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The vice president, Shankar Dayal Sharma, was the obvious choice for the presidency. The problem was that, by 1992, vice president and prime minister, thick friends in the past, had grown weary of each other. Sharma—a senior of Rao’s in the Congress hierarchy—expected the prime minister to brief him regularly when it came to affairs
A former professor, Sharma had a long-winded and didactic style of conversation; Rao had grown tired of wasting entire afternoons over tea with the vice president. Sharma had noticed. An aide to Rao says, ‘Sharma knew he was being ignored. He resented it.’
Among Rao’s private papers is a large chart, the combined size of four A4 sheets. Written in green felt-tip pen is a cost-benefit analysis of each of the ministers in Rao’s Cabinet. There are fourteen names. Some of them have a ‘reputation for corruption’, others are inefficient.
That changed on 16 June 1993 when Harshad Mehta told a packed press conference that he had paid the PM one crore rupees in return for ‘political patronage’. Mehta claimed that Sat Paul Mittal (then a Congress MP from Haryana) and his son Sunil (now the chairman of the telecom company Bharti Airtel) had accompanied him to the prime minister’s house. Mehta alleged that Rao was given a suitcase full of cash.47
To assist the prime minister in managing party funds were treasurer Sitaram Kesri and another Congressman who does not want to be named. This Congressman remembers a businessman once offering Rao a one-crore-rupee ‘donation’ for the party. Rao directed the businessman to the temporary party treasurer, at that time the squeaky clean A.K. Anthony. Anthony refused the money. When Rao heard of this, he said, ‘It’s not for him. It’s for [the] party. This is how it happens.’
Narasimha Rao ordered that his illness be kept hush-hush (it remains secret to this day). If news spread that the seventy-two-year-old prime minister had experienced a stroke, the din to replace him would reach a high pitch.
A few months later, the Congress split with the formation of the All India Congress (Tiwari). N.D. Tiwari was made the president of the breakaway party, Arjun Singh became its working president.
Four BJP leaders were named in the case, L.K. Advani and Yashwant Sinha included.
Those named in the chargesheet kept their vendetta against Narasimha Rao alive even after his death, ensuring that the memory of Rao is anathema to the Congress party today.
Jayalalithaa was also accused by her rivals of being involved in corruption scandals. That Rao was aware of these accusations is seen from a document found amidst his private papers, titled ‘Yearwise Credits in Bank Accounts of J.Jayalalithaa’.
At around the same time, Rao was provided a curious note by the intelligence bureau. It provided a list of twenty-one aspirants who wanted to become ministers, as well as the names of nine party leaders. Next to the names are details of the person’s ‘state’, ‘caste’, ‘age’, ‘loyalty’, and ‘comments’. Under the heading ‘loyalty’, there are two categories, ‘pro-High Command’ [i.e. pro-Rao] and ‘pro-10 Janpath’ [i.e. pro-Sonia]. For example, next to ‘M.S. Aiyar’, it is written: ‘tamil nadu, brahmin, 52, pro-10 janpath, was critical of handling of the Ayodhya Issue by the PM. Took care of party
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Next to ‘Smt. Margaret Alva’, it is written, ‘Karnataka, christian, 53, pro-high command, political lightweight. Could be dropped if adjusted suitably in the organisation other-wise christians of Karnataka may react adversely.’
Unlike Rao, Advani was not a practising Hindu. As humourless as Vajpayee was jovial, he was also more disciplined. Advani’s organizational skills were almost solely responsible for the rapid rise of the BJP.
If anyone in the BJP could protect the mosque, Rao felt, it was Advani. He asked B. Raman, from the spy agency RAW, for a ‘safe house’ where he could meet Advani in secret.57 Raman located a guest house that had been used by Rajiv Gandhi to meet the leadership of the Akali Dal right before Operation Blue Star in 1984.
Blaming Narasimha Rao for Babri Masjid killed two birds with one stone. Sonia’s Congress could escape blame, which would allow it to reach out to the Muslims who had left the party. And Rao, who posed a threat to the Nehru-Gandhi legacy, would stand discredited.
The diplomat Salman Haidar, who would become foreign secretary in 1995, noticed more confidence in Rao. ‘As foreign minister, he was not the sort of person who could make people walk with fear. As prime minister, he demonstrated a very different kind of authority.’6 His choice of foreign minister, the politically busy Madhav Sinh Solanki, meant that it was the prime minister’s office that called the shots.
He would cook a simple meal of rice, dal, curry, chutney and sambar for Rao in his hotel room.12 Home-cooked dinner over, Rao would then grace the official banquet, where he would feast on fruits, nuts and the occasional desert.
Narasimha Rao was keen to meet CEOs of top American companies. He asked the Indian embassy in Washington to fix appointments. But the embassy, used to four decades of shunning capitalists, did not have the contacts. Rao turned to a man with even more connections in the US than his own diplomats. The tantrik Chandraswami had a network of American devotees, from CEOs to senators.
So discreet was he that the then US national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, famously—and possibly apocryphally—described Ronen Sen to President George W. Bush as a ‘bikini’. ‘What he conceals is more important than what he reveals.’
Manmohan had earlier served as the finance member of the Atomic Energy Commission and had a low opinion of the commission’s financial discipline.
Ronen Sen says, ‘We had previously tested our nuclear [technology]. In 1993, we tested our ability to deliver. This is the day India became a nuclear power.’18
In the mid-1980s, India had bought Mirage-2000 planes from France (as defence minister, Rao had overseen the final acquisition).
When Rao organized a tea party for his Congressmen on 25 September 1996, soon after his resignation as party chief, it had to be cancelled because not a single invitee was willing to attend.
Even Rao’s association with women reflected a certain opacity. He lived away from his wife for much of their marriage. He had a relationship with Lakshmi Kantamma for more than a decade. From around 1976 till his death, he had a close friendship with Kalyani Shankar.
