Rasgotra lifted from unpublished work, says Ashok Parthasarathi

Days after the former Foreign Secretary Maharajakrishna Rasgotra said Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru “spurned” an “extraordinary gesture” from U.S. President John F. Kennedy to help India overtake China in the nuclear race, the former Scientific Adviser to Indira Gandhi Ashok Parthasarathi has accused him of lifting information that he accessed as part of a committee to bring out a centenary volume on Mr. Parthasarathi’s father, the late G. Parthasarathi, or ‘GP’.

In his autobiography, A Life in Diplomacy , Mr. Rasgotra wrote that Prof. Parthasarathi circulated a paper saying Nehru received a letter with the offer from President Kennedy. “Nehru shared the letter with only two persons, G. Parthasarathi … and Dr. Homi Bhabha.” However, Mr. Rasgotra implies that GP advised Nehru in the way that the Prime Minister “wanted to hear” and India spurned Kennedy’s offer.

To this Prof. Parthasarathi told

The Hindu that the paper that Mr. Rasgotra has cited was meant for a book on G. Parthasarathi which was to be published to mark his centenary in 2014-15 but was delayed due to his illness.

“No one else apart from me knew about President Kennedy’s offer to Pandit Nehru which was narrated to me by my father. Mr. Rasgotra lifted this information which was shared with him exclusively for the purpose of the book which I am editing and will be published soon” said Prof. Parthasarathi.

Mr. Rasgotra however narrated in the ‘Notes’ section of the book, that he had personally seen “no evidence” of the Kennedy offer and he read the paper by Prof. Parthasarathi which he accessed while chairing a committee which planned the centenary celebration for GP.

He had demanded to see the letter from Ashok Parthasarathi who owns all the papers related to G. Parthasarathi. However Ashok Parthasarathi had told him that the Kennedy letter was lost.

Ashok Parthasarathi also disagrees with Mr. Rasgotra’s depiction that the late ‘GP’ advised Nehru according to what “he wanted to hear.” “My father told Pandit Nehru that accepting President Kennedy’s offer would hurt India’s image in the long run as the whole world would get to know that we copied the American nuclear designs.”

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Rasgotra said that he used the information since it was shared in the meeting to plan the centenary of G. Parthasarathi. “I used the information because I felt Ashok wanted to make this information public since it was mentioned in the paper that he circulated among those attending the meeting to plan centenary celebration of G Parthasarathi,” he told The Hindu, and added, “I will have a discussion on this issue with Ashok and if he still objects, I will edit this portion on Kennedy’s offer to Nehru from my book.”