P N HAKSAR

Intertwined Lives-   P N Haksar and Indira Gandhi by Jairam Ramesh ; Published by Simon and Schuster; Pages 518;   Price Rs.799/-

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Jairam Ramesh is a Congress MP and author of six books—one on Indira Gandhi as a Nature Lover and Conservationalist. His  latest book brings alive the lives and times of a man who spent his life being invisible.  P.N.Haksar  was Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary and wielded   extraordinary   influence on both India and Indira. He drafted her speeches, helped in appointments, wrote lengthy notes and steered the course of Indian foreign policy. He was outspoken but listened to by the P.M.

The book under review  chronicles the remarkable life of Haksar from being on the watchlist of the British agencies to helping create India’s own spy agency, RAW, with his Kashmiri comrade R.N. Kao. He bore witness to India’s  history and made it in some measure   being Indira’s  voice .

This is  the first full-length biography of  India’s most  powerful civil servant during the Indira .

This is a work of great scholarship born out of thorough research and the copious footnotes are a proof. Haksar was Indira’s “alter ego” during her period of glory. He  was unarguably India’s most influential and powerful civil servant.

Haksar was  handpicked by Indira  in 1967 as the secretary in her Secretariat. It was a position  of enormous significance which  reshaped modern India at several levels. It revealed the role of a  bureaucrat as a center of  power, altered  the contour  of the PMO and resulted in many  far-reaching decisions that affected  Indian politics. From 1967 to 1977, Haksar advised  the prime minister on several issues that led to fundamental changes -- the nationalisation of banks, abolition of privy purses and princely privileges, the Indo-Soviet Treaty, the 1971 war and creation of Bangladesh, rapprochement with Sheikh Abdullah, the Simla and New Delhi Agreements with Pakistan, India’s first Pokhran tests and later, the integration of Sikkim with India. Drawing on extensive official records and private papers, Ramesh has ploughed through tonnes of   office documents and private archives and produced an eminently readable account that ought to command the attention of all Indians interested   in Indian politics or economics.

 Haksar was a  “a remarkable man who worked for a remarkable woman.Those in power must have people around them who speak truth to power. Indira Gandhi gave Haksar the freedom to tell the truth to her,” according to Ramesh. He has also provided  never-before-seen photographs and extracts from , archives, official papers, memos, notes and letters.

Gandhi and Haksar’s relationship was more than just a professional relationship. They were friends first, having stayed together with Feroze Gandhi in London in 1938 and then Gandhi brought him to her Secretariat to bring professional competence. Ramesh describes Haksar as the ideological beacon and moral compass of Indira Gandhi.

 However powerful he was Haksar was reduced to a voice and had no role to play during the Emergency in 1975 or Operation Blue Star in 1984. “Haksar was fully opposed to the Emergency, his house was raided and his wife was almost arrested. He was the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission back then. In a note from the time, he has written, ‘I kept looking at the Prime Minister, but she avoided my gaze’,” said Ramesh.

 Haksar , according to Ramesh was the “most unusual Indian who had not only a remarkable capacity to think but also was afforded an unusual opportunity to act.” Haksar opposed Sanjay Gandhi’s move to manufacture small cars. Jairam Ramesh writes of December 1, 1968 when Sanjay Gandhi applied to the Ministry of Industrial Development for a letter of intent to manufacture a small car.

“Haksar had voiced his strong objection to the PM about her son dabbling in such a venture… and to Sanjay Gandhi staying at the PM’s residence and carrying out his business activities from there… His objections were fundamental. He was against diversion of scarce resources to manufacture cars and was for expansion of the scooter manufacturing capacities in public sector instead.”

 “He made his views known to the PM. An uneasy truce prevailed. That was to end on September 30, 1970 when Sanjay Gandhi was finally given the letter of intent to manufacture 50,000 small cars every year without foreign collaboration and without imported raw materials. My reckoning is that this was the beginning of Haksar’s estrangement with Indira Gandhi. The final break would happen 27 months later,” Ramesh writes.

 During the Khalistan Movement in Punjab in 1984, Haksar had advised Gandhi to “solve the problem through political process”. He wrote her a long note on the issue, but was unaware of Gandhi’s military plans on the Golden Temple.

 Haksar  “invented” the formula in 1987 that India and China could cooperate in other areas even as they addressed their differences on the boundary question. He was sent to China as special envoy by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1987, said he spent 10 days persuading the Chinese to accept his formula that, despite differences on the boundary question, the two countries should “endeavor to reconstruct the totality of Sino-Indian relations in the field of trade, industry, technology…”

Ramesh writes that what Haksar mentioned in July 1972 happened more than a decade later when Rajiv met Deng Xiapoing in 1988 in Beijing.

“Credit is given to Deng Xiaoping for being pragmatic and creating an opening. In reality, this is exactly what Haksar had been advocating for years — keep the border issues aside and start cooperating in other areas,”

 Twenty years after Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing, the two countries are still engaged in addressing their border dispute but trade and contacts between the two countries have multiplied manifold since 1988.

 Haksar contributed to almost all the speeches Gandhi delivered from the day she became PM on January 24, 1966 to the day she was assassinated on October 31, 1984.

 The author writes of Haksar as a man of pragmatism who guided Indira Gandhi to play safe when Soviet Russia first gave military equipment to Pakistan in 1968; a man of great socialist credentials who nudged her to nationalise banks in 1969 and abolish privy purses in 1970; a bureaucrat who had, by 1970, convinced her that India must go nuclear; and also a close friend who served as a guide to the PM’s sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, when they were studying abroad while Haksar served as the deputy high commissioner of India to the UK.

Jairam admirably sums up Haksar—“This was the life and times  of a most unusual Indian who  had not only a remarkable capacity to think but also was afforded an unusual opportunity to act. On rare occasions in  history a person finds his right niche  at the right moment. Haksar found his at an extremely critical period in India’s recent history. He held public offices with unparalleled distinction and set standards in public and personal life which few can imitate and fewer still improve upon.”

This book is a valuable contribution to post-Independence   history of India.

P.P.Ramachandran

19/8/2018.