Swatantra Party and Jaswant Singh

Mr Jaswant Singh said in a interview with IE.

COOMI Kapoor: You are one of two senior leaders of the BJP who is not from a Sangh background. How did you get into the party?

The first party I joined was Janata Party. Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was then the leader of the Jan Sangh. He asked me to join the Jan Sangh but I had difficulties doing that. Then, Rajmata Gayatri Devi of Jaipur asked me to join the Swatantra Party. I knew Minoo Masani and Rajaji were in the party. I had to tell Rajmata Gayatri Devi that I couldn’t join the Swatantra Party. She was quite irate and asked me why not. I told her there were too many princesses in it! Post 1975, I joined the Janata Party and when the Janata disintegrated, I went to the BJP. That was the long and short of it.

Manoj C G: What will be the topic of your next book?

It’s a book on Rajagopalachari. I think Rajaji is a rather neglected figure of Indian politics. He is an extremely wise man, quite a remarkable figure, he had great foresight and his political life is really a commentary on those times.

“If you had known anything, we wouldn’t have been in this mess today”.

The following text is from a interview with Shekhar Gupta.

I am posting only the interesting conversations that relates to C Rajagopalachari and his Swatantra Party.

Shekhar Gupta: Tell us about your first election, your first experience of politics. Did you just walk into it, not knowing what it meant, or you had thought about it?

Maharani Gayatri Devi: I don’t know if you have heard of C Rajagopalachari and his Swatantra Party.

Shekhar Gupta: Yes.

Maharani Gayatri Devi: People came to me to talk about the Swatantra Party and what Rajaji wanted to do. I thought it was a very good idea. I had great respect for Pandit Nehru, but didn’t like his policy of nationalising everything. Free India, swatantra Bharat, swatantra janata was what I believed in.

Shekhar Gupta: You believed in free economy?

Maharani Gayatri Devi: Of course. When these people came to talk to us, I asked my husband, “May I join the Swatantra Party?” He said, “Yes”. I was going out for a ride in the morning and I sent for the secretary in Rajasthan and joined the Swatantra Party. Then when the election time came near, they asked me to contest from Jaipur. I had no intention of being a Member of Parliament. My husband said, “You’d be the obvious choice”. The election campaign began, it was an eye opener. In those days people didn’t know how to read and you had a list of the names of the candidates. The Swatantra Party’s sign was the star.

Shekhar Gupta: During those five months in jail, did you regret being in politics?

Maharani Gayatri Devi: I never regretted being in politics, I never regretted being in the Swatantra Party, I never regretted being a chela of Rajaji’s. He believed that India should be really free.

Shekhar Gupta: If you look at the two personalities, he and Nehru, both towering personalities, where did they differ?

Maharani Gayatri Devi: Both were great friends. When Pandit Nehru had to send somebody to America to talk to Kennedy, he chose Rajaji. I admire Rajaji because he had a vision for India.

Shekhar Gupta: The war?

Maharani Gayatri Devi: Yes. Prof N G Ranga of the Swatantra Party told me, “Jawaharlal will make fun of me” and I said, “In what way?”. He said, “You wait and see”. When Pandit Nehru was replying to a debate on China, he said, “Prof Ranga... professors will know more than he does”. So I got up and said, “If you had known anything, we wouldn’t have been in this mess today”. He sat down and another Member of Parliament stood up and said, “I didn’t hear what the honourable lady member said”. So I said, “May I repeat it. That if you, the Prime Minister, had known what was happening we wouldn’t have been in this mess today”. The next day the secretary of the Lok Sabha said, “Maharani saheb, how could you be rude to someone older to you?”

Shekhar Gupta: You interacted with leaders, princes, princesses.

Maharani Gayatri Devi: C Rajagopalachari, definitely. And strangely enough, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He loved India and India loved him. But the things he did were not right for India.