'Manmohan Singh protected his functional turf like a quintessential bureaucrat': K.P. Nayar

As prime minister, Manmohan Singh had his first meeting with Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf on September 24, 2004 in New York. A few hours before that meeting, I went to the New York Palace Hotel, where the Indian delegation to the 59th United Nations General Assembly was staying, for a private breakfast with National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit. He told me the summit would begin with a one-on-one exchange between Singh and Musharraf. Dixit asked me not to mention this to anyone. Only two other people in the Indian government were aware of it and it was not listed on Singh’s classified minute-to-minute programme.

One of the two people was diplomat Rakesh Sood. Dixit trusted Sood, then deputy chief of the Indian mission in Washington, and he had summoned him on temporary duty to New York. The other was Ruchi Ghanashyam, liaison officer to Dixit during his General Assembly visit. Ghanashyam, then posted in New York, had brought along our breakfast―home-cooked Mysore-style rava upma.

Shortly after breakfast, we headed for the Roosevelt Hotel, a stone’s throw from the Grand Central Station. It was Pakistan’s turn to host the Indians and it chose this hotel which was then owned by the Pakistan International Airlines. Before walking towards Musharraf, who was waiting to receive Singh, Dixit announced to the Indian delegation that there would be a one-on-one meeting between the two leaders before the delegation-level talks. External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, who thought of himself as the oracle of diplomacy, exploded. “This cannot be allowed,” he said, overstepping the limits of a cabinet minister in front of the prime minister. Singh was his usual picture of calm. “Natwar, let me decide what can be allowed and what cannot be,” he said, firmly putting the minister in his place. Manmohan Singh resolutely guarded his turf. The only exceptions he would make were for the members of the first family of the Congress.

Dixit was in his element when I met him in his hotel suite later that day. “Come to me after six months,” he said. “We will have a solution to the Kashmir problem.” Alas, it was not to be. He died on January 3, 2005.

Dixit and his Pakistani counterpart, Tariq Aziz, had decided that they would not keep any record of their deliberations, Dixit’s aides told me after he died. Some years later, Musharraf hinted at this solution, which had fallen by the wayside. Manmohan Singh, typically, has taken the secret of what could have been a Kashmir solution to his funeral pyre.

Like all efficient civil servants, Singh knew how to wield power without being abrasive. Once, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s political aides were harassing a joint secretary who suspected corruption in a big foreign aid project that Krishna wanted to be approved. Krishna’s office tried to turn the tables on the officer, accusing him of corruption and threatening to let loose the CBI on him. Someone brought it to the prime minister’s attention. One day, after a meeting at his residence, Singh left the high table and walked to the back of the room and shook hands with the joint secretary. Within earshot of everyone present, the prime minister complimented the officer on doing a fine job and urged him to keep it up. No issue was specified, but everyone got the message. The harassment immediately ceased and the officer prevailed on the dubious aid contract.

Manmohan Singh’s dogged perseverance of the India-US nuclear deal is well known, but he had other important foreign policy successes that are no longer remembered. It would have come as a great satisfaction to Singh that 12 days before he died, the wheel came a full cycle on one of his external affairs visions. Releasing a scholarly periodical on foreign affairs, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar put a premium on relations with Canada. His remarks were in contrast to a year’s descent in India-Canada relations, now at its nadir. Throughout his prime ministership, Singh worked to improve ties with Ottawa. He realised that Canada is a ‘resource power’ and its assets could help India grow at 6 to 8 per cent if those were incorporated into India’s supply chain ecosystem.

Singh was shrewd enough to also realise―especially as a Sikh―that Canada had to make amends to aspects of its inglorious past if India-Canada relations were to realise its potential. He told this to his counterpart in Ottawa, Stephen Harper, whenever they met. In 2006, Harper appointed a judicial commission to inquire the Khalistani terrorist bombing of Air India’s Kanishka aircraft in mid-air, which killed 329 people. In 2010, after the commission’s final report, Harper solemnly stood before the families of the victims and apologised to them. Twenty-five years too late, but better late than never.

During the rest of his tenure, Singh continued to work on the Canadians to atone for another act of inhumanity. In 1914, Canada refused entry to 376 Indians, mostly Sikhs, who arrived in Vancouver by a Japanese ship, the Komagata Maru. They endured unspeakable hardship on the vessel for two months, after which Komagata Maru was forced to set sail to Calcutta. Several passengers died. In 2007, the government of British Columbia―where Vancouver is located―apologised for the incident. A year later, Harper apologised to the Sikh community in the province. After Singh and Harper had left office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the sufferings of the ship’s passengers a “stain on Canada’s past” and repeated the apology in the House of Commons. The correction of these two historic wrongs by Canada bears the personal foreign policy imprint of Singh as prime minister.

Singh never got enough credit for putting India’s relations with Saudi Arabia on an upward trajectory, both as finance minister and as prime minister. He visited the kingdom in both capacities and brought King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as Republic Day chief guest in 2006. Singh also opened up relations with Oman and Qatar. He did not take enough care of ties with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait owing to circumstances beyond his control.

The author was a foreign correspondent in Washington.