Opinion Master and Commander

Sonia Gandhi’s surprise announcement in 2004 that Manmohan Singh would be prime minister took several senior Congress leaders aback and left them seething. Pranab Mukherjee knew he was the most experienced,the senior most and the most qualified for the job. Arjun Singh believed he had the best political understanding of what the party stood for. P Chidamabaram thought he was the cleverest. Natwar Singh assumed he knew Sonia the best,as he had mentored her in her early years in public life. Shivraj Patil felt he was the most loyal.

But Sonia realised instinctively that Singh had the qualities she most desired in a prime minister. He was scrupulously honest,the most trustworthy because he was apolitical and the humblest as he was the least ambitious of all her key aides.

However,the soft spoken Singh’s mild exterior should not be read as weakness. Beneath the velvet glove is an iron fist,as the CPM discovered when it unsuccessfully tried to browbeat the PM over the nuclear deal. In the aftermath of the Left’s withdrawal of support to the UPA government,Singh demonstrated his political acumen. The PM played a key role in persuading Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh to support his government.

Singh may have his own ideas about national issues,foreign policy and government but he abides by the consensus in the party. Over time,the PM has grown in stature and gained enough confidence to feel that he can make a breakthrough in some crucial areas,which is perhaps why at Sharm el-Sheikh he struck a discordant note by giving the go ahead to the Indo-Pak joint statement without first consulting the party president. This is in contrast to the nuclear deal negotiations when emissaries like Ronen Sen,Prithviraj Chavan and even Pranab Mukherjee were always in touch with Gandhi. His detractors in the party allege that last month Singh displayed similar uncharacteristic assertiveness and independence on the issue of climate change and the End User Agreement with the US.

As head of the government,Singh had to take a call at Sharm-el-Sheikh. He obviously believed that India should reciprocate Pakistan’s demonstration of good faith in handing over the detailed dossier on investigations into the Mumbai terror attacks and by omitting any mention of Kashmir in the joint statement.

But did Singh have the mandate to deviate from established Indian foreign policy, by de-linking action on terrorism from the composite dialogue process and mentioning Balochistan in an official document for the first time,without consultation? Singh,after all,is in many ways a surrogate prime minister,even if he played a supporting role in his party’s victory in the recent parliamentary elections.

It took the Congress nearly 10 days to publicly back the Prime Minister over the Indo-Pak joint statement. The Congress spokespersons initially took the curious position that this was a matter for the government and not the party and hence it had no comments to offer. Even Sonia Gandhi’s statements in Parliament and her address to party MPs were nuanced,suggesting only qualified support. She avoided referring to the Indo-Pak joint statement or the mention of Balochistan in it while applauding the Prime Minister’s “firm and unequivocal statement” on foreign policy issues,particularly on Pakistan. Gandhi stressed that Pakistan needs to act against terror before a composite dialogue can get underway.

At the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting last Thursday,Sonia made it clear that her party’s position vis-a-vis Pakistan remained unaltered. “We support resumption of dialogue process with Pakistan,but only after it has demonstrated its seriousness to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks to justice and to prevent its territory from being used to launch terror attacks on any part of the country,” Gandhi said. If further proof was needed of Gandhi drawing a distinction between the party and the government,it was the fact that she never once used the term “our government”,a phrase she has often used in the past.