The world of Indian politics will keep remembering P.V. Narasimha Rao for his political acumen and his eventful five years as the country’s ninth prime minister. Beyond the identity of a lawyer-turned-politician, however, Rao also left behind the unmatchable legacy of a scholar and linguist. What perhaps powered Rao all through was his undying curiosity and willingness to learn new things.
It is this voracious appetite for learning that helped Rao master multiple languages. Besides having an excellent command over his mother tongue Telugu, Rao was proficient in Marathi. He has translated Hari Narayan Apte’s famous Marathi novel Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto into Telugu. He translated many other famous works from Marathi to Telugu and from Telugu to Hindi.
He was deeply interested in Indian philosophy and culture, and wrote poetry, fiction and political commentary. He has also published Sahasra Phan, a Hindi translation of Viswanatha Satyanarayana’s famous Telugu novel Veyi Padagalu and published many articles in different magazines, mostly under a pen name. He also published a 'semi-autobiographical' novel The Insider, which kicked up a storm in political circles.
He could speak in seven languages, ranging from Urdu, Sanskrit and Tamil to English and Spanish. In the book To The Brink and Back, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has written that Rao’s mastery over Sanskrit was the highpoint of his speech in Parliament during the vote of confidence faced by the then government in July 1991.
A man of many interests, Rao also liked music, cinema and theatre.
It comes as no surprise that in its obituary of Rao, who died on December 23, 2004, The Guardian profiled him as a man who was much respected for ‘his scholarship and astonishing linguistic prowess’.
Rao, the voracious reader, also left behind a library with his collection of over 10,000 books in multiple languages, many of them rare editions. The library was set up by Rao at the Swami Ramananda Tirtha Trust in Begumpet in Andhra Pradesh.
Rao’s quest for learning did not restrict him to the language of books—he went on to far outpace his peers and introduced himself to the language of computers. Rao was in his 60s when he got his son to send him a computer, and hired a tutor to learn the intricacies of the machine in 1986. Rao eventually went on to write code in programming languages Basic, Cobol and Unix, according to his biography Half Lion: How PV Narasimha Rao Transformed India, written by Vinay Sitapati.
The computer became Rao’s companion till he breathed his last. Remembering Rao’s exuberance and his association with the computer, members of Swami Ramananda Tirtha Trust told Telangana Today, in an article celebrating the politician’s birth centenary: “When doctors advised him to use a stress ball at the age of 80 to exercise his fingers, he used a keyboard and typed documents on the computer.”
Rao’s willingness to learn and experiment also stayed with him through his political career which witnessed multiple reforms.