Through a Statesman’s Gaze

The Hindustan Times reported (1 January) that informally, the decision to release the hijackers had been taken on the night of 29 December: ‘The militants-for-hostages swap was decided collectively by Prime Minister Vajpayee, Home Minister Advani, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Brajesh Mishra, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau and the Secretary of the Research and Analysis Wing late on Wednesday (December 29, 1999).’

President Narayanan, an alert ‘diplomatist’ antenna within his brain receiving and transmitting signals, alerted Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh on the criticality of naming Pakistan and telling the world what and where we stood on terrorism. Not that they were unaware, but nudges work to speed, ginger, and sharpen action. On 3 January, Prime Minister Vajpayee formally accused Pakistan of being behind the December hijacking of IC 814 and urged that Pakistan be declared a terrorist state.

On 6 January, four men based in Kashmir were arrested in connection with the hijacking. Discussion on the whys and why-nots of the incident went on, with former prime minister Gujral saying, ‘Although the Prime Minister rang up to say that [Jaswant] Singh was going, he did not breathe a word of the deal that had already been struck with the hijackers. He told us half-truths.’

President Narayanan’s speech in Parliament on 23 February 2000 had forty-nine paragraphs dealing with almost every aspect of governance. The hijack came in for passing mention in these lines: ‘Irrefutable evidence has been provided by the Government about the Pakistani origins of the hijackers as well as the role of Pakistani officials posted in Kathmandu. We sincerely hope that Pakistan will reverse this policy of hostility towards India so that normal relations could be restored.’

Curious it was, that a traumatic, even cathartic, experience that convulsed the nation and brought it close to a meltdown should have finally got condensed into one of the smaller paragraphs in a forty-nine-paragraph-long speech. Doubtless, each word in that paragraph had been through microscopes of phraseology. The government would not have appreciated Narayanan cavilling at the wording. But Narayanan did what a constitutional head of state could. He made his antenna thrum in unqualified relayings to the government. The very next day, 24 February, a review of national security was ordered, citing the report of the committee on the incursion of Pakistani-backed forces into Kargil. The report, going by the popular name of Subrahmanyam Report, after the head of the committee, the renowned international affairs expert and defence strategist K. Subrahmanyam (1929– 2011), had exposed serious shortcomings. The committee had recommended a new ‘national security planning and decision-making structure for India in the nuclear age’.

There was something else that was giving President Narayanan cause for worry. Admiration for the Constitution and a sense of affiliation with its spirit was, for him, an ardour amounting to a passion. And so, the Vajpayee government’s interest in getting the Constitution ‘reviewed’ by a committee, as reflected in the draft for his address to Parliament, did not sit well with him. The Constitution, he believed, was not infallible and was open to amending. But then only by Parliament, not at the instance of a government-appointed committee. Yet is there anything wrong in a government appointing a committee to study the Constitution and suggest changes in it in the light of experience? The point was moot. But Narayanan’s apprehension was about a ‘review’. That was an omnibus approach, making the Constitution’s supremacy as a whole subject to a reconsideration, a reappraisal—an audacious thing to attempt. And so, he did what was within his scope: he touched up the draft paragraph expertly, delicately. It finally read as follows (with the words in italics reflecting President Narayanan’s thinking):

The Constitution, which India adopted fifty years ago, has served us well. It has been a reliable guarantor of parliamentary democracy, secularism and fundamental rights, which all of us cherish. It has also inspired the spread of democratic consciousness in our society, empowering dalits, adivasis, backward classes and women and making our system of governance more participative and progressive. While keeping the basic structure and salient features of the Constitution inviolate, it has, however, become necessary to examine the experience of the past fifty years to better achieve the ideals enshrined in the Constitution. The Government has, therefore, set up a broad-based Constitution Review Commission. The recommendations of this Commission will be presented before Parliament, which is the supreme decision-making body in Indian democracy.

Without the benefit of Narayanan’s thinking, the unitalicized parts would probably have been all the speech said. Thank God for an alert president with a humming antenna, a sharp eye and a sensitive pen.

President Bill Clinton’s visit to India was imminent. Shortly before the visit began, a suggested draft came from the Ministry of External Affairs for his use in the banquet speech. President Narayanan, in one inspired sitting, tore through the MEA draft and virtually rewrote the whole thing.

The preliminary round of discussions that he had with Secretary of State (the first woman to hold that office) Madeleine Albright (1937–2022) was frosty. An obituary of the lady was to say: ‘Admirers said she had a star quality, radiating practicality, versatility and a refreshingly cosmopolitan flair.’ Her meeting with President Narayanan showed she also had a beam of steel in her, a cold steel. Narayanan, who had wanted to be apprised about the Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott talks on non-proliferation and was dissatisfied with what he was told by way of briefs, expressed himself forcefully to Albright on what he called ‘India’s sovereign options’ but kept his franker views for when he was to be face-to-face with Clinton. Their

discussion was prosaic and went on expected lines. In his banquet speech, President Narayanan came with total confidence to his punchline: ‘Mr President, we do recognize and welcome the fact that the world has been moving inevitably towards one world…. But, for us, globalization does not mean the end of history and geography and of the lively and exciting diversities of the world.

(Excerpted with permission from Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s The Undying Light; published by Aleph Book Company)