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Leaves of nostalgia

THE statement was impossible to believe then just as it is difficult to believe today what Mohammad Ali Jinnah once told Kuldip Nayar — if any third country attacks India, Pakistan soldiers would fight alongside their counterparts against the enemy.

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Gaurav Kanthwal

THE statement was impossible to believe then just as it is difficult to believe today what Mohammad Ali Jinnah once told Kuldip Nayar — if any third country attacks India, Pakistan soldiers would fight alongside their counterparts against the enemy. Years later, Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Home Minister, confided in Nayar that had Pakistani troops fought by the side of Indian soldiers in the 1962 Indo-China war, it would have been difficult to say no if Pakistan had asked for Kashmir then.

Nayar quotes India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru saying, “Even if Kashmir were to be handed over Pakistan on a platter, Pakistan would think of some other way to keep its quarrel with India alive, because Kashmir is only a symptom of a disease, and that disease is a hatred for India.”

On Leaders and Icons: From Jinnah to Modi is brimming with anecdotes, memories and classic quotes given by the top leaders of Indian sub-continent to veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar (August 14, 1923-August 23, 2018).

His tone in describing the leaders of the freedom movement is that of admiration. For the generation of leaders that followed Nayar reserves a critical tone, bringing out their power struggles and how they plunged the nation into crisis; the present-day politicians have been ruthlessly dealt with.

In his profile of Nehru, Nayar says the leader was a firm believer of institutions, setting up IITs and Planning Commission among others.  In contrast, the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, believes in a free economy, and has abolished Nehru’s creation. 

Mark Tully, in his foreword, says Nayar began his career as a successful press officer with the government and went on to become Shastri’s media adviser in 1961. By Nayar’s own admission, he became a blue-eyed boy of Shastri, thereby antagonising Indira Gandhi and many Congressmen. Immediately after Nehru’s cremation, Nayar claims, he wrote an article for UNI saying Morarji Desai had prematurely shown his over-enthusiasm for the PM’s post, effectively swinging hundred of Congressmen to Shastri’s side.

Nayar’s success as a journalist was due to the trust he inspired in people. Such was his privilege and access that he could provide evidence that Nehru had no doubt in his mind regarding his succession plan — it would be his own daughter, Indira Gandhi, Nayar confirms. It was Nayar who got Pakistan PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to admit that he persuaded President General Ayub Khan to launch a war against India in 1965, believing that Pakistan would win because of the superiority of its armour.

Journalist, diplomat, left-leaning political commentator and author of Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography, Distant Neighbours and many other books, Nayar has many interesting, never-heard-before anecdotes to narrate in this book, which turned out to be his last before his death.

He recounts a meeting between PM Shastri and iconic Bollywood actress Meena Kumari on the sets of Pakeezah where she garlanded him on his arrival to a thunderous applause. Shashtri began his speech by accepting his ignorance, “Meena Kumariji, mujhe maaf karna, maine aapka naam pahle dafa suna hai,” leaving her embarrassed in the front row.

Nayar shows no mercy to former PM Manmohan Singh for getting a ration card, needed by people who are marginalised, made from Assam in order to get nominated for the Rajya Sabha. As an economic adviser to the government, he had floored Nayar in their first meeting by saying that he deserved a Bharat Ratna for his role in Hindu-Sikh reconciliation after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. 

But when he rose to the country’s top post, he never asked Nayar for a cup of tea in 10 years of his tenure. “Probably, he did not want to risk the annoyance of Sonia Gandhi,” says Nayar, besides poking fun at Singh’s reluctance to speak in Punjabi despite being from a lower middle class family in Amritsar. Singh recently turned down the invite for Nayar’s book-launch, upset with Nayar’s claim that during his prime ministership, government files would go to Sonia Gandhi’s house. It is a slim tome but an account that comes loaded with memories.

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