Politics is said to be the last option of the scoundrel. It can also be the first choice of the gentleman and the noble minded. Mani shows the way.
“A Maverick In Politics”, the second volume of Mani Shankar Aiyar’s autobiography, is a gripping and touching tale of his triumphs and disasters in electoral politics. His life’s journey oscillates between ecstasy and deep despair.
For the serious student of the modern history of India between 1991 and 2021, it is a significant chronicle of the changing political landscapes of India, its colourful and venal politicians, and the towering figures of those four decades who shaped modern India – Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh to Narendra Modi.
For the lay reader, Aiyar, who is erudite with a literary flourish, the narrative is a melange of personal anecdotes, political insights and blunders. The writing style is racy and engaging, laced with vicious wit. For instance, in one passage he writes:
“When Jayalalitha became the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, she presented a baby elephant to the Guruvayur temple. When I become the CM of TN, I will present Jayalalitha to the Guruvayur temple.”
It was unpardonable. Jayalalitha and her cadre were inflamed. Even Mani’s wife was disapproving. Mani thought they don’t have a sense of humour.
Mani is irreverent, impetuous and unorthodox, but has a brilliant mind, a felicity with words, and the gift of the gab, thus drawing the ire of Sonia Gandhi who referred to him as “a loose cannon”. Discretion is not one of his virtues, a trait he shares with his party supremo Rahul Gandhi who has been convicted for defaming Modi. Mani’s two personal attacks on Narendra Modi, which are recounted and refuted by him in detail, resulted in his suspension from the party for eight months. What Mani does not get is that Rahul is the crown prince and can get away with it – but not Mani.
Mani has a few monumental obsessions which surface throughout the book: the Gandhi family, secularism and Nehruvian socialism, the RSS and Modi, Panchayati Raj – and Pakistan, the last which he calls his ‘magnificent obsession’.
He quotes Rajiv Gandhi whom he adores: “A secular India alone can survive. Perhaps, an India that is not secular does not deserve to survive.’’
Panchayati Raj and the devolution of power and funds to the village level is an idea he espouses with evangelical zeal as the panacea to lift rural India out of poverty. He served as India’s first-ever Union Cabinet Minister of Panchayati Raj in UPA-1. He led a commission and produced an 1800 page tome, a kind of Encyclopaedia Panchayatica during UPA -2. Sadly, it never caught the imagination of Manmohan Singh’s governments or the subsequent governments whose focus was on mega projects of industries, highways and IT. Panchayati Raj may yet be Mani’s blazing legacy for posterity if there is a rekindled interest in that spa
At every opportunity, he spoke of engaging with Pakistan to forge a path towards peace and mutual cooperation. He makes the nuanced distinction between the governments, the armies and the ISI, which encourage cross-border terrorism,and its peoples who share a common ethnicity, heritage and culture with India and are its kith and kin. He strives tirelessly to reveal the futility of spilling each other’s blood riven by religious hatred and rabid nationalism. He fails but never gives up.
The Gandhi family made and unmade him. While he entered politics inspired by Rajiv Gandhi, who gave him a ticket to contest from a constituency in Tamilnadu, he was elected to Parliament only after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Mani entered the Lok Sabha during the reign of PM Narasimha Rao and won three Lok Sabha elections, was elevated to a cabinet post and held four portfolios. Then, he tasted defeat in the Lok Sabha elections in 2009, but was still rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat in 2010. However, he was put out to pasture by Sonia Gandhi. Over the years, as Congress declines and disintegrates and the power centre shifts from Sonia to Rahul. Mani, sidelined, tries to meet Sonia and is ignored. When he seeks an appointment with Rahul that is never granted, he feels crushed and cries out that Rahul treats him like a ‘political leper’ .
His wife, Suneet, distraught and lashes out at him, unable to see him cringing before the Gandhi family. “Don’t you have any self- respect?… Can’t you see you are being discarded like soiled tissue paper?” Tragically, Mani is besotted with the Gandhi family and continues trying to reach out to them, begging to be recognised and rewarded for his loyalty and talents.
Despite these failings this book has immense value. Mani shines the mirror on himself with total candour and self-deprecating humour revealing warts and all.
His accomplishments in ministries of Sports and North -East overshadow his foibles. The committee which he steered as its Minister in the petroleum ministry to bring out a white paper to increase production through R and D and bring about sweeping reforms to make India energy self sufficient was a seminal work and again overlooked with vested corporate interests torpedoing his efforts.
The issues raised in Mani’s book – of chaotic democracy versus authoritarianism and crony capitalism which also reigned during UPA – as when he was unceremoniously dropped from the Petroleum portfolio – religious and caste divides and raging communal conflicts, and unemployment with no job creation, and India’s moral authority eroding globally in an increasingly polarised world engaged in genocidal wars – still resonates and can guide those engaged with these problems.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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