The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh (31 page)

Dr Singh played an active role in the first two G-20 summits, in November 2008 and April 2009. The impressive performance of the Indian economy in the 2004-08 period and its ability to withstand the immediate impact of the Lehmann collapse contributed to India’s global standing and to Dr Singh’s global image. Leaving the London G-20 summit in April 2009, President Barack Obama went to Germany where a young school student asked him which politician he admired. Obama’s instant reply was that among existing world leaders he admired Dr Singh of India the most.

The robust performance of the economy during UPA-1 provided the policy space within which Dr Singh could push his ideas on economic interdependence, the irrelevance of borders and the importance of strategic partnerships defined by economic interests. The Subrahmanyam task force also drew pointed attention to the strategic importance of sustained economic growth.

The keys to India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ were, first, overcoming the challenge of wiping out ‘poverty, ignorance and disease’, as Nehru reminded the nation in 1947, and, second, creating a competitive economy that would enable India to rebuild the ‘bridges of mutual interdependence’ with the world, as Dr Singh reminded the India Today Conclave. In short, ‘India must do what it must at home’ for it to be able to deal more confidently with the world.

That, the world believed, India was doing in UPA-1. Once the economy began to falter and the government became wobbly, India and its PM lost their sheen, underscoring the fact that the ‘Manmohan Singh Doctrine’ requires as its foundation a rapidly growing and dynamic economy capable of overcoming domestic challenges, facing international competition and being engaged with the global economy.

‘I dream of a day when, while retaining our respective national identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. That is how my forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live.’

 

Manmohan Singh, FICCI annual general meeting
8 January 2007

 

The Indian subcontinent was always a crossroads between Asia to its east and Asia to its west. Conquerors, travellers, traders and teachers set foot or set sail and moved across Asia through India. The Indian cultural and economic footprint extended from the banks of the Mediterranean to the Pacific, from the coasts of East Africa and the Arab/Persian Gulf to the coasts of Vietnam and Indonesia. India was both enriched and impoverished by such flows of people across the Indus and the Gangetic plains.

It was this vision of India that shaped Dr Singh’s approach to India’s relations with its neighbours, including Pakistan, the land of his birth. Partition in 1947, and the creation of Pakistan, could never be reversed but why should political boundaries now come in the way of free movement of today’s travellers, traders and teachers when they had not done so over centuries? He spoke about a subcontinent without borders or, as he put it to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, ‘where borders are mere lines on paper’.

The state of India-Pakistan relations and the need to find a lasting solution to the problem of Jammu and Kashmir, had occupied Dr Singh’s attention for years. His interest in it predated his prime ministership and he kept himself informed on what was happening in J&K. So it was not surprising that while preparing for his first visit as PM to the UN General Assembly, in September 2004, Dr Singh devoted considerable time to his planned meeting with President Pervez Musharraf.

To create a favourable environment for the meeting, India took the initiative to announce unilateral liberalization of the visa regime for Pakistani academics, businessmen and senior citizens. That some back- channel discussions had already taken place on Kashmir was evident from the fact that President Musharraf made no reference to the troubled issue in his speech. Singh reciprocated the gesture by telling the UN General Assembly that he ‘reaffirmed’ India’s determination to carry forward the dialogue with Pakistan initiated by his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in January 2004, ‘to a purposeful and mutually acceptable conclusion’.

Those statements set the tone for the meeting of the two leaders at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel on 24 September 2004. While Dr Singh drove to the hotel with a delegation that included External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, the two leaders chose to meet without aides and talked for over an hour. Earlier it had been decided that the two would not meet the media and only a spokesperson would brief journalists. But as the meeting came to an end, they announced that they would like to jointly address the media.

Almost fifty to sixty waiting journalists from both countries had to be security checked and allowed into the hotel lobby within minutes. The hotel did not have a suitable conference room, so it was decided that the two leaders would stand in a wide corridor outside the room where they met and make a statement. As TV crews set up their cameras, it was left to MEA spokesperson Navtej Sarna to get a hotel staffer to unscrew the ‘Exit’ sign on the wall so that the two leaders would not be caught on camera standing below it.

The two then issued a bland joint statement, hurriedly drafted by their aides, that said they had ‘agreed that confidence-building measures of all categories under discussion between the two governments should be implemented keeping in mind practical possibilities’. It became clear that the two had a more wide-ranging conversation when, about a month after Musharraf returned home, the Pakistan correspondent of the
Tribune
reported from Islamabad, on 27 October 2004, that, ‘In a new formulation to resolve the vexed Kashmir issue, President Pervez Musharraf last night suggested that India and Pakistan consider the option of identifying some “regions” of Kashmir on both sides of Line of Control, demilitarize them and grant them the status of independence or joint control or under UN mandate.’ The report quoted Pakistan’s government-run TV channel, PTV, to say that Musharraf had said that ‘a solution to the lingering Kashmir problem cannot be found either by insisting on plebiscite or making the LoC (Line of Control) into a permanent border’.

Even though the Indian government rejected this interpretation of the New York conversation, it encouraged a public debate on the pros and cons of Musharraf’s thinking. After all, the idea was originally canvassed by none other than Dr Singh. On the eve of his becoming prime minister, in May 2004, Dr Singh told journalist Jonathan Power
(Statesman,
20 May 2004) in an off-the-record conversation that Power published without his permission, ‘Short of secession, short of redrawing boundaries, the Indian establishment can live with anything. Meanwhile, we need soft borders—then borders are not so important.’

Enough had happened in backroom talks between September 2004 and February 2005 for Musharraf to want to carry the conversation forward. He chose to speed up things by publicly expressing his desire to watch the India-Pakistan one-day cricket matches scheduled for that spring. Musharraf’s public solicitation of an invitation from India was met with stunning silence from New Delhi.

After waiting for a couple of days, the Indian media became restive and sought a response. Several journalists called me to find out if the PM was aware of Musharraf’s stated desire and whether he would invite the Pakistan President to come watch a match. I walked into the PM’s room in South Block and sought an answer.

‘I have been advised that this is not a good time for a visit because the budget session is going on,’ the PM told me. ‘The foreign ministry will inform Pakistan that the visit can take place sometime later.’

I asked the PM if he and his diplomatic advisers had considered what headline they would get the next morning: ‘Musharraf wants to go to India to watch a cricket match. India says no!’

The PM laughed and asked, ‘So what do you think we should do? You realize if he visits India, it will not be just to watch a cricket match but for formal discussions.’

True, I said, but for now Musharraf was only seeking an invitation to watch a cricket match. It was clear from the PM’s demeanour that he was quite willing to invite Musharraf and continue their conversation from where they had left it in September 2004. In fact, while we were speaking, he summoned Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and national security adviser Narayanan. Within minutes they joined us. ‘Sanjaya says I must invite Musharraf,’ he told his two nonplussed senior aides, who already appeared unhappy to find me present at such a hurriedly convened meeting with the PM. This was, of course, his old tactic of putting his own views into other people’s mouths. Those unfamiliar with his style would offer a counterview, thinking they were responding to a view other than the PM’s own. Those who had come to know Dr Singh well would realize this was just the PM’s way of expressing his own view, while retaining an exit route. Perhaps both Narayanan and Shyam understood this, but neither hesitated to disagree with my view. Shyam shared Dr Singh’s vision on most foreign policy issues but on Pakistan he was a hawk and was as sceptical as Narayanan about Pakistan’s readiness to normalize relations with India. We were soon joined by Nair and Pulok and I was pleased when they both agreed with me. The PM turned to Shyam and asked him to draft a letter of invitation to Musharraf. The meeting had ended.

I was asked not to breathe a word of this plan to the media till the diplomats had done their job of deciding the date and the venue, and getting a formal acceptance of the PM’s invitation from Islamabad. For two days, I heard nothing more about this and had to fob off an eager media which kept asking me: ‘Will the PM invite Musharraf?’ I was told by a colleague that both Shyam and Narayanan were in discussions with state governments to figure out which match Musharraf should be invited to—the one in Visakhapatnam or the one in Kochi.

I could not believe my ears when I heard this and decided to speak to the PM. I went over to 3 RCR and told him that the media would view this as an attempt to keep Musharraf away from New Delhi. He hinted at considerable resistance within the government to the idea of a Musharraf visit at this time. The main reason, it seemed, was that it was not a good idea to have such a high-profile visit with Parliament in session. So why not downplay the visit by making it semi-official and go along with the pretence that he was only being invited to witness a cricket match and nothing else? In Europe, heads of government travel to each other’s capitals without too much protocol. Why should there be a joint statement, I argued, each time two South Asian heads of government meet? I could see that Dr Singh was ready and willing to invite Musharraf and the matter was getting delayed because of the usual bureaucratic processes and diplomatic protocol. I suggested to him that he could use the opportunity provided the following morning when he was scheduled to speak in the Lok Sabha by using his intervention in a parliamentary debate to publicly extend an invitation to President Musharraf. He asked me to give him a draft statement.

Next morning, on 10 March 2005, I drove to 3 RCR and handed him a draft before he left home. He read it, folded the paper and placed it in his pocket, as was his wont, saying, ‘Let me think about it.’ Later that morning, I went to the Lok Sabha to hear him speak. He spoke for over half an hour, replying to all the points made by several members in the course of the debate. I waited anxiously to see what he would say when talking about foreign policy.

He went through the discussion on foreign policy as well, and finally, when he came to the very end, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the folded sheet of paper and read from it:

Mr Speaker, Sir, I am happy to inform the honourable members of the House that I have decided to invite President Musharraf to come to India to watch a cricket match between our two teams. It is my earnest desire that the people in our neighbouring country and their leaders should feel free to visit us whenever they wish to do so. Be it to watch a cricket match; be it to do some shopping; or be it to meet friends and family—India is proud to be an open society and an open economy. I do hope that President Musharraf and his family will enjoy their visit to our country.

 

Members of Parliament from around the hall thumped their table in approval. Even before his officials and diplomats had got around to placing a letter of invitation to Musharraf in front of him, the PM had verbally issued that invitation from the floor of the Lok Sabha and had secured instant approval from Parliament. In the officials’ gallery, everyone around me, including the NSA, was stunned. Nair turned to me and winked. I walked out quietly and went into the PM’s room to watch TV channels splash the ‘breaking news’.