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Saturday, May 10, 2008
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Arjun questions loyalty yardstick

Special Correspondent

PHOTO: R. V. MOORTHY

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and HRD Minister Arjun Singh at the release of “Mohin Kahan Vishram” in New Delhi on Friday. –

NEW DELHI: If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s unscheduled appearance at a function here on Friday evening to release Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh’s book took everyone by surprise, his subsequent silence raised eyebrows.

Before questions could be asked by the large media contingent, the Prime Minister left, leaving the field wide open for the Minister. However, Mr. Singh refused to elaborate on the many remarks he made during his speech, stating that it was for the media to figure out what he had said.

Speaking extempore, the Minister traced his 51 years in public life but opted out of raising any political issue, stating that this was not the proper platform to do so. However, by then he had already questioned the yardstick for loyalty in present-day Congress and referred to forces within the party which he said had been trying to pull him down from the very beginning.

While maintaining that the Nehru-Gandhi family had a knack of recognising loyalty – and could differentiate between true loyalists and pretenders – Mr. Singh did not elaborate on his observation regarding “limited definition” of loyalty prevalent within the Congress today.

Prior to his comments on loyalty, the Minister sought to point out how the late Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi allowed him to speak his mind during the Emergency. He went along with the decision though his reservation was that it would be misused. This difference in opinion, he pointed out, might have kept him out of Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet during the Emergency but did not prevent him from getting a ticket in the 1980 election.

“In fact,” he said, “Sanjay Gandhi came to campaign for me.”

Not once in his comparatively long speech – Mr. Singh is known to be a man of few words – did he mention the present-day Congress leadership. Titled ‘Mohin Kahan Vishram’, the book – edited by K. L. Nandan — is a collection of articles on the Minister’s public life.

The first copy of the book was presented to President Pratibha Patil who spoke about the difficulties faced by any politician as the line between public and private life gets blurred after the very first step into politics.

In his address, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee hailed Mr. Singh as a champion of secularism for whom it was not a dogma but an article of faith. Also, he made a reference to the downslide in politics and lamented the confrontationist and divisive attitude of some political parties.

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