Secularism's Old Soldier

A review of the second volume of former Congress politician Mani Shankar Aiyar's memoirs highlights how his non-conformism and too great a loyalty to his ideals found him on the 'wrong' side of history — devastated but unrepentant

- Bhaswati Mukherjee

After reading A Maverick in Politics 1991-2024 (Juggernaut), my response was that this is a book written by a brilliant mind. These are not the memoirs of a maverick but a brilliant ideologue caught in a time capsule. It encapsulates the tragedy of the author’s life and career as he so honestly acknowledges: “What remains are the memories and fantasies of yesteryear… Coping with failure was more personal…. I just never thought the Gandhi family that had brought me into politics would bowl me out too. Do I regret having quit the Foreign Service midstream to take the plunge into politics? Not for one second. I took my decision consciously, never looking back, knowing that it might end in disaster, not triumph…. No, I regret nothing”.

Unlike most who are ‘born’ into politics and do not switch from civil service to a completely different milieu, Mani, as we affectionately call him, refused after moving to politics, to change with the times, or accept that India had changed. He liked his time capsule and unlike Dr Who, of BBC fame [a British science fiction programme produced by the BBC], refused to emerge from it. The consequences were clear and revealing and frequently tragic.

An example was his position on the Babri Masjid, outlined in fascinating detail in Chapter 3, ‘Life as a National MP’. As he writes: “I went with a Parliamentary delegation to the site and declined the prasad distributed by the pujari of the makeshift temple of Ram Lalla virajman….I adamantly held that prasad cannot be distributed in a Muslim place of worship”.