Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India

by Vinay Sitapati

Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister on the evening of 31 October, before the slaughter had commenced. One public word from Rajiv would have ended the violence. There is no evidence that he directly ordered the killings; rather, his silence allowed party thugs to loot and murder in his name.

Rajiv's role in the 1984 violence

A fortnight after the killings, Rajiv would dismiss the violence with ‘whenever a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little’.37

Rajiv's statement about the 1984 violence

is true that commission after commission investigating the massacre have cleared Narasimha Rao of any role in the violence and, as the evidence suggests, he was under a direct order from the prime minister’s office to stand down. But he was home minister of the nation, formally in control of the Delhi Police. He could have defied his prime minister’s henchmen, ordered the police to act, and called in the army on 31 October itself, before the killings began. A public statement by him may have shamed Rajiv into acting sooner. Such an open revolt against his party would have meant political oblivion for Narasimha Rao, who had by now perfected the art of being a loyal number two. Rao’s career in the Congress would have surely ended had he ignored instructions—both categorical and couched—from his party. But it would have set him apart from the others who allowed evil to take place in those four days of 1984. It was his vilest hour.

Narasimha Rao, by not taking charge when he should have, proved that he was only interested in saving his position in the party.

Some months after the elections, Narasimha Rao was present in the room when Rajiv Gandhi told a friend that he intended to open up electronic and computer imports to India. ‘But the old guard in my party will not understand,’ Rajiv complained within earshot of his defence minister. Narasimha Rao said little. That evening, he called up his son, the engineer Prabhakara. The home computer revolution had only begun in the late 1970s, and computers were a novelty even in the United States. ‘You keep talking about this computer thing. What is it? Send me one,’ Rao said.45 The next day, Prabhakara sent a prototype to Delhi. Prabhakara also hired a computer specialist to teach his father. Ever the technophile, Rao bought manuals to read on his own, and within fifteen days, told the specialist he was redundant. Over the years, Rao would master two computer languages, COBOL and BASIC, and would also go on to write code in the mainframe operating system UNIX. Narasimha Rao’s love for learning had merged with his instinct for political survival.

Narasimha rao's introduction to computers

Bofors was only one of many mistakes that Rajiv will be remembered for. Worried that Muslims were disillusioned with the Congress and voting for regional alternatives, Rajiv Gandhi overturned a Supreme Court decision that had enhanced the protections available to divorced Muslim women. This pleased the Islamic clergy, but led to allegations by the rising BJP that he was pandering to Muslim extremists. So, Rajiv decided to win over the Hindu vote bank by completely opening up the disputed Babri mosque in Ayodhya for Hindu worship in 1986. This upset Muslims, so Rajiv’s government decided, in 1988, to ban Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses for hurting Islamic beliefs—the first country in the world to do so. Three years later, in an attempt to consolidate his Hindu vote bank, Rajiv allowed the foundation stone ceremony for a future Hindu temple at Ayodhya, enraging Muslims even more. Such competitive communalism reinforced the image of the Congress as playing religious politics rather than standing by its professed secular creed. There is no evidence that Narasimha Rao advised Rajiv Gandhi against these missteps.

RG pandering to please both Hindus and Muslims; Ayodhya foundation stone ceremony; Banning of Satanic verses; Reversal of Supreme Court verdict (Shah Bano case)

Foreign minister Rao visited Singapore in 1989. His grandson Shravan recalls, ‘He came back and told me, “There is a theme park called Sentosa. There is a sound and light show. There is excellent technology. The way they aligned the lights and sounds is superb. There is one show, that show is conducted on the beach in the night.”’82 In that same visit to Singapore, he spent the day with an Indian-origin businessman, buying laptops to take back home.83 These visits to East Asia would shape his ‘Look East’ policy as prime minister a few years later. It would also shape his dislike for the barriers that technology imports into India faced. Returning from one such visit, the foreign minister was irritated at the level of duty that customs officials levied on the laptop and electronic gadgets he was bringing back. He came away from the airport seething.

Duty and customs

Rao was wise to be cautious. Seven years earlier, Pranab Mukherjee had broken the queue when prime minister Indira Gandhi was killed, setting himself up as successor. For the sin of a commoner claiming a dynastic right, Pranab was sent to the back of the line. He was only now being rehabilitated. The same Family right was being reasserted, as Rao heard ‘the loud slogans and shouts of some fellows on the road, asking for Sonia Gandhi to be made C.P’. Rao realized he was being upstaged. ‘The picture was complete in my mind.’

Post Rajiv's death : the clamouring for power