 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have Jairam Ramesh, former minister, and now turned historian, biographer, if you will. Jairam, we have this book which you have brought out recently. And I must say it's one of the most reasonable, readable biographies I have read. And it really kept me awake for two nights, for which you are to blame. Thank you. You know, of course, these are two figures I know very well, one because I was Mrs. Gandhi's guest for one year during emergency. And Haksasab, as we all called him, we didn't call him P&H. We called him Haksasab because he was the president of the Delhi Science Forum, for which, you know, I think we spent about 10 years. Yeah, absolutely. Many papers on the Delhi Science Forum in his archives. OK. So Jairam, what brought you to write this book? Why did you think it was important for us to know about this aspect of this? Well, I've long been fascinated by Mr. Haksasab. I've never met him. I've never known him. But I've long been fascinated by him and the role that he played in all the biographies of Indira Gandhi. He stands out, I mean, if you read Indira Malhotra, if you read Dom Moray's. Most of all, if you read Catherine Frank, you know, the biographies of Indira Gandhi, he stands out as a crucial figure for that period of 67 to 73. So that's always been on my mind, you know. Who was Mr. Haksa and what did he do? And I just finished writing an environmental biography of Indira Gandhi that came out last year. And during my research on Indira Gandhi, I dug and dug and excavated a lot of material on Haksa. And then, of course, I was aware, through my friend Ram Guha, that there was this extraordinary archive which Mr. Haksa left behind in Nehru Memorial. It was a book waiting to be written. I think Mr. Haksa didn't want to write it himself. He didn't write any memoir, unlike his colleagues. But he left behind these papers for some, you know, out-of-work politician to come and write a biography, so to speak. So this has been on my mind for quite some time. And I won't have, by the way, I won't have written this book if there was no archive. That's the important part of this biography. Because it's a series of vignettes that you have reproduced from his archives. Yes, absolutely. But strung together in a way that it tells a story. I've tried to make, my contribution has to put a coherent narrative from his birth till his death. But it isn't Mr. Haksa speaking. It's, you know, whether Haksa speaking in college, whether he was in London, whether he was in the diplomatic service, whether he was with Indira Gandhi or post-Indira Gandhi in retirement. So, and it's a full-length biography, by the way. There's some material which is not in his archives. For example, he presents a paper at a world student assembly in August 1939 in Paris, two weeks before World War II begins. Now, this was during his period when he was a communist. He was an unabashed communist. He remained an unrepentant Marxist all his life. And he was then a part of the All-India Student Federation, AISF. That was, of course, at that time, it was not CPI linked. But he was linked to the communist in Great Britain. Yes, yes. It comes great. This is running for absolutely. And he was the secretary of the district Congress, district CPI in Nagpur, 42, 43. So I was able to discover, in the archives in Amsterdam, the International Institute of Social History, a copy of the paper that he presented. And that assembly was actually funded by Comintern, which is Communist International of the USSR. So a lot of these things I was able to discover, which are not there in his archives, his archives, by the way, cover the period 47 onwards. They're very good for 67 onwards. But there's some material from 47 as well. But the pre-47 material I found in the British archives. And some of the material during his foreign service days I found in the National Archives. So this is basically an archival biography. I mean, I didn't. Which is rather surprising. I didn't speak to his friends or, you know. Surprising for a political person to do that you really acted like a professional historian. No, you see, Praveen, the point is I believe that biographies should be scholarship based. And not hagiography based. And not true collections of the people. Yeah, I've been critical of Mr. Huxer. I've been critical of Vidhra Gandhi. I mean, the benefit of hindsight. But I don't want to be judgmental. And the important thing is to get the primary. We don't have a good tradition. You know, my good friend Nainjoth Lahiri, a very good historian, one of the greatest historians of ancient India now. She tells me that we don't have a tradition of biography writing in this country. It's all hagiography, basically. Coming back to this, I think one of the most important issues that you've dealt with, though it's dealt in the passing, really. Because I think much more material is waiting outside Huxer archives. It's a Bangladesh issue, Bangladesh war, as it were. You have put the larger picture, that how Huxer, Indira Gandhi, of course, Indira Gandhi was the prime mover in that, that they wanted not just a military intervention, and they looked at it in the political sense. And this was a geo-strategies, not about military interventions. It's really about the larger picture. And that's why India was so much so successful in the way it handled Bangladesh's issue. How do you look at this today? Well, you see, I plead guilty to the fact that this is not a comprehensive history of 1971. Because Gary Bass, and more importantly, Srinath Raghavan, Srinath Raghavan really has written a comprehensive history of 1971 based on Indian archives, British archives, US archives, Bangladesh archives, and the Soviet archives. So I didn't want to repeat that. This is 1971 through the highs of Huxer. This is 1971. What is Huxer doing in 71? You know, with Raw, with the Soviets, with the Bangladesh Tajudi Namad and his colleagues, Vijaya Prakash Narayan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who were arguing for strong military, early military intervention, how he was dealing with Manak Shah and the army, and how they were dealing, how he and Indira Gandhi dealt with Nixon, most importantly, his conversations with Kissinger. So this is all Huxer-centric 1971. So to that extent, you're right. It's not a comprehensive history of 1971. But there were many things of 1971 that were not known. I mean, for example, what I enjoyed writing in 1971 was his encounter with Kissinger. I mean, the transcripts are there in his archives. You know, and they make fascinating reading. What is also not known is how the Indo-Soviet Treaty, the twists and turns which the Soviet Treaty was actually conceived of in 1969 by Deepithaar and Marshall Grechko. But it was finally signed only in 1971. And that's after Kissinger's flight from Ravel Pindi to Beijing, the geopolitics changed. What has never been bought out, which I claim some, I can claim immodestly, that Mr. Huxer actually retired from government on the 4th of September 1971 at the height of the crisis. He just retired because he was 58 years old. And he went on leave preparatory to retire. And he took three months leave. But by the 24th or 25th of October, 1971, Mrs. Gandhi gets him back. And she says, you must come with me to the Western capital, the six Western capitals, including Washington, her famous visit with Nixon. So he comes back. He's technically on leave when Mr. Gandhi is meeting Nixon on the 4th of November 1971 in the White House. There was Kissinger from the American side. And there was Huxer from the Indian side. Huxer is secretary to Mr. Gandhi on leave. He's actually got leave preparatory to retirement. And on the 4th of December 1971, after Pakistan has attacked India the previous night, he gets reappointed as principal secretary to the prime minister. So there are many stories of 1971 that have really, he was determined to leave in 1971. So it was not as Manishankar claims in the view that it was basically a cloak and dagger act. No, no, from 1971, from January 1971, he is telling Indira Gandhi he wants to leave. In May 1971, he writes a letter to D.P. Dhar, saying that, for the next phase of Indira Gandhi, I am not the man. This is the phrase he uses. For the next phase of Indira Gandhi, I am not the man. But then I think what happens is people like D.P. Dhar, Aruna Asafalli, Nikhil Chakramarthi, Mahan Kumar Amargalam, the left lobby, in a good sense. I'm not using the word lobby in a derogatory sense. The left network prevailed upon him, I think, to stay back. Other part of it which doesn't come through here, but you might have got some archive. You must have seen some archival material in it. I believe that the prime minister secretary of the team which was monitoring continuously the Seventh Fleet. And this is what Arundhati... Yeah, I mean, I have, you know, he calls the American Charger d'affaires. And, you know, on the 15th of December, 1971, there's a, and the record of the meeting I was able to get from the archives of the State Department. Yeah, there are some conversations on that. But yeah, I mean, the internal military details I did not get into, because, you know, Srinath has done it, Garibas also have done it. I didn't get into that. But, you know, the exchanges that he and Marek Shah had, the humorous exchanges that they had in 1971. And then after 1971, how Marek Shah, you know, and Huxer, Marek Shah was trying to become Field Marshal, you know, that whole episode, you know, all that comes out here. The other part of the story is, of course, the emergency, as you also have dealt with the passing, the emergency, but more about Huxer and what happens to Huxer. Yeah, this, as I said, again, this is not about the emergency. It's about what happens to Huxer during the emergency. So, it's from a Huxer-centric point of view. And I have actually castigated Mr. Huxer. You know, I've actually said that he may have suborned himself, you know, that he may have committed perjury when he went to the Allahabad High Court in February of 1975 and gave testimony on the Yashpal Kapoor affair. In fact, people don't realize that there were six charges against Mrs. Gandhi under the, you know, the representation of People's Act for the 1971 victory, Raj Narayan. There were six charges. Justice Sinha exonerated Indira Gandhi on four out of those six charges. And she was held guilty on two charges. The first charge was that the state government had put up a rostrum and dais for her public meeting. Another ridiculous, a ludicrous charge, if you ask me. And the second one was that Yashpal Kapoor, who was a OSD, had drawn a salary for two weeks when he was a government servant. And on these two charges, you know, she was held guilty. Now, Mr. Huxer, as the archival evidence suggests, accepted the resignation. The resignation was given on the 13th of January, 1971. But he accepted it orally. And for the next 14 days, you know, Mr. Yashpal Kapoor function, but he didn't get a salary. But the written evidence was that the resignation was effective on a written record on the 27th of January, 1971. So, you know, I reproduced what happened in the Allahabad High Court, which I was able to get courtesy Prashant Bhushan, whose father was appearing for Raj Narayan. And he had kept meticulous records. But Mr. Huxer, I think, was less than less. I think he was trying to defend in Raghandi, frankly. You know, he didn't want her to get into serious trouble. But as it turned out, she did get into serious trouble on the Yashpal Kapoor affair. And that became one of the two charges. During the emergency, by the way, you know, he was actually driving from somewhere in Himachal to Chandigarh. The day the emergency was declared the morning of the 26th, he was not there in the cabinet meeting. You know, he may well have spoken out. But would he have resigned on the emergency? I doubt it. I mean, I raise that question. I think his loyalty, public loyalty was such that he would not undermine her resignation. He differentiated the personal, you know, that's why even though the Pandit brothers were raided in the middle of July, he continues. And then he comes and tells his wife, you know, I sat through the cabinet meeting and looking at Indira in her face, and she avoided my game. So the issue for him was the role of a public servant as distinct from what his personal views and emotions would have been. When he played what I was surprised to discover, he plays a very important role in the announcement of the 20-point program. In fact, he gave the 10 points from that. The 10 points of the. But to be fair again to Mr. Huxer, that was not after the emergency. I had given that note before. No, he's given it more before than Mr. Gandhi. But she used it. She used it. But you are also said that the basic rupture started in Sanjay Gandhi to hide from England. Actually, 65. Because when he was local guardian to Rajiv in Sanjay Gandhi, he was able to build a rapport with Rajiv Gandhi. And that rapport extended to 87. I remember one thing that Mr. Huxer did in 87 when he was virtually half-blind. He was sent by Rajiv Gandhi as a special envoy to begin the process of reconciliation with China, and which culminated in the historic visit of Mr. Gandhi to Beijing in December 88. So he and Rajiv Gandhi had, I think, personal fondness for each other. But he never struck a rapport with Sanjay. And that, I think, tension was evident. And in 1968, when Sanjay Gandhi's dreams of becoming the Henry Ford of India get unveiled, I think Mr. Huxer hits the ceiling and tells Mrs. Gandhi, for which I've actually found it in evidence that India does not need passenger cars. That's a political position at one level. But I think the bigger issue for both Sanjay Gandhi, Mr. Huxer, and the prime minister was that it's going to compromise the prime minister. No, no, no. I'm coming to that. There were two reasons. I'm coming to that. You preempted what I was going to say. The first reason was that India does not require passenger cars. It requires a efficient public transport system. If at all, we need to produce more scooters, and that's how Scooters India was established. So that's the one ideological objection he had. But the second objection is that the prime minister's son should not be sitting in the prime minister's house, living in the prime minister's house, and having these contacts with all these less than desirable characters to build the car. If it's a business proposition, it should be done independently. So that, I think, the first one could have been handled. I think the second one was something that upset the equilibrium. And from 1968, this starts, it boils over in 1970, in September of 1970, when Sanjay Gandhi is given the letter of intent, the first step in the production. At those time, you had a letter of intent, and you had a license, and then you had the actual production. He gets the letter of intent in September of 1970. And the file does not go through Mr. Huxer. That's what I have shown. It was directly, Dinesh Singh was the minister of industry at that time. It goes to Mrs. Gandhi. So from 70, it then builds up. It really builds up. But as I said, in 71, he wants to leave. He's prevailed upon to stay. And then in 72, he continues. But the writing is on the wall. And by December of 72, he writes to her. Contrary to what all biographers have written to give Indira Gandhi her due, she did not get rid of him. He voluntarily left her. But she continued to use him. But it's very clear. The relations post the Maruti, shall we say, changed. It was not just Maruti, probably. It was also the magnificent victory that Indira had in the March 1971 election. The victory over Pakistan in 71, where she's held as Durga by no lesser man than Dr. Bairi Bajpai. So Mrs. Gandhi, she was no longer the cautious, tentative Indira Gandhi who needed Huxer, the ideological and moral compass. This was an Indira Gandhi who had won two-thirds majority from the Indian people. She had won a magnificent victory over Pakistan. I asked Huxer, sir, this question. Why did she call for the elections? Because opposition at the time had really sort of decided that they were no longer going to be able to do anything. Their organizations had been broken. The left was an underground organization. Everybody thought emergency was here to stay for about 10 years, five years, 10 years. As I said, I was then still her guest. So I remember those conversations. And I don't think people expected their elections to take place so quickly. And when it did take place so quickly, there were actually quite a lot of debate whether they should participate or not, because the expectation was that she would actually win. And I asked Huxer, sir, this question. Why did she declare elections? She said, well, you know, she didn't win in the South. There's a lot of her advisors were right in thinking there was a lot of support for the emergency, except that the different parts of the country that responses are very different. Well, I have discussed this at some length. And my view is that Bhutto's calling for elections in Pakistan was an important factor in getting Indira Gandhi to declare elections in India. She could not be less democratic. How could Pakistan have elections and India not have elections? If you look at the timing, her timing, announcement of the elections of 1977, a few days after Bhutto's announcement, a few days. Do you think it goes back to Oxford days? I'm joking. No, I don't think they knew each other. I mean, although they struck a good rapport in 1972 in Simla, they did strike a good rapport in 1973 when Huxer and Bhutto meet, the exchange of warm words on Indira Gandhi. Incidentally, Bhutto is a peculiar individual. I discovered, which I have not used in this book, thanks to Shankar Bachpai, who shared with me an extraordinary document that Bhutto wrote at the death of Nehru in 1964. And it was immediately suppressed. But Mr. Bachpai got a copy. And I discovered actually this copy in the Oxford archives. Then I asked Mr. Bachpai because it was sent to Mr. Huxer by Mr. Bachpai. And it's an extraordinary document. If you read it, Huxer, Bhutto is actually praising Nehru for many of the things that Mr. Nehru did, secularism, democracy, parliament, planning, all these things. It's critical of India. But his admiration for Nehru comes out. So going back to the story, I think Bhutto's announcement of elections in Pakistan cannot be ignored in any calculus that we do on why Indira Gandhi called for elections. The story is that Mr. Sanjay Gandhi didn't want the elections to be called. And yet, she called for the elections. Basically, maybe she was convinced in January. Although the evidence seems to suggest that by February or March, after the campaigning in North India, it had become clear to her that she was going to lose. I think January, the expectation was different. By February, March, everybody was surprised in the reaction. Two things happened in February, probably, if you recall. Two things happened in February, 1977. One is that Jagjivan Ram and Bahuguna formed the Congress for Democracy. That was a big Dhaka. In fact, Huxer meets Indira Gandhi the day the CFD is formed. And I've recorded that conversation, which is there in Gujarat's diaries. And the second thing that happens is Mrs. Gandhi starts campaigning in North India. And the writing is on the wall. I think the result of March, 1977, may have been a surprise to her advisors, but it was not a surprise to Indira Gandhi. Last question. By the way, one small point on this election. In November, 1979, Huxer writes a letter to Arjun Sengupta, who is then an Oxford, that Indira Gandhi is going to come back with a bang. I've read that letter. Remember, I mean, nobody expected her to come back in January 80. In fact, Pranoy Roy and Ashok Lahiri made their name because they were the only guys who had. They predicted, I think, first ones to predict. They were the first ones to predict an overwhelming mandate. But in November, 1979, Mr. Huxer writes to Arjun Sengupta saying there is no way that Mr. Gandhi is going to come back with a bang. Last question to you. We have to evaluate Huxer's role in Indian history. Do you think this book, in fact, brings out today for a generation which never knew Huxer, that this brings out some of the elements that we need to take into account for evaluating his role? Well, certainly. I think Mr. Huxer was a man of his ages. I mean, he was an unrepentant Marxist. He was a strong ideologue, strong votive of the public sector. He wanted scooters to be manufactured in the public sector. That's why scooters, scooters India was set up. His problem was where it was set up. And it really didn't take off. Yeah, it didn't take off. But it got established. You know, he picked up a huge battle with Ashok Mehta on ONGC, you know, on Bombay High. They wanted to go with Teneko, which is the American company. But he fought for ONGC. And that's how, you know, ONGC emerged as a big company. He was an unabashed champion of the public sector. Shall I, the continuation of this question, do we miss people in the government of his cloth? 100%. That is what we don't have. I think the greatest quality that he had, just the epigraph. I just want to read only the epigraph. When shall loyalty unshaken and candid truth ever find a peer to him? This is from Horace, an ancient Latin. I think you need people at the top who have the courage of their conviction to speak their minds irrespective of what the consequences may be, who are open to different points of view. By the way, Mr. Huxer may have been an ideologue. But he listened to different points of view, distilled it, you know, gave it his own color. But he gave a sense of that people were being heard. At the top, every prime minister requires a Huxer, you know, every prime minister, every leader, everybody who goes in public life, because flattery and sycophancy comes naturally in our culture, right? Also, the other thing about Mr. Huxer, which I think we have lost, the loyalty to the written word, as you said right in the beginning, we are an oral culture, the difference between Brijesh Mishra, who is the only one who comes closest to Mr. Huxer as principal secretary, Mr. Brijesh Mishra did not leave behind a written record like Mr. Huxer has. It is very important, you know, he would jot down everything. He would write his notes. He would write his letters, you know. And thankfully, they are all now in the public domain. Thank you very much, Jai Raab, to be with us. And we hope that we will encounter you in NewsClick on many other issues, where we agree as well as disagree. This is all the time we have with NewsClick today. Keep watching NewsClick and also visit our website and YouTube page.