Kalam book: More truth needs to be uncovered

NDA convenor and JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav is angry with former president APJ Abdul Kalam’s selected revelations in his memoir Turning Points published by Harper Collins.

Yadav is angry that Kalam has waited for five years to speak. It is not clear whether the JD(U) leader is unhappy with the timing of Kalam’s revelations, or he thinks what the former president is saying is not the whole truth. Then, instead of getting angry, he should give his own version of it if he knows anything of these matters. The other thing could be that he feels these are embarrassing revelations for the BJP and the NDA, and that it will boomerang on his coalition. Yadav, then, is feeling very uncomfortable. 

Kalam made two controversial disclosures. First, that many political leaders had met him and asked him not to invite Congress president Sonia Gandhi to form the government in 2004. He also said there were many e-mails as well, and that he passed them all on to the relevant official channels.

This is a limited disclosure. What everyone would like to know are the names of these leaders who met him and made this strange, undemocratic request, and who were not courageous enough to say in public what they told in private to the then president. What we knew then were the hysterical gestures of the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharati, who threatened to shave off their hair if Sonia Gandhi was made the prime minister. One senior BJP leader then said the party would not have come in the way of Gandhi, and another said it would have been better for the BJP had she become the prime minister because the UPA government would have been more vulnerable.

In 2004, a section of the media did spread the conspiracy theory that it was Kalam who invoked some silly legal provision that required some strange bilateral treaty between India and Italy that would have included a reciprocal condition that an India-born Italian could be a prime minister in Rome if an Italy-born Indian were to become prime minister in New Delhi. This was stupidity of the strangest kind but the air in Delhi in the summer of 2004 was thick with rumours, and a BJP-friendly section of the media carried this rumour as news.

Kalam’s revelation appears to have called the rabid right-wingers’ bluff. However, the story remains incomplete. The names of the leaders who raised objections are not out. Perhaps those leaders had their own reasons for raising objections. It would then have been better if they had made those statements in public, or released a copy of their letters to the president. If responsible political leaders had raised those objections, then Kalam should reveal their names or those who raised these issues should own them up.

Eight years after the Congress president has stepped aside — not for saintly but for political reasons — it might seem a dead question whether Kalam stopped her in the tracks, or she did so on her own and surprised him as Kalam says, has no political value. But Yadav’s anger shows that the political value of the question is not yet dead. But this is a question that historians would like to know. Perhaps, Kalam should write down the names and place a moratorium of 20 years for them to be revealed.

Compared to the Gandhi issue, what Kalam has to say about his trip to Gujarat in 2002 after the riots is comparatively less intriguing. Atal Bihari Vajpayee must have been worrying about the possible public embarrassment that the president’s visit may raise. Of course, Vajpayee emerges as less than statesmanlike and more a BJP partisan. Perhaps, Yadav is worried about the impact this would have on the image of the NDA government because it wants to fight the 2014 election on the liberal and statesmanlike halo of Vajpayee. What Kalam has to say about the Gujarat situation is not flattering. Without condemning chief minister Narendra Modi, he exposed the plight of the riot victims. And he has also silenced those secularist extremists who accused him of being a Hindutva Muslim.

The Congress and the BJP are maintaining a discreet silence on Kalam’s revelations. The Congress and Sonia Gandhi have moved much beyond the 2004 moment, and the BJP perhaps does not want to be dragged back into a controversy which it may want to leave far behind.

There should be no doubt that Kalam’s statements will have to be tested by historians with other collaborative evidence. Kalam might be telling the truth as much as knows it. But there are other aspects he might not know. The Congress party’s inner deliberations, as well as the BJP’s, need to be known. It is only the partisan media that is exposed by Kalam. But the whole truth remains to be uncovered. 

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