Congress lowers itself with potshots at PV

Though it is almost two decades since the great son of soil, P V Narasimha Rao, passed away, the Congress leaders still seem to be unable to digest the fact that someone outside the ‘family’ had become a very successful Prime Minister. They also seem to have conveniently forgotten the insult that was meted out to him after his death.

PV, as he is fondly called, was a man of varied interests. He was fond of music, cinema and theatre. However, his special interest lay in Indian philosophy and culture, writing fiction and political commentary, learning languages, writing poems in Telugu and Hindi and keeping abreast of literature. During the period when he was Minister of External Affairs, he successfully brought to bear his scholarly background and rich political and administrative experience on the field of international diplomacy.

1982 and 1983 were eventful years for India and its foreign policy. In the shadow of the Gulf War, the Non-Aligned Movement leaders asked India to host the Seventh Summit. This also meant India assuming the Chair of the Movement and Indira Gandhi becoming its Chairperson. PV presided over the meetings of Foreign Ministers of Non-Aligned Nations on the eve of the New Delhi Summit and also at the United Nations, both in 1982, when India was asked to host the Summit and the following year when, at the initiative of the Movement, informal consultations amongst Heads of State and Government from diverse nations across the world were held in New York. Narasimha Rao took over as Home Minister on July 19, 1984. He was re-appointed to this post, with the additional charge of the Ministry of Planning, on November 5, 1984. He was appointed Minister of Defence from December 31, 1984 to September 25, 1985. On September 25,1985 he took over as Minister of Human Resource Development. He took over as the Prime Minister in 1991 to see that the Congress party was saved from serious crisis and proved to be father of new generation of economic liberalisation and reforms which no successive government could dump it.

Ignoring all these achievements, some of the Congress leaders, who are considered to be part of ‘Bhajan Mandali’ of the party, had the cheek to call him the ‘first PM of BJP.’ What is the reason for this? The only reason is PV summoned Mani Shankar Aiyar while he was on his Ram Rahim Yatra from Rameshwaram to Ayodhya and told him that he did not disagree with his yatra but disagreed with the definition of secularism. “’Mani you don’t understand that this is a Hindu country.’ I sat up in my chair and said, ‘This is what the BJP says. (But) this is not a Hindu country. We are a secular country and in this secular country we have a huge majority of Hindus, but we also have nearly 200 million Muslims and several other Christians, Jews, Parsis and Sikhs. So how can we be a Hindu country? We can only be a secular country.’” This made Aiyar conclude that PV’s mind was so partisan and sectarian, and made a sweeping comment that he led the country from secular path to the communal path. He made these disparaging comments against PV at the launch of his autobiography Memoirs of a Maverick in August.

It is really unfortunate that so far none from the party starting from Sonia Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi who talks of Mohabbat ki Dukan had not objected to such comments against PV who was a man of great integrity and one who was liked by Indira Gandhi and who always fell back on him for his advice. This certainly is an attack and insult to the Telugu pride.