Tales of a secular fundamentalist

A Maverick in Politics: 1991-2024, the last volume of Mani Shankar Aiyar's autobiographical trilogy, presents a candid account of the stages of his political life

- Vinod C Khanna

It is worth speculating about the trajectory of Mani Shankar Aiyar's political career had Rajiv Gandhi not died so prematurely and had he himself not been such a "maverick." Aiyar is a person with independent, often unusual, thoughts, which he has the courage to articulate, no matter what the consequences.

In this last volume of his autobiographical trilogy, the author gives us a candid account of the various stages of his political life. Some of the events described are no longer of much public interest and the reader's attention may flag while negotiating the exhaustive narration. Nevertheless, many of Aiyar's experiences, as an ordinary MP and as a minister, are worthy of documentation.

As a "Constituency MP", he worked zealously to promote the well-being of the people but not always with matching electoral success. He was more than compensated for this by a compliment from Sukh Ram, one of India's most electorally successful politicians: "Winning an election is easy but gaining the affection of the people is difficult. You have won their affection."

As a "National MP", while he was able to do useful work on some issues, his desperate efforts as a deeply committed secularist to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid failed. To his amazement, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao sought to correct his definition of secularism by declaring, "You don't understand that this is a Hindu country."

When the historic mosque came down with the PM missing in action, Aiyar made this scathing, though not necessarily fair, remark: "Narasimha Rao has proved that death is not a necessary precondition for rigor mortis to set in."