How Prime Ministers Decide by Neerja Chowdhury was taken up for discussion. Strong points of views emerged on the policies some had pursued. Harry Malik made the presentation and Mohan Thadani who was Rajiv Gandhi’s classmate at school provided a critical overview.
The most controversial aspect of Indira Gandhi’s rule was the Emergency she imposed between 1975 and 1977. The whole country acquiesced. As the author notes : Besides Vinoba Bhave , it was also Bal Thackeray who persuaded the RSS to support the Emergency. Sanjay Gandhi used Nath, then his ace lieutenant, to start back channel talks with Bal Thackeray
Forty four years later, in 2019, when Sonia Gandhi was faced with the decision — whether or not to support a Shiv Sena ~led Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra, she was reminded of the support Bal Thackeray had given Indira Gandhi in 1975. In the years that followed, the RSS maintained that it had opposed the Emergency, underplaying the support it gave Indira Gandhi. The controversy continues to resurface from time to time.
In Rajiv Gandhi”s time the Shah Bano case aroused considerable controversy. Rajiv’s response to it was to give a fillip to the Hinduisation of politics, which led to the rise of the BJP.
As the author observes : Three years later, in the 1989 general election, the Congress was to fall between two stools. Rajiv Gandhi’s impressive majority slumped from 414 to 197, The Congress never recovered from the shock. It failed to get a clear majority in any national election after that. The Shah Bano judgment turned out to be the small pivot on which the big door of Indian politics swung for three decades afterwards.
The other PMs covered are: VP Singh, Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh.
Herewith an anecdote on the first BJP Prime Minister:
The author says that though those in the literary world did not think much of his poetry, it got play in later years because of who he was. It was the poet in him who would communicate at the popular level the complex political messages that people could relate to.
He was recognized as a public speaker not only because of his poetic turn of phrase, but also for the legendary pauses in his speeches, which made him the orator he was,
There were a din of views expressed on the various PMs. Dr Gautam Vohra, who was a journalist during the time when the Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi talked of the damage that caused to the freedom of the press and how he felt redundant as a result. Anita Katiyal, another journalist, expressed similar sentiments. Anil Nauriya, Kavita Charanji and Siddo Deva, drew attention to the surprisingly successful term of Manmohan Singh who had no political skills but was an honest politician who won widespread respect..Subagh Singh talked of bumping into Vajpayee at India International Centre and how affable and approachable he had been.
