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| Heat and dust of everyday politcs | | Natwar, Jaswant in a practical dilemma | | SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, AUG. 5: Natwar Singh and Jaswant Singh find themselves in an unenviable position, with their respective party bosses seemingly trying to distance themselves from the controversies the two have triggered. The two leaders belong to two diferent political parties. And Jaswant Singh and Natwar Singh, the two leaders from Rajsthan, share more then just their last names.
Within their own parties they have nestled comfortably away from the heat and dust of everyday politics, playing to the higher galleries both at the national and the international levels. However, in the end of their political careers both have found they might have been living in a time warp. Even in adversity the clipped accent of Jaswant and Natwar never falters.
Natwar Singh acquired the Cambridge accent as a student at Corpus Christi College. The stylish grey hair, though, is looking a little untidy and the jacket has come undone. Natwar Singh, Nehruvian, friend of EM Forster, and proud alumni of St Stephen's college, stripped not only of his portfolio but even his good name by the RS Pathak probe, which says he misused, his position in the Oil-for-Food scam.
Now if only Indian politics was more like life in Cambridge University. Natwar Singh still sounds brave, almost as brave as another aristocrat from Rajasthan, another writer of books and another former External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh. Jaswant is in many ways very similar to Natwar Singh and another member of an elite public school.
The epaulettes always upright, the military stature, Jaswant Singh has always been held in suspicion by the RSS for his less-than-saffron tendencies. The Mayo College alumni impressed At Behari Vajpayee not because of his political talent but by his command over the English language. English, as it should be spoken. A 1920s, old fashioned polo-playing sort of English.
Jaswant Singh and Natwar Singh, both feudal from Rajasthan. Both were more comfortable in the drawing room rather than in the world of mass politics. Both perhaps guilty of one mistake: enormous acts of selfishness, one trying to launch his son in business, the other trying to launch his book in the market.
But that is a mark of the old rajas and maharajas, isn't it? After all, if princes make mistakes they always expect someone else to clean up the mess. |
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