dharambhai’. 

Tragically despite his spectacular achievements and service to his country, Jaswant, after his party suffered its second successive defeat in 2009, having served as leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha upto that time, was shabbily treated when he demanded a discussion on the debacle.

We would meet often at his residence and although we never discussed politics, he was troubled by developments within the party he had helped found. His book of 2010, Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence although released after consultation with his party leadership, brought acrimony from those perceiving it as sympathetic to Jinnah.

He was denied a ticket to contest the elections of 2014 from a seat of his choice, consequent to what he believed to be party intrigue.

He contested, nevertheless, as an independent from his native constituency of Barmer in Rajasthan, which, with the full might of the ruling party arrayed against him, he lost. Because he did not withdraw his candidature, he was expelled from the BJP in March, 2014.

Shortly thereafter, on August 7, 2014, Jaswant Singh had a fall in his bathroom suffering a crippling head injury. Admitted to the Army’s Research and Referral hospital in Delhi for treatment, where I visited him, he never recovered from his coma till he finally left us on September 27, leaving me in mourning for a brother who will remain always my very own.