Mainstream Weekly

Indira Gandhi's Place In History

K. Natwar Singh — 2012-11-21T18:57:01Z

November 19 this year marks Indira Gandhi's ninetyfifth birth anniversary. On this occasion we are reproducing the piece the former External Affairs Minister wrote in Mainstream (October 31, 2009). Natwar Singh worked under the late PM for several years.
From May 1966 to April 1971 I was working in the Prime Minister's Secretariat (it was renamed Prime Minister's Office by Morarji Desai). I was the first foreign service official to serve in the Prime Minister's Secretariat.
At that time (…)

- 2012

Grace Under Pressure

K. Natwar Singh — 2011-11-12T19:39:20Z

Jawaharlal Nehru. What a man!
This May, we observed his twentyfifth death anniversary. Six months later, India and the world celebrate his centenary. Without Jawa-harlal Nehru the history of the twentieth century would be incomplete. Nehru, the statesman and leader, left his imprint on India and the world. He changed the course of history.
Jawaharlal Nehru was much else. He was a great author. He enriched the Republic of Letters. Through his writings he reached out to history. But even (…)

- 2011

Remembering Gopi

K. Natwar Singh — 2009-11-28T01:28:24Z

TRIBUTE
G.K. Arora, who was a Special Secretary in the PMO during Rajiv Gandhi's stewardship of the country in the eighties, passed away in New Delhi on November 5. A brilliant product of the Allahabad University, he was the trusted lieutenant of D.P. Dhar, the Indian ambassador in Moscow, during the Brezhnev period of the USSR in the seventies. He has been branded as a “pro-Moscow man with a Marxist crap” by those who knew him from a distance, but those who saw him from close quarters and (…)

- November 2009

Nehru as PM and Foreign Minister

K. Natwar Singh — 2009-11-24T14:00:50Z

Fortyfive years after Jawaharlal Nehru's death, has history done him justice? Regrettably not. In surveys that rank India's best Prime Minister, he is placed below his daughter, and on some occasions he figures third. This is preposterous. Only three worthwhile books on him have appeared after his death: Hiren Mukherjee's The Gentle Colossus, S. Gopal's three-volume biography and M.J. Akbar's Nehru: The Making of India.
Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundations of a democratic, secular, (…)

- November 2009

Indira Gandhi's Place In History

K. Natwar Singh — 2009-11-01T12:32:00Z

October 31 marks the twentyfifth anniversary of Indira Gandhi's martyrdom. On this occasion we are carrying the following piece by the former External Affairs Minister who had worked under her for several years and seen her from close quarters. We are also reproducing (on p. 27) N.C.'s article on her after her demise.
From May 1966 to April 1971 I was working in the Prime Minister's Secretariat (it was renamed Prime Minister's Office by Morarji Desai). I was the first foreign service (…)

- October 2009

Tagore and Victoria Ocampo

K. Natwar Singh — 2009-10-17T07:28:47Z

Earlier in the week The Asian Age carried a news item about a film being made on the Rabindranath Tagore-Victoria Ocampo friendship. I doubt if the name Ocampo is known to many in India today. Tagore too is a distant memory.
The film, Thinking of Him, is to be a joint Indian-Argentinian venture about the ‘Tagore-Ocampo Love Story'. It is to be directed by the Argentine film director, Pablo Cesar, who will be in India next week. He is coming with the Argentinian President, Cristina (…)

- October 2009

At Random

K. Natwar Singh — 2009-09-26T14:31:29Z

The last two weeks have provided both mirth and melancholy. First melancholy. The aged and respected Minister of External Affairs, S.M. Krishna, and his junior colleague are unceremoniously asked to vacate their five-star abodes. That they were inflicting no burden on the taxpayer is besides the point. In our hypocritical political set-up ostentatious austerity has to be seen, not practised.
How were this Ministers dealt with? The Finance Minister, a man of wisdom, vast experience (…)

- September 2009

At Random

K. Natwar Singh — 2009-09-12T15:41:52Z

It never rains but pours. There is a severe drought in large parts of the country, but there is no political drought. The Bharatiya Janata Party is hell-bent on committing political hara-kiri. Such disarray has never been witnessed in our country. An erstwhile colleague of L.K. Advani has woken up after his expulsion from the BJP. What was he doing all these years? The BJP made him the Foreign Minister, Defence Minister and Finance Minister. But strange things happen in politics. Yesterday's (…)

- September 2009