Madam and the Mandarin
Jairam Ramesh's new book examines the long and complicated relationship between Indira Gandhi and her legendary advisor and longtime Principal Secretary PN Haksar. PNH has now faded from political memory but his exceptional career was marked by extraordinary proximity to and influence on the government mostly Indira herself. He was at the core of her kitchen cabinet and a paid-up member of the so-called Kashmiri Mafia (with DP and PN Dhar) and a fellow traveller of the leftist ginger group within the Congress. While his star was ascendant, Haksar would make a unique and lasting impact on the country and the region. He is regarded as one of the prime architects of the bank nationalisation of 1969 and the sidelining of the finance minister who opposed it, Morarji Desai. He was both a witness and a strategist of the Bangladesh War and played a particularly significant role in orchestrating the historic Shimla Agreement with Pakistan in 1972. From the creation of RAW in 1968 to the nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974 or the annexation of Sikkim in 1975, Haksar's hand was discretely but forcefully involved in most significant government decisions of the time, guiding or restraining his patron. It was a career built on the fragile plinth of a relationship his friendship and ideological affinities with Indira Gandhi. Inevitably, it would founder on personal and political conflict simply Sanjay Gandhi and the Emergency. Yet a stubborn streak of loyalty endured even this breach. From friendship to disenchantment: a story of two lives and many letters.
EXCERPTS
Haksar took over as India's deputy high commissioner in the UK in May 1965. He was back in extremely familiar haunts after ten years. He was to navigate Indo-British relations through a particularly bad patch when Prime Minister Harold Wilson came out openly in
