From Rajiv to Sonia to MMS: Here are all the bombshells in Natwar Singh's tell-all

Perhaps still smarting from the treatment meted out to him when he was sacked in the wake of the Volcker report on the Iraq oil for food scam, former external affairs minister Natwar Singh has reportedly used some choice adjectives to describe Congress president Sonia Gandhi in his autobiography, ranging from ‘Machiavellian’ to ‘capricious’, and ‘ambitious’. [caption id=“attachment_1643647” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Former Congress leader Natwar Singh. Image courtesy PIB[/caption] Fresh reports on the contents of the tell-all book One Life Is Not Enough indicate that it is not just Sonia Gandhi whose image will be dented by this much-touted tell all. Natwar Singh’s prose has aimed its sights on a variety of other targets 1. On Rajiv’s naive foreign policy Among the more damning of the other revelations in the book is that during his tenure as prime minister in 1987, Rajiv Gandhi took the decision to send Indian troops to Sril Lanka pretty much on his own, consulting neither his Cabinet colleagues nor officials. A report in India Today, quoting from an interview Singh gave Karan Thapar on Headlines Today said Rajiv took the decision while he was in Colombo attending a reception given by then president J R Jayawardene. This account paints Rajiv as somewhat naive, cavalier and inclined to take decisions on instinct rather than sound reason. The report says Rajiv decided to forcibly airdrop food parcels in Jaffna without even informing Jayawardene. “Natwar Singh said that they only did so when he pointed out that forcible airdrops amounted to an invasion of Sri Lanka’s sovereign air space and as a member of the Security Council, Sri Lanka could create a problem for India unless steps were taken both to inform Jayawardene in advance and alert India’s ambassador at the UN to be on his guard,” the report said. Rajiv’s IPKF debacle and the blind faith he placed in Prabhakaran – which would later backfire on the Indian mission – also find detailed mention in the book, alongside a number of other foreign policy gaffes. 2. On the politics around the N-deal One other landmark foreign policy decision Singh has detailed is the Indo-US nuclear deal and the political machinations surrounding it. At one point, with Manmohan Singh reportedly tired of trying to build political consensus on the deal, the prime minister apparently refused to take calls from then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice reportedly then called Natwar Singh and asked why the PM was being reclacitrant. According to a report in The Indian Express, Singh told her he had done his best but Manmohan may not be able to sell the n-deal in Delhi. 3. On his being singled out as fall guy in the Volcker report The book claims that Manmohan Singh actually met met Paul Volcker. “I too was surprised why he needed to spend so much time with the man…,” Natwar Singh writes, implying perhaps that he was set up by his own party leaders. He has also reportedly said former finance minister P Chidambaram had promised that the case and investigation against Natwar Singh would end in a couple of weeks, but eventually dragged on for years. He has written about his phones being tapped and his family made the subject of round-the-clock surveillance. 4. On Sonia, her foreign origins Singh has reserved his harshest criticism, however, for Sonia Gandhi, saying that Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi would have never shown the ruthlessness Sonia did in dealing with him when his name emerged in the Iraq food for oil scam. Asked whether this may be linked to her Italian origins, Singh told Thapar during the interview: “What else can it be? Some part of her is not Indian." Singh (83), an estranged Gandhi family friend who quit the Congress in 2008, has already claimed that it was not Sonia’s “inner voice” that prevented her, as she had stated at the time, to take up the PM’s post. What’s more, he claims that Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi met him at his residence in May this year to persuade him to not refer to this particular episode in his autobiography. The autobiography reportedly has a five-page epilogue written after the Lok Sabha election results emerged, in which Singh says Sonia’s achievement is the reduction of one of the greatest political parties into a “rump” of 44 members in the Lok Sabha. 5. On PV Narasimha Rao and the Pokharan n-tests There is also an account of how nuclear tests in Pokharan were called off in 1995 after American satellites picked up the scent of activity around the region. Clinton reportedly spoke to Narasimha Rao “in strong terms” and the then PM changed his mind, Singh has written. Singh, whose son is a BJP MLA from Rajasthan, has rejected the charge that he may have been prompted by bitterness and revenge for the way he was dumped by the Gandhis. He has said, “It is important to tell facts as you know them.”