“Prakash Karat clearly is the most powerful man in India today. He can dictate the Presidency and Vice-Presidency.” And then, after a pause and a twinkle, “Remember I said most important man, I didn’t say woman”.

Speaking at the Idea Exchange, an interaction with the editorial team of The Indian Express here today, Karan Singh, Congressman, self-professed “cultural diplomat”, environmentalist, philosopher on an “inner spiritual quest”, and the “Man Who Knows Too Much” on J&K, was candid about why he is also the Man Who Still Isn’t President.

The list of names had narrowed to two names — Karan Singh and Shivraj Patil. DMK leader M. Karunanidhi, had indicated his preference for him. “I was the last man standing, before the women took over...In some ways, my whole career was a preparation for the presidency”.

And then the Left used its veto. It ruled him out, says Singh — quoting CPI leader A B Bardhan at an earlier Idea Exchange — because he was the “son of a maharajah”. “Weren’t Ashoka, Rama and Buddha sons of maharajahs too?” he asks and then adds: “I am the son of a Maharajah whose signature is the reason that Jammu and Kashmir is a part of India.”

But it is the second reason the Left gave for ruling him out of the race — that he is the founder of the Virat Hindu Sammelan — that clearly rankles more. In India, secularism has come to mean something quite different from what it means in Europe, says Singh. “The Left looks at it in an absolutist way — you are either pro-religion or anti-religion”. This was not what it meant for Gandhi or Nehru. “Gandhi was deeply religious, Nehru wasn’t an atheist...I am not sure that atheism is a part of Left ideology in India.”

... contd.