There disturbing news for the Congress, especially for party president Sonia Gandhi. K Natwar Singh is not done with writing books yet.
Having raised a storm with his recent book, One Life Is Not Enough, Singh is nearly ready with the manuscript of a second one, tentatively titled "My Irregular Diary", in which he promises, "I will say a lot more things".
Asked whether these too will concern Gandhi, Singh says: "I'll not rake up the personal lives of people. But what Manmohan Singh said about private conversations is baloney. Look at the books on John F Kennedy — they name every affair he had, every talk he had. Look at Henry Kissinger's book, his conversations with Nikita Khrushchev, Charles de Gaulle and Chou En-lai are reproduced verbatim. Sonia Gandhi is a historic figure, and historic figures can have no private lives."
This second book, to be published by Rupa again, will be based on the dairies Singh has maintained, off and on, since 1956.
Despite his no-holds-barred criticism of Sonia Gandhi — unprecedented in India's political discourse and damaging given the Congress's beleaguered state after its drubbing in the 2014 general elections — Singh claims he was not provoked by the desire to get back at her when he wrote One Life... "I am 83 years old. I thought I would write it to leave a legacy for myself and my grandsons. Unfortunately, the media has made it a Sonia centric book. It is not," he says.
But the bitterness at his treatment over the Volcker Committee Report rankles. "I have known the Nehru-Gandhis for a very long time and they have been very good to me. I had very good relations with Sonia Gandhi for many years. So when the Report came, I expected her to say, 'No, Natwar Singh would never do this'. But that didn't happen."
Despite his sense of injustice, Singh says he will not make another appeal for the Volcker Committee documents to be opened to scrutiny."What is the use?" he says, adding that "the BJP's going to go for them. There are no two ways about that."
