New Delhi. There is a story told about Jaswant Singh, who wore a variety of hats as a minister, including the key portfolios of Defence and External Affairs, during his three decades-plus in Parliament, that there was a flurry of activity when he was appointed to head the foreign ministry. There was a scramble for dictionaries as Jaswant Singh, a former Indian Army officer, was a stickler for articulating every word right and woe betide those who had difficulties in following his line of thought.
Be that as it may, Jaswant Singh, who died in New Delhi on September 27 aged 82, was a stickler for doing things the proper way, “ there’s a right way of doing things and there’s a wrong way”, he was often quoted as saying – and served as the External Affairs Minister under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during one of the most difficult times in the country’s history in the aftermath of the Pokhran-II atomic tests that heralded India’s arrival as a nuclear weapons state.
Deputed as India’s single representative to hold a repeated, long-term dialogue with the US – represented by Strobe Talbott – on all matters related to nuclear policy and strategy, the outcome of the sustained engagement was positive for both countries, a fact fully acknowledged by his interlocutor. This certainly was a high-point in his career.
At the same time, there were occasions when he courted controversy.
The first was in 2006, when he wrote in his book “Call to Honour” of a mole in the Cabinet of then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao who had been passing on secrets to the US. Pressed on this, he let it pass.
Three years later, he was expelled from the Bharatiya Janata Party (the successor of the Jana Singh), of which he was one of the founder members, after his book “Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence” praised the founder of Pakistan whom many hold as one of the key figures responsible for the partition of the sub-continent in 1947. He stood firm and was even expelled from the party for a brief period.
Earlier in 2009, Jaswant Singh had incurred the displeasure of his party colleagues when, after the BJP suffered its second successive defeat in the General Elections, he circulated a note demanding thorough discussion on the debacle.
He had also been criticised when in 1999 he accompanied four Pakistani terrorists freed from an Indian jail – including Masood Azhar, who later became a major thorn in the flesh for New Delhi – in return for the passengers and crew of an Indian Airlines A-300 jet that had been hijacked on a Kathmandu-Delhi flight and had eventually landed at Kandahar. “The lives of Indian civilians were important,” he is reported to have said on the occasion, in clearly what was a Hobson’s choice.
Jaswant Singh’s swansong came in 2014 when the BJP decided against fielding him in the General Elections but he decided to contest anyway from his Barmer constituency in Rajasthan but lost. In August of that year, he suffered a nasty fall at his home in New Delhi and went into a coma, from which he never came out for over six years.
Elected on the BJP ticket to the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament, five times (1980, 1986, 1998, 1999 and 2004) and the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament, four times (1990, 1991, 1996 and 2009), he also served as the Minister of Finance, when he majorly pushed through the second set of market reforms, thrice as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament and a brief term (1998-99) as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission that was headed by the Prime Minister.
Jaswant Singh truly lived life on his own terms – no matter what the consequences.
No comments
Post a Comment