Privation, limelight, exile: Jaswant Singh's political life saw all three

A true democrat and nationalist, the former army officer, founding member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, remained fiercely independent and intrepid in expressing his views

The last post sounded for Jaswant Singh, India’s Defence, Finance and External Affairs Minister, a few months scant his 83rd birthday. Since 2014, when he met with an accident and had to be operated for skull injuries (‘we had to take out that part of the brain that deals with feelings’, one of the doctors who attended to him said at the time) he had been out of the public gaze, tended devotedly by his wife Sheetal and his two sons. A founder member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he was fiercely independent, intrepid in expressing his views even when it meant disagreeing with his party, but always a true nationalist  and a total democrat.

In the late 1950s, when a slim lad walked into the National Defence Academy (NDA) mess and announced to the dinner-table that he was “Jaswant Singh of Jasol”, no one paid much attention, because no one knew where or what Jasol was.

It is on the banks of the Luni, a pretty little village nearly 200 km from Jodhpur in the heart of Marwar, barely 300 km from the border with Pakistan, and virtually on the edge of the Thar desert. It is this proximity to Pakistan that gave Jaswant Singh a – different – perspective of the partition, the problems and dilemmas of Indian Muslims and divided families. As foreign minister, he was to negotiate a railway line between Khokhrapar (on the Indian side) and Munabao (on the Pakistan side) so that families could meet. Sadly, that lies in disrepair now.

Singh belonged to a clan which prided itself on its tradition of soldiering. His father was a soldier in the Jodhpur Lancers. In some ways, Singh had no choice. The Army was his destiny.

When it was time to pick the regiment he was to join, Singh elected to join the cavalry, the Central India Horse. The classical Armoured Corps officer, he had style and swagger, unlike poorer infantry cousins, whom all cavalry officers viewed with disdain.

The style lived in touches that weren't regulation -- the hair worn a little long, the tie slightly off-centre. Even when he left the Army to join politics , he always wore shirts that were an adaptation of the Army walking out dress -- bush shirt, with epaulettes, but without lower pockets, worn with the sleeves rolled up.
 

He loved the Army. And he hated it. Especially the element of “empty posturing”. He once recounted an incident: An officer at Jhansi railway station, to the flustered and hapless station master, after being informed that the train to Delhi had gone: ‘Gone?’ the officer asked in a Gimlet-soaked drawl, ‘what do you mean gone? Get another, instantly, go and get another train, now.’

Nine years after his commission, in 1966, he quit. When asked to give reasons, he stated clearly: ‘To join politics.’

What followed was a period of great privation, a story very few know. He had Rs 2,600 in his bank. His parents had been shocked by his decision and his father refused to speak to him. In any case, he was the younger son. His wife Sheetal’s family too would have nothing to do with the young couple. “There was no question of either of us asking for help from our families. So we were on our own”, he told Business Standard, some years ago.

With the help of colleagues and friends, he managed to get back on his feet. A benefactor was the Maharaja of Jodhpur. Another was industrialist Mahendra Jhabak. In 1967, Singh fought his first election as an independent. He lost. Bhairon Singh Shekhawat asked him to join the Jana Sangh. Singh told him he was uncomfortable with the thought of joining the party because of its position on the minorities. Maharani Gayatri Devi asked him to sign up for the Swatantra Party. He refused that too because he told her ‘there are far too many princes there’.

Later, he met Atal Bihari Vajpayee with Shekhawat. That launched his political career. He moved to Delhi with his family in a small apartment in Delhi’s Uday Park when it was not the tony neighbourhood it is today. In her tiny kitchen, Sheetal would cook for 30, 40 people, especially during the Emergency when those opposed to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty would plot ways to overthrow it. Later, after he became Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee was to count him among three of his best friends.

His first stint in the Rajya Sabha was from 1980 to 1989, a period of serious eclipse for the Opposition. In 1989 Jaswant Singh won his first Lok Sabha election and he stayed in the lower house through repeated elections till 1998.

Jaswant Singh with then US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon on Oct 2, 2001 | Photo: Wikipedia

These were troubled years in Indian politics. The BJP supported a VP Singh government but withdrew support to it when Lalu Prasad arrested LK Advani in Bihar during a rathyatra campaign. The years saw the BJP’s strength in the Lok Sabha grow and grow, from 3 in 1984 to 89 in 1989 to 119 in 1991.

Ironically, when it was time for the party to revel in its fortunes, Singh lost the 1998 Lok Sabha election. He was to have become Finance Minister but had to be made Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission instead. A year later, he entered Rajya Sabha and became foreign minister, the man to get the world to understand India in the aftermath of the nuclear tests – which changed India’s context in the world, but also racheted up anxieties about a nuclear race in the subcontinent with Pakistan having conducted its own tit for tat tests.

Defence Minister George Fernandes was forced to resign from the government following a bribery scam: and for a few months, Singh held that portfolio as well.

In 1999, the hijacking of IC 814 was the worst point in Singh’s political life. India had to concede to the demand of the hijackers. He explained to BS many years later that he had no choice in the matter. "Everyone throws this at me. It was something I could not have not done. The airport in Afghanistan where the hijacked aircraft had landed was already crammed. Somebody's presence was needed to man the release. Citizens and relatives of those who had been hijacked were stopping the traffic, lying on the roads... Of all the places where an Indian plane could have been hijacked Kandahar was the worst. We had information that the flight would take off and be blown up in the air. We negotiated the release of the passengers in the most adverse circumstances. It was the right thing to have done."

The Vajpayee government was nearing the end of its term by 2002. The BJP had suffered a crushing defeat in a handful of assembly elections, attributed to the lacklustre handling of the Finance Ministry by Yashwant Sinha, Finance Minister. When Vajpayee called Jaswant Singh and told him : “You’ve done stellar work in the Foreign Ministry, please work your miracles here (In the Finance Ministry) too” he had no option but to agree. He was made Finance Minister in 2002, a job for which he had little enthusiasm.

But it was only when the BJP was in the opposition and Jaswant Singh wrote a biography of Jinnah, and also a book on Sardar Patel, that the BJP started a campaign to hound him out of the party. At that time, as he was expelled from the BJP he told Business Standard: “All political parties today are private limited companies. The BJP was an exception. But the BJP seems to have been taken over as well – I won’t say by whom. I don’t see another BJP on the horizon”.

But the relationship was soured for ever. Even in his beloved Rajasthan, a series of misunderstandings had turned relations with the Vasundhara Raje government bitter. For all practical purposes, Jaswant Singh was out of politics – and in 2014 when the BJP swept to power, never had the party needed him more, for there was no one to create a new strategic thought for a rising political ideology.

It was not to be.