Bharatpur, the royal house of former foreign minister Kunwar Natwar Singh, had only one king, Suraj Mal Jat.
Suraj Mal won a little land south of Delhi as the Mughals rapidly declined in power after the death of Aurangzeb. The family was promised they would be made rajas by Syed Hassan Ali Khan of Barha (one of the two famous/infamous Syed brothers). The Syed had no authority to do this, and was killed. But the Jats were desperate for the title of king. Suraj Mal’s father Badan Singh sent Rs 5,000 to the defeated but still proud former governor of Gujarat, Sarbuland Khan, to please address him in his letters as “Raja”.
Khan returned the money, addressing Singh only as “Thakur”. This was in the 1730s. Suraj Mal made his money mainly from robbery. He died a rich man.
It is not surprising that the heir to such a history is equally colourful. One of the Congress’ most literate leaders, Natwar Singh has become a rebel at age 83. Despite decades to service to the Nehru-Gandhi clan, his ministry was taken away a few years ago after a United Nations report on an oil scandal. His son later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. Now Natwar has written a book which has made the apparently outrageous allegation that Sonia Gandhi was too afraid to become Prime Minister when Atal Behari Vajpayee was defeated in 2004.
I say apparently because I cannot understand what the scandal is here. His specific claim is this:
“Rahul was vehemently opposed to his mother becoming Prime Minister, fearing that she would lose her life, much like his grandmother and his father. Matters reached a climax after Rahul said that he was prepared to take any possible step to prevent his mother from taking up the prime ministership. Rahul is a strong-willed person; this was no ordinary threat. He gave Sonia 24 hours to decide. Manmohan Singh, Suman Dubey, Priyanka and I were present at that moment. Sonia was visibly agonised and in tears. As a mother, it was impossible for her to ignore Rahul. He had his way. That was the reason for her not becoming Prime Minister.”
The most shocking thing to me in these paragraphs is the language. For someone who studied at St. Stephen’s and Cambridge, Natwar relies too much on stock phrases. “Vehemently opposed”, “matters reached a climax”, “prepared to take any possible step” and such should be left to poor journalists who have to churn out words daily and must perforce rely on lazy formulation.
So far as their content goes, what is wrong with a son wanting to keep his mother safe?
But the allegation has taken the halo off Saint Sonia’s head, at least in her mind. She was upset enough to say: “I will write my own book and then everyone will know the truth. The only way the truth will come out is if I write. I am serious about this.”
All right. As the great Eli Wallach said in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly — “When you have to shoot, shoot; don’t talk.”
Does Natwar think it is rejecting the PM’s post that keeps Sonia safe? Or less powerful or less appealing a target to whoever threatens her? She is the most powerful person in the Congress. She was the most powerful person in India even during the 10 years when Manmohan Singh was PM. Sonia should not have responded to this book. Going by the excerpts it is a singularly bland piece of writing.
It would have served Sonia better to have remained silent about it, and perhaps that is what she might have done had her party been in power. It is Sonia’s long silence and distance from politics in the years after Rajiv’s death that gave her the convincing image of being someone who was not keen on power.
She has gained nothing in trying at this point to prove that her motives were always noble. And Kunwar Natwar Singh, whose publisher is Rupa (also the publisher of Chetan Bhagat) has used this one incident cleverly. His ancestors would be proud.
Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist
