In the end, Chanakya’s pearl of wisdom: ‘The only friend you have is yourself’

The publication now—whenever it happens—will be posthumous but it will be much-awaited because it was December 6, 1992, that besmirched what is arguably the most innovative premiership in modern Indian history.

More so because he never talked about it in public, about how right through that year, he tried to create a consensus with sadhus, sants, VHP, BJP. About how that consensus broke down, the masjid fell, and his firefighting began.

A firefight, fed from within his own party, that finally left him out in the cold. ‘‘The only friend you have,’’ he told this writer when he was battling court cases, ‘‘is yourself.’’ That all the cases finally went in his favour is a forgotten footnote. What political contours his Ayodhya solution would have had is anybody’s guess given that this was the same mind that reversed a policy of 40 years when it came to economics.

Brought up on all the shibboleths of socialism, Rao saw the writing on the nation’s crumbling economic wall. Officials recall going to brief him the day before he was to be sworn in as Prime Minister. He was poring over lists of names of a possible Cabinet. He listened carefully and commented, “I knew the situation was bad but I did not know it was this bad.” Within days, the change had begun: the new industrial policy came a month later.

And, almost as if in step, he brought liberalisation and globalisation to engage with the neighbours and the world, most importantly the United States.

His meeting with Bill Clinton in the summer of 1994 was a turning point. According to those close to him, he had floored Clinton by saying, “You should come to India in your first term and not your second.” Clinton had accepted to visit India at that time. After a 45-minute session, Clinton turned to the Indian delegation waiting outside and said, “I have learnt history from your Prime Minister.”

Rao’s stint as Foreign Minister under two PMs gave him the insight which enabled him to explore the contours of a new Indo-American relationship, later to become the foundation of what came to be known as a “paradigm shift”.

Add these to his foreign policy successes: from recognising Israel to engaging with Nawaz Sharif and Beijing, from his rapport with the Soviet Union to several initiatives with the newly formed central Asian republics, his highly successful visits to Iran and Oman.

The ground for a nuclear explosion that the Vajpayee Government carried out in May 1998 was prepared by Rao in 1995 but he abandoned the idea when news leaked out to the Americans. He had sewn up an agreement on Kashmir with Farooq Abdullah and announced the package from Burkina Faso, delaying his departure by two and a half hours. Farooq, he said, went back on it and it was during the premierhsip of H D Deve Gowda that elections to the J&K assembly were held. Punjab quietened during his stewardship, and so did the Mandal-Kamandal agitations which had wracked the country and polarised the polity.

A British politician once told Rao that the biggest mistake he made was to acquire a majority in 1994. He would have done better running a minority government at which he was so adept and no one could have challenged him.

Instead he broke other parties, and one of the upshots of that process was the JMM case which dogged his steps till recently when he was acquitted. All through his five years in office, he made a point of keeping regional satraps like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Yadav, Kanshi Ram, Deve Gowda in good humour and they often met him during slots that were marked ‘‘reserved,’’ entering his residence without having to disclose their identities.

If there was one overarching theme in his politics and governance it was consensus. Not only did it suit his phlegmatic temperament, Rao also knew that it was an effective tool to manage contradictions. For, he knew he had neither the arithmetic nor the chemistry. Nor the bright lights of a family brand. No wonder then that he was the only non-Nehru Gandhi leader of the Congress who ran a government for a full term.

Once I asked him about his legendary indecisiveness, his statement that not making a decision is also a decision. He replied: ‘‘Any decision for which the time is not right or ripe, needs a clear-cut decision of non-taking—either express or silent.’’

As the first southern prime minister, who altered the north-south balance in the country’s politics, he often said he admired North Indian Brahmins. ‘‘Rajniti to tumhi logon ko aati hai,” he would tell his friends form the north. When they would point out that the South Indian Brahmins were more adept at hatching conspiracies, he would retort, “Chanakya to tumne paida kiya hai.” The South had produced the Shankaracharyas, but in Rao it produced its first Chanakya.

And in the end, Chanakya was alone.