What This Blog is About

Since May 2009, in five years, I wrote 93 blog posts in five indifferently and sporadically fed blogs.

Under Blue African Skies perhaps gave me the greatest satisfaction, written as it was from Lesotho. It was a lean blog and had a leaner readership.

Blurs and Bright Spots began as a this-and-that blog but soon acquired an identity - a collection of book reviews.

The Summing Up was meant to sum up my experiences of life. It ran aground, not unlike many other projects I have undertaken.

A Hitch Hiker's Guide to Inner Self was meant to trace my inner journey.

Balis' Blog was about our family.'I doubt if many in the family read it!

I decided to merge all those posts into this blog - for record.

Self-Deception: India’s China Policies – Origins, Premises, Lessons by Arun Shourie

Focus on India’s relations with China never recedes to a point where the contents of a book on it become anything less than riveting. Add to it meticulous research and scholarship of an author like Arun Shourie and you have an absorbing read on your hands. Self-Deception: India’s China Policies – Origins, Premises, Lessons turns its spotlight largely on the history of our diplomatic handling of China, especially by the first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. It does traverse the more contemporary ground too, albeit briefly.

The central theme of the argument has been this: our handling of relations with China has been extremely inept and self-deluding. We have lived – and continue to do so – in a bubble of denial, often ignoring signs of clear and present danger. In the 50s, we somehow convinced ourselves that there was no pending border issue with China, that somehow our supplicant acceptance of China’s annexation and absorption of Tibet had bought us a permanent seat on the table of friendship, that the Chinese leadership was dependent on our sagacity for learning the nuances of diplomacy and that every Chinese aggressive or hostile move needed to be explained away by us lest the country became anxious! It appeared that we had forgotten that self-generated ‘hope’ should hardly be the sole pillar of foreign policy.

The book solidly relies on documentation. Letters from Prime Minister Nehru to the Chief Ministers, minutes of meeting between Nehru and Chou En Lai and speeches in the parliament have been quoted extensively. There is little to redeem us in those documents.

Many years ago I had read Neville Maxwell’s India’s China War. The conclusions that Maxwell had reached regarding our diplomatic handling of the border dispute were exactly the same. This book provided me with a gloomy confirmation.

Have things changed since? I wish there were reassuring signs but neither the book nor media reports provide us with any. Only recently we described a blatant Chinese intrusion thus: “one little spot is acne, which cannot force you to say that this is not a beautiful face... that acne can be addressed by simply applying an ointment.”

When Arun Shourie was the editor of the Indian Express, he was known for outstanding investigative journalism. Indeed, he was the pioneer in that form of print-media, one who unerringly dug up facts and presented his reports without fear. Later, even as a Union Minister he was known for his competence and probity. All this is reflected in his writing.

The book is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the trajectory of relations between China and India – and the course correction that ought to be applied.

The Accidental Prime Minister: the Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru

At the very end of his book, Sanjaya Baru, who worked at close quarters with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his Media Adviser during UPA 1 from 2004 to 2009, draws analogies from the Mahabharata to summarise Dr. Manmohan Singh’s success as a leader. He rubbishes the analogy that Manmohan Singh had been like Shikhandi – the half man half woman character who shielded Arjuna during battle with Bheeshma; it was common knowledge that the latter would not strike against a woman and could it be that Manmohan too shielded his party from attacks with stoic silence? This characterisation was initially attributed to BJP’s Yashwant Sinha. Baru disagrees. He also wonders if Manmohan Singh could be likened to Dhritrashtra, the blind king who unhappily presided over his strife-torn kingdom, ignoring the wrongs. Going further on this mythological journey, Baru favours a comparison of his boss with Bheeshma himself; for all his brilliance, Bheeshma had been mocked by Dropadi for taking refuge of finer points of religion when he could not defend her while she was disrobed in public. Was Dr. Manmohan Singh the Bheeshma who presided over scams while maintaining the highest standards of personal probity due to a misplaced sense of loyalty?

For five years, Sanjaya Baru was privy to a slice of history as it was made. His book reveals what he saw though, as many have pointed out, the overall picture of Prime minister Manmohan Singh that emerges is not radically different from the popular perception of him as an honest and dedicated man, self effacing, humble and decent, whose failure lay in lack of display of leadership qualities and who allowed the Party (‘the Family’) dictate the narrative. To Baru, the subservience of this scholar was baffling and he concludes that it was a stratagem for his own political survival. This may be an unkind deduction but Baru makes it with a hint of exasperation and sadness.

But contrary to the popular uproar in the media, the book is not entirely unkind to Dr. Manmohan Singh. On the contrary, in most part, it unreservedly extols the Prime Minister and credits him both the victory of UPA 1 in 2009 and the Indo-US Nuclear deal. Baru is mostly affectionate in his tone towards Manmohan Singh and severely critical of those who were malevolent in their intent towards the Prime Minister. Among the many who do not come out well from these pages are Karat of CPM, Mani Shankar Iyer, Prithviraj Chavan, Natwar Singh and, of course, the Family.

The book makes an attempt to redress the balance of history in Manmohan Singh’s favour. But that alone is not clearly the purpose of the book because it also shines light on Manmohan Singh’s warts and moles. To a lay reader, it appears to be a balanced account, though this is hardly a characterisation that anyone from Congress would agree with. Many in the ruling party have already painted Baru as a back-stabber, someone who chose the period of General Elections when the Congress party is battling for survival, to release this book. I can’t agree – isn’t that how books are timed for release?

The Accidental Prime Minister – a rather accurate title – is an easy read. It is not a story with dramatic twists and a red-hot plot. All the same, it is a gripping account and provides part of the explanation why the Congress is staring down the barrel today.

Like ·  · Share