This Wednesday, former external affairs minister Natwar Singh reinvented himself as a Jat leader at a huge rally in Jaipur. It was the latest of his responses after his ‘deviancy’ in the ‘oil for food’ scandal - first reported by the Volcker committee and confirmed by the Justice R S Pathak Commission - produced a set of moves by various political actors. I shall look at Natwar’s responses to the verdict by the various players and examine their implications for our democratic polity.

There are three responses that a combatant Natwar made in the thick of the public debate that need attention. The first, his stinging political attack on the PM of his own party under whom he served as minister. During the discussion on the ‘oil for food’ issue in the Rajya Sabha he mocked the PM by saying he merited a place in the Guinness Book of Records for not winning a direct election, even a municipal one, and yet being PM.

Natwar’s second response is equally astounding when he attended dinner meetings with the enemy after the Pathak Committee report — with leaders of the Samajwadi party, the BJP and the Left. At these he accused the Congress of duplicity, graphically stating that ‘not a leaf stirs without the knowledge of the Congress president’.

Natwar’s third response, in getting the Rajasthan Jat Mahasabha to warn the Congress that further ‘humiliation’ would not be tolerated and that insulting Natwar was insulting the Mahasabha meant that cosmopolitan Natwar, the Delhi intellectual, morphed into Natwar the caste leader. He too has obviously read his Machiavelli. Planning like a fox and acting like a lion. Through all this the Congress did not expel him. It isolated, ostracised him, but kept him. Perhaps, being in its inner coterie for years, he knows many party secrets.In the party’s calculus political pragmatism has prevailed over the rules of democratic morality.

... contd.