One of the many regrets of my professional life is not to have written a paper on the Babri Masjid’s demolition for P.V. Narasimha Rao.

A lesser regret is not to have composed a critique of his book India’s Economic Policy: The Gandhian Blueprint Charan Singh wanted. He was about to inscribe “Presented to Shri S.K. Datta-Ray in the hope that he is not a Communist” because, as he said, he never knew with his “Bangla bhais… They wear London suits and speak London English but turn out to be Communists!” when a close aide stopped him. I was given the aide’s name and address and told to post — no email in those dark ages — my critique to him, so that the home minister (as he still was) could read it.
I made both promises and didn’t keep either. I haven’t even read Charan Singh’s book which gathers dust on a shelf, dreary in its grey jacket and heavy with forbidding tables. I didn’t meet him again and not having kept the promise doesn’t weigh too heavily on my conscience. But Narasimha Rao was a different matter. Despite my liking for the man, I soon realised he spoke of favourites in the government as if they were good because they were south Indian. He complained to others when any article I wrote contradicted the briefing he had given me. But he is much in my thoughts now — as he should be in everyone else’s — in this 20th anniversary year of the political and economic revolution that changed India for ever. If there is hardly any public acknowledgement of that achievement, though Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew compared it with the transformation that Deng Xiaoping brought about in China, it’s largely explained by what he said at our last conversation in the bleak loneliness of his Motilal Nehru Road bungalow.
“When does it start?” he asked when I gave him a copy of my book, Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium. It was quid pro quo for his autobiographical novel, The Insider. In it, I noticed he had written the date as 29/1/2k, not 2000. I thought it was an old man’s affectation of modernity. He was saying that he might look like a stick-in-the-mud in his dhoti after the brash, young, safari-suited brigade of the last Congress regime, but he was familiar with computers, master of several European languages and had learnt to play the piano late in life to exercise his arthritic fingers. Narasimha Rao wanted to know when my tale of the upturn in Indo-US relations began. I said that while it was difficult to set a date since some Indians were making obsequious approaches to the US even in 1947, I thought the meeting with Ronald Reagan at Cancun that Indira Gandhi contrived in 1980 marked a watershed. “So the world didn’t start with Atal Behari Vajpayee!” he said grimly, not as a question.
On another occasion, Narasimha Rao reminded me he was the only Congress Prime Minister “not of the family” to complete a full term in office. “And I shall never be forgiven for that.” It was said deadpan with no trace of bitterness in voice or expression, yet he wouldn’t have been human if the bitterness had not welled up within. I didn’t see him again.
I don’t for a moment think his reforms were rooted in philosophical fervour for what Reagan called “the magic of the marketplace”. Nor was he devotedly pro-Western like Swatantra Party magnates though his tenure marked closer ties with Israel, Taiwan and apartheid South Africa as well as military engagements with the Americans. When I asked him in 1991 about his programme, Narasimha Rao replied testily he had already said he would follow the Nehru line. But some of his initiatives didn’t seem very Nehruvian, I ventured. “Manu the law-giver gave the law. It was up to each Brahmin to interpret it!” he retorted.
This Brahmin’s interpretation was determined by circumstances. Foreign exchange reserves were down to $1.1 billion when he took over, while the foreign debt had soared to $70 billion. India’s short-term obligations stood at $4 billion. Gold had been mortgaged in London and Tokyo, and our diplomats were roaming the world trying to borrow money, close down diplomatic missions and sell off embassy properties. If a socialist way had been open then, Narasimha Rao would probably have taken it. One recalls his ambivalent response when hardliners tried to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. That came of pushing too hard for change, Narasimha Rao warned.
He was cautious by nature. He was also a pragmatist. Pragmatism implies flexibility. When I.G. Patel declined his invitation to become finance minister, he persuaded Manmohan Singh, who was equally acceptable to the US and the IMF, to do so. But it’s no secret that he wouldn’t let Dr Singh go as far or as fast as he wanted. Echoes of the tussle between conservative and reformist even reached Lee in Singapore who angrily accused Narasimha Rao of fobbing off Indians with potato chips when they wanted computer chips. Yesterday’s hero was today’s villain in Lee’s pantheon. But the old Brahmin felt he had the measure of Indian sentiment. The 1996 election proved him wrong.
I liked his wry humour. “Who would want to buy this country?” he retorted when Dr Singh wailed he was being accused of selling India. I admired the deft firmness with which he handled Pakistan’s obstreperous high commissioner in Singapore. Unlike most other Prime Ministers, he believed in collecting and collating opinions and forming his own from a distillation. That’s why he wanted the Babri Masjid paper. “I have asked other friends too,” he said. “Don’t spare any criticism. Be as harsh as you like…” But I was living in faraway Honolulu when it happened; I had no office facilities to look up old records; and I was lazy.
I am sorry I failed him. The architect of Indian modernity deserved better.

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray is a senior journalist, columnist and author