Dreams and the Man

Ashok Mitra

(Selected from Haksar Memorial Volume II, September,2004, published by Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh, India.)

London, mid-thirties, the world in the throes of deep economic depression. The sun did not still though set on the British empire. Of the contingent of bright young Indians who were being drilled by Rajani Palme Dutt into the mystique of the inevitable impending global revolution engineered by the international brotherhood of the working class, K T Chandy flaunted the largest stock of the reddest of red ties; P N Haksar however had the most sumptuous rooms. Haksar's digs therefore became the natural meeting place of the would-be insurgents.

Europe soon drifted into Adolf Hitler's World War; the flock who nurtured the Federation of Indian Students' Societies in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Europe rushed back home. Some of the returnees straightaway entered the lair of the Communist Party, where PC Joshi took charge of them. Those who did not formally join the party dispersed all over. But, for most of them, pride in, and loyalty to, the cause survived the vicissitudes of diverse career choices. That apart, Dutt's young acolytes had another memory to share: their involvement, while in London, in the activities of the India League. Much, much later, even when it was seemingly the end of the road for him, they refused to disown Krishna Menon.

Some phases of personal history remain vague; whether, on his return as a barrister-at-law, Haksar headed directly for the Allahabad high court, or he had an intermediate stop at a quiet locale in what is now Madhya Pradesh, for the purpose, of setting up a communist party cell. Misgiving over the sudden transformation, in 1941, of the imperialist war into the people's war must have caused his change of route. Most Kashmiri Pandits are related to one another in some manner or other. So it was not difficult for Haksar to come closer to Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru of course was always the hero non pareil. His Autobiography, just published on the eve of Haksar's sailing for the Tilbury docks, had duly bowled the latter over. The traumatic devotion to Nehru - and to the Nehru household-was not obliterated by the interlude in England, nor, by association with the deeper-hued Marxists.

Following independence, Nehru picked him for the foreign service. For one full decade, as he drifted from one assignment to the next, Haksar watched the scene, domestic as well as international. It was for him a kind of waiting in the wings. As he waited, he learnt, he taught himself certain crucial lessons, such as when to be vocal and when to keep quiet, irrespective of one's inner emotions. He also made a resolution during these times not to sufferfools, despite the fact that such fools densely populated the senior rungs of the hierarchy he belonged to.

His upward mobility in the foreign service evoked a mixed response. The Minoo Masanis were ready with their cudgels; neither Haksar's India League past nor his loyalty to friends who stayed the stretch as communists was allowed to be forgotten. Nehru's declining years, particularly following the 1962 skirmish with China, could hardly have made Haksar's left-over tenure in the foreign service all that comfortable. He nonetheless survived. Unlike his colleagues and seniors, he had cultivated a wide range of interests in lieu of the passion for the tittle-tattle aka cocktail diplomacy. He was a connoisseur of paintings and a voracious reader of art history. He combined his love for Sanskrit and the classics in that language with the ability to read, at an enormously fast pace, European history and fiction at one end and contemporary books on international relations and military strategy at the other.

When posted in Britain, he, not surprisingly, became friendly with Nye Bevan. Apart from possessing in common the gift of a dry, wry humour, both were excellent cooks and spent long hours exchanging views on the culinary tricks of trade. His other strong point, some would say, the principal one, was the natural charm of a Kashmiri and the dignity with which he< displayed it. He was, besides, a wonderful raconteur of stories- even dirty stories, if the companywas right.

This man, rich in talent, an Allahabad Nehruvian to his fingertips, the song of socialism in his heart, of impeccable Kashmir Brahmin stock, was biding his time. Events ensued, as if to vindicate his conviction that in case the will was there, wishes could be turned into horses. Death cut short Lal Bahadur Shastri's tenure as prime minister. Circumstances, aided by those in the Congress who deeply disliked Morarji Desai, catapulted Indira Gandhi to power.

For the first few months, the prime ministerial slot was to her a nightmare. The devaluation of the rupee in 1966 midpoint and the nearfamine in Bihar put the Congress high command in a sneering mood. The general elections the following yearwere a very near thing. Indira Gandhi gritted her teeth and decided. She needed help; much more than formal help, she needed someone she could rely upon, one hundred per cent. Parameswar Narain Haksar, Jawaharlal Nehru acolyte, friend of Feroze Gandhi, ex-Mayo Hostel, fitted the bill. He was summoned from London and installed as secretary to the prime minister.

Haksar's kingdom was gifted on his lap. In a couple of years, the office of the prime minister underwent a sea-change. Haksar the ideologue and Haksar the tactician planned and plotted to convert his dreams into reality; Indira Gandhi went along. A sortie of well aimed midnight letter missiles took care of the Congress old guard, but the problems remained. The organization of the Congress party was by now shot full of holes; it was scarcely the appropriate agency to galvanize the masses into a social convulsion which would ensure the country either a decent rate of economic growth or a balanced structure of income and assets distribution, balanced in both inter-class and inter-regional terms. Nor could one lean on the rusty mechanism of the government apparatus. Given too much latitude, ministers and their civil servants, sans ideology and social commitment, were bound to pull in different directions. Haksar's mind was made up: to concentrate power and decision-making in the prime minister's office, and to install loyal individuals in key slots in the individual ministries and departments who would ditto the prime ministerial bidding to the last detail.

Haksar's early years in the company of Communist Party cadres helped him to grasp the ground rules of how to go about things, silently and efficiently, so that all resistance could be weakened and the prime minister's office emerged supreme. Indira Gandhi's stray thoughts on socialism proved a masterstroke. Bank nationalization and the suspension of the princes' privy purses swung the pendulum of mass support. The cycle of good monsoons and the effects of the high yielding varieties of seeds did not harm either.

Some gamesmanship was involved, a few corners were cut, a couple of scruples were brushed aside, but ultimately nothing succeeds like success. The garibi hatao election ushered in piping victory. Haksar saw to it that his friends from younger days, radicals of many hues, contested the polls and won: many from amongst this crowd were appointed ministers. They knew only too well who was the most powerful man in the country at that particular moment.

One friend, who had made pots and pots of money in the legal profession, chose to ride in his Bentley forthe swearing-in as minister, he received an open tongue-lashing from Haksar and opted for a prim Ambassador next day onwards. Quite a few junior ministers would actually rise in their seats when PNH entered a room. It is immaterial whether Haksar approved or was disdainful of such conduct. The feudal burden cannot be easily heaved off. The prime minister's office was in any case recognized by everybody as the most crucial entity in the new system. But instead of being the deus ex machina for social revolution, it soon turned, very nearly, into a version of guided democracy.

By now, Indira Gandhi was ready to claim what she thought was her legitimate inheritance. A backroom boy, even one of Haksar's stature, was in her reckoning still a backroom boy. Haksar created the edifice, but it was for Indira Gandhi to avail of it in the manner she wanted to, not in the way Haksar wanted. The relationship between the two could not have been altogether smooth. He knew too well her strengths and her weaknesses to make her position as prime minister unassailable. Haksar of course played a major role. Even so, it was she who was the prime minister. That apart, she was Motilal Nehru's granddaughter and Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter. Those in inferior positions should know the line they are supposed not to transgress.

Haksar was correct to a fault. One or two things still rankled. Haksar, for instance, tried to fob off Sanjay Gandhi's demand to pocket the Maruti project by offering him Scooters India instead. Indira Gandhi was not amused.

The dream of socialism via the post office of the prime minister's office was soon rendered defunct. Docile individuals were put to work by Indira Gandhi to engage in more mundane missions such as squeezing money for royal coffers from both the private sector and public undertakings. That global phenomenon, corruption, was internalized.

There was one remaining chapter of glory. Indira Gandhi captured the headlines and received showers of accolades for the feat from Atal Behari Vajpayee and others. It was however Haksar who was, from beginning to end, the planner and architect of the Bangladesh campaign. Setting up the 'independent' regime of Mujibur Rahman's followers in exile, chalking out the logistics of the diplomatic battle against Pakistan, signing the defence treaty with the Soviet Union thereby facilitating the confrontation of the Pakistani troops in the river terrains of what-was-to-become Bangladesh: each manoeuvre bore the stamp of Haksar's intellectual prowess and his deftness that enabled hitherto unimaginable phenomena to be turned into commonplace ones.

The last significant breakthrough he ought to be credited with - the Shimla agreement - on which our bureaucrats and politicians now routinely fall back whenever confronted by awkward questions on Kashmir-is a remarkable piece of strategic benevolence; Pakistan has peen trying to break free of that prison of an agreement ever since.

It was past high noon though; Indira Gandhi, the empress of India, had no further need of P N Haksar in tow. Haksar was soon eased out of his office and put to graze in the Planning Commission. The Emergency caught up with him there. Sanjay Gandhi was not given to either forgetting or forgiving. In the frenzy of the Emergency, Haksar's octogenarian uncle, who owned a garments and handicrafts outlet in Connaught Place, was picked up, handcuffed and led by the rope tied to his waist to the police lock-up, for allegedly committing the offence of not displaying a proper price list of the wares he was selling. It was a harrowing tale of mean-minded vindictiveness. After the Emergency was over, Haksar's wife wrote a full-blown account of what had happened.

Haksar himself kept quiet. Many had at that time raised the query why, the day his uncle was dragged away to prison, he did not resign his slot as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. It would be silly to suggest that he was frozen by fear. The real reason must be much more deep-seated. Despite snubs and insults, the sense of filial loyalty to Nehru's family failed to come to a surcease. To him, P N Haksar, the problem was essentially private and personal. But to the nation, his silence became the subject of far-fetched, and often wild, interpretation.

He was still around for nearly another quarter of a century, perhaps mulling over in the mind his positive as well as negative contributions to nation-building, the sad naivete of his superstructural dream not excluding. Feudalism, he must have concluded, could never be a vehicle for social transformation. Haksar must have burned up within himself with retrospective contrition.

But all that hardly detracts from the grandeur of his vision. And if it is sin to forget his other dimensions. A person of infinite charm and unsurpassable dignity, he stood by his friends, even when they chose to desert him. His philosophical poise allowed him to absorb the shock of such betrayals-and of what Feroze Gandhi's progeny did to him.

To this writer, more than a dozen years or more Haksar's junior, the fondest recollection is that of the warmth of his affection. This affection had an inclusiveness which refused to recognize barriers of grammar and convention. A cosy family gathering, PN playfully arguing a point with a combative Nandita and an equally obdurate Miku, with Urmila Haksar looking on; a stray visitor would drop in, and would be immediately drawn in into the proceedings; the home and the world would lose their separate identities.

That was P N Haksar's specific charm. A final remembrance is of a repartee. The last few months of his life, his strength was fast ebbing, he himself knew what was happening and would puff away at one cigarette after another. One felt like remonstrating with him, and one did. Pat came the response: 'Ashok, I thought you were my friend, not my doctor.'

Add up such memories, and you have P N Haksar.