Arguably the last of the Nehruvians amongst us, Natwar Singh – who passed away on Saturday (August 10) at the very ripe age of 94 – personified both the best of Nehruvian traits as well as its decline and confusion in the last decade of his long public life.
A man born in a princely compound and tutored in an elite school, Kunwar Natwar Singh shed his feudal predispositions when he went to Cambridge University. An English education made him a modern Indian, and he soon joined the Grand Nehruvian Enterprise of establishing and consolidating a democratic India.
As an Indian Foreign Service officer, Singh became part of an elite bureaucracy that joyfully attended to the task of fleshing out the Republic, putting together the structures and protocols of a democratic nation-state in an ancient land long subjected to medieval and imperial depredations. Though the present generation of Indians, unfortunately, remains unappreciative of the triumphs and tragedies of the Nehruvian years, Singh was part of a governing class that not only excelled in safeguarding the country’s national autonomy in the most demanding days of the Cold War but also nurtured democratic institutions and constitutional niceties that enabled India to survive and thrive as a modern nation.
Singh himself was a bit of an incongruity – an aristocratic man subjected to the hustles and hassles of a democratic mandi. He seems to have resolved the personal dilemma when he began signing himself as K. Natwar Singh. A quintessential Indian compromise.
Singh also personified another trait of his generation — a love of literature and a genuine respect for men and women of letters. A fortuitous acquaintance with E.M. Forster, fifty years his senior, consequentially shaped his intellectual orientation and personal values. Thanks to Forster, he got admitted to the rarefied world of writers and authors; this exposure to men and women of sensitivity and creativity, he was to admit, “saved me from a sordid vision of life.”
Another fortuitous acquittance. At school with him were two sons of Krishna Hutheesing, Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister. That friendship provided an entrée into the Nehru circle. Later, as an IFS officer, it was only a matter of time before he got to impress the then foreign minister, Nehru. “Krishna-massi” was a ticket to Teen Murti House, Indira Gandhi and the rest of the clan and household. And, he had the class and self-assurance to carry it off with the Nehrus of four generations.
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By all accounts, Singh was a competent and accomplished bureaucrat on his own, but he came to be defined — and he did not seem to mind — as “close” to Indira Gandhi and, then, as “closest adviser” to Sonia Gandhi. This closeness to the Gandhis relegated to the background much of his labours as an IFS officer.
While India Gandhi did not need Singh in any way to establish herself in New Delhi, he took it upon himself to be a kind of P.N. Haksar to Sonia Gandhi. And, just as Haksar fell afoul of Indira, Singh too parted company with Sonia Gandhi on a sour note.
To his credit, Singh was not averse to getting his feet dirty in electoral politics. He contested and won — and, then, lost — many Lok Sabha elections. Nor was he a stranger to the politicking and intrigues of the Indian politicians’ world.
In that most treacherous of political arenas — the Congress Party — he often played the game as opening batsman of the Gandhi Household XI. He thought and believed that the Nehru-Gandhi family had the pre-eminence and the entitlement to be the lord and master of the Congress; as an extension, Singh also convinced himself that it was only natural that Sonia Gandhi should occupy the same office in South Block as did her husband and mother-in-law.
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Singh’s carefully crafted political script got derailed when in 2004 Sonia Gandhi chose not to claim the prime minister’s job. He had to serve, as foreign minister, under Dr. Manmohan Singh for whom he had scant respect. As external affairs minister, Singh did not have much elbow room to innovate or dazzle; in this age, no foreign minister can out-shine his/her prime minister.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) arrangement was a complicated set-up and Singh’s political and diplomatic skills were perhaps too outdated to allow him to make a mark for himself as a brilliant diplomat. His departure from the government under unpropitious circumstances – his name figured in the UN’s Volcker Report on the ‘oil for food’ scandal in Iraq – put a sad end to his long-relationship with the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Bitterness of that break-up clouded Singh’s judgment and his sense of history. He would eventually even lowball Nehru’s contribution. What saddened many of his admirers and friends was that this man of immense learning and understanding of global forces should have fallen into the trap of the impresarios and charlatans of “naya bharat.” Despite his failure to see through the all-round bogusness of his new comrades, however, his old friends will remember him as a man of elegance, grace and gravitas.
Harish Khare is a former editor-in-chief of The Tribune.
