Madam Sonia said I had to be fixed
Natwar Singh is most at home in his study, pulling out Jawaharlal Nehru's selected speeches and letters or pointing out a Nandlal Bose lithograph of Mahatma Gandhi during Dandi March. It is here, between his desk, his treadmill, his beloved Husains and photographs of him with world leaders from George W. Bush to Fidel Castro, that he has written many drafts of his autobiography, One Life is Not Enough. Seated in his favourite armchair, he tells Editor Kaveree Bamzai why he has written such a scathing account of Sonia Gandhi after eight-and-a-half years of silence.
Q. What did Rahul Gandhi mean when he said he was prepared to take any possible step to prevent his mother from becoming PM?
A. What would the extreme steps be according to your judgment?
Q. It has to involve some sort of violence. Or some sort of disclosure.
A. He was very worried. He said you know my grandmother was killed, my father was killed. And I expect that my mother will be killed in six months if she becomes prime minister. She couldn't go against what he said, and it made sense. I personally give him full marks for preventing his mother from taking up a job which could endanger her life.
Q. But if someone is so deeply antagonistic to the idea of power, how can he lead the Congress party?
A. They are two separate issues.
Q. Why?
A. This happened in 2004. He'd been in the Lok Sabha only two years, he was not the vice-president of the party, he had no position in the party. This was between mother and son. He put her life over power.
Q. But what was the extreme step? What could have shaken Sonia to such an extent that she was in tears as you described?
A. You know he's a very strong-minded person, Rahul. And he feels very strongly about, even if it means his own life.
Q. Are you suggesting that there was a threat that he may take his own life?
A. No, he didn't say so, but it was quite clear. That come what may, he would not let his mother risk her life.
Q. You believe this is why Sonia and Priyanka are so worried about the book?
A. Yes.
Q. This is the primary reason?
A. Yes, this is. Only three or four people know.
Q. If, as you say, it belongs to the past, why should it matter to them? It shows a son's loving concern for his mother.
A. This you must ask them
Q. But when Sonia and Priyanka came here, did they indicate why they didn't want the book published?
A. Around say, April 15 or 20, Suman Dubey, a good friend of mine and a very decent person, asked me for lunch. Then Priyanka rang up, 'Can I see you?' I said come tomorrow, have a cup of coffee.
So Priyanka came. She said 'my mother has sent me to talk to you about your book. What are you going to write?' Now this is tough. Because I've known the family since 1944. So I said 'you know facts are facts and the truth is sacred, so I'll have to do this'. I told Priyanka what the Congress and her mother had done to me for the last eight to 10 years. A little while later, Sonia came. I said no country in the world took note of the Volcker report except India. They set up a Pathak inquiry committee, which exonerated me: that there is no material to show that Shri Natwar Singh made any personal financial gain from the contracts. It should have ended here. It didn't. The hounding continued. She said she didn't know. So I said, 'Nobody is going to buy that. Nothing happens in the Congress without you knowing, not even a leaf stirs.' It was a very pleasant meeting and I was very nice.
Q. After she came here, which is May 7, did you notice a change in the attitude of Congressmen towards you?
A. A lot of people were interested. My brother-in-law Amarinder (Singh) and I were having lunch at The Oberoi and Digvijaya Singh came with his family and asked when is the book coming out. I used to sit with Sonia for hours every single day talking about every single thing under the sun, including Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. There was nothing that we didn't talk about. We were so close that there were certain things that she didn't tell even Priyanka and Rahul, but she told me. For her to come to my house, it was surrender.
Q. What do you expect from them once it comes out?
A. I don't know. They might go to court... I don't know. It doesn't bother me.
Q. The person who is possibly going to be most affected by this is Rahul. What is your relationship with him?
A. I've known him since he was a baby. But the age difference is so much.
Q. So it is with Priyanka.
A. But Priyanka, you know, I've seen more of her than I have of Rahul. For example, one day we were sitting in her mother's drawing room and she said, 'Has my mother told you that I'm expecting my second child?' And Rahul would walk in and say, 'Can you point out some defects in my grandfather?" And I would reply, 'It's tough, I hero-worship him.' It was only when the Volcker report came out that things changed. I was in Frankfurt when I saw the news that a Congress spokesperson has said Congress is clean but Natwar Singh should take care of himself. I was furious. I had expected that Sonia didn't know. They told her that he's so close to you, people will say you gave him the money. But there was no money. I don't know who got the money, I am not interested. Then the documents of the 70,000 pages that were obtained by Virendra Dayal were never shown to the Pathak committee. When I met Pathak, I asked him what's happened to these documents. He said it's a long story.
Q. Do you feel the money went to the Congress. Who in the Congress?
A. Nobody knows. If you look at the annexures of the Volcker report, it shows that the Congress party was mentioned through 1997. My name was added in March 2005. And the Volcker report was to inquire into the misdeeds of the officials of the UN, particularly the son of the secretary-general. Now they all got away and I had done nothing. Because Madam Sonia said I had to be fixed.
Q. What did you have to be fixed for?
A. You see, she is not used to being defied.
Q. What constituted your defiance?
A. I didn't go and see her. I didn't say I am very sorry, why are you angry with me, like everybody does.
Q. When you came back from Frankfurt in October 2005, didn't you see her?
A. I expected some communication saying 'tell me what's all this?' and I would have clarified. If you're looking at this in a worldly-wise manner, it was probably not a wise thing to do but it was a moral issue for me. Even when she questioned me about some defence deal, I told her that 'You questioning my integrity and honesty isn't acceptable'. But then, there are so many other pleasant things. When my daughter passed away, she was at the house all the time for days and days. And then I had a bypass surgery and she used to come to the hospital... and I saw her so often... not for any other thing, just for a chat. We talked about books, she is a great reader. I hadn't heard of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez before Sonia told me about it, when she was reading the book. We exchanged a lot of books. There is a side to her that's very charming.
Q. What is that?
A. She realises I'm a discreet person and that I'm devoted to the family, so she lets her hair down. She puts her hand to her mouth, she blushes and the dimples appear, and it's very nice. And she has a very good sense of humour.
Q. Is she a gossip? Does she like to know what's happening?
A. She knows everything.
Q. Rahul makes one appearance in your book, with the puppy who chewed the book. Is that all you think of him?
A. I like him, he's a charming chap. I have very great hopes that he will do something.
Q. Based on what?
A. Because he has the pedigree, he has grown up in a political family, he's a modern chap. He has no hang-ups.
Q. He never consulted you? Or had you become persona non grata by the time he became active in the party?
A. I am a life trustee of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund. So I meet him there, once in four or five months. Sonia also comes there but I don't speak to her.
Q. Right, just pleasantries. You describe a dinner where she doesn't speak to you.
A. She was sitting here, I was sitting here, and the Czech president was here and she didn't speak to either of us. At other dinners we used to exchange jokes and chits. I'd write something funny and she would read it and put the chit in her purse. Nobody else had this relationship with her.
Q. Was it like a mentor and mentee? Or like two friends?
A. Mentor is very pompous. We were very good friends.
Q. Despite the age difference?
A. Yes.
Q. There's one very telling sentence in the book. That no Indian would've done what she did.
A. Yes, that's true.
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. That she has a very hard core inside her. Which is un-Indian. For example, no Indian would've dealt with a person so many years older than her in such a way, when there's a tradition that you respect your elders and you don't mistreat them. And this is not just me, everybody else is at the receiving end. I mean the prime minister of India knows that she doesn't talk to him (reference is to P.V. Narasimha Rao). He says, kya karun main, I am prime minister, I want to see her.
Q. Is that the only thing you think is un-Indian about her?
A. You see, this has been her home since she was 19. She's dressed like an Indian. She's not well-versed in our holy books, but so few of us are. She observes all the fasts and festivals. She had a Kashmiri wedding for her daughter. She has lived here and at the top and she has not committed any faux pas that someone can say yeh kya kar rahi hai. But she has a hard core. Maybe twenty-five percent, but it's there.
Q. Does Sonia have any friends?
A. At this level, there are no friends. You accept that you can't have friends.
Q. You do realise that this will be called a BJP conspiracy? Your son is a BJP MLA.
A. My son has nothing to do with this.
Q. You don't think this is one of the things Congress will say?
A. I'll say, 'How well do you know the Congress?' Who are these jokers who will say this to me? How well do they know Sonia Gandhi?
Q. Because you end the book with a meeting with Mr Modi.
A. Yeah, I went to see him. I was very surprised that in five months he hadn't said a word about foreign policy. So I went and told him, "Main aapse kuch maangne nahin aaya hoon. I have come to tell you that if you're the Prime Minister, you're ultimately foreign minister also." So he said, "Bataiye," and I said, "Start with the neighbours."
Q. Do you still believe that the Congress can be led only by a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family? Even now?
A. Yes. Unless some genius appears. Give me a name. The Nehru-Gandhi family has a pan-India appeal which cuts across religion, language and region. Up until the last five years, they had a 15 per cent vote share that was a given. They would start at an advantage. The party will split from the middle without them. She's kept it together for 15 years. When she became Congress president, she asked me what she should do and I said, "Reinvent the Congress party." And she did. It went off very well.
Q. But what do you think of Rahul as a leader?
A. I thought he had the makings of a leader.
Q. So you think the makings have now withered away?
A. No, but if your party is left with just 44 seats, there's something wrong.
