P. V. Narasimha Rao - Rao's Legacy and The Current Congress Leadership

Rao's Legacy and The Current Congress Leadership

It has been noted that the current leadership of the Congress party attempts to undermine Rao's legacy by denying him the credit for fostering economic reforms in India. For instance, it is reported that in a speech to mark the 125th anniversary of the Congress, the party president Sonia Gandhi "made it a point to ignore P.V. Narasimha Rao". It is also reported that

"Sonia Gandhi praised contributions of all Congress prime ministers except P V Narasimha Rao in her speech ... Making no mention of Rao in her 15-minute speech, she said Rajiv Gandhi scripted the course of economic policies that were followed by the government (headed by Rao) for the following five years."

Several commentators argue that while Rao should be rightly blamed for his failure to protect the Babri Masjid, at the same time, he should be given credit for initiating the process of economic reforms in India. In an op-ed article published in Business Standard, A.K. Bhattacharya writes:

"Even today, the Congress leadership shows extreme reluctance to acknowledge the role PV Narasimha Rao played in appointing Manmohan Singh as his finance minister and giving him the freedom to unveil the economic reforms package to bail the Indian economy out of an unprecedented crisis. The Congress leadership was correct in blaming Narasimha Rao for his political misjudgment on the Ayodhya issue. But it is now time the same leadership also acknowledged Narasimha Rao’s role in ushering in economic reforms."

In similar vein, Harsh V. Pant argues:

"Clearly as Prime Minister Rao failed in his duty to protect the disputed structure in Ayodhya ... Rao's failure cannot be an excuse to deprive him of all the credit that is his due as the nation's prime minister at one of the most difficult times in India's contemporary history ... Manmohan Singh is touted as the father of Indian economic reforms but as Singh has himself acknowledged it was Rao was fathered the process ... Rao deftly navigated the political waters ... and made economic reforms politically tenable. How ironical then that today the same Congress party functionaries ... trying to take credit for India's economic success without acknowledging the role of Rao who envisioned and executed the process?"

Historian Ramachandra Guha asserts that Rao has become "the great unmentionable" in the Congress party. In an op-ed article in The Telegraph (Calcutta), Guha writes:

"Narasimha Rao may be denied the credit by the present Congress leadership for taking the Indian economy well above the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ of two to three per cent per annum. But they do not let the public forget his greatest defeat, which was his failure to stop the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December, 1992 ... From the point of view of the present Congress leadership, Rao’s problem was not just that he was not a Nehru-Gandhi, it was also that as prime minister he did not genuflect enough to the Nehru-Gandhis ... Now that the Nehru-Gandhis once more control both party and government, P.V. Narasimha Rao has become the great unmentionable within Congress circles. I should modify that statement — Rao can be mentioned only if it is possible to disparage him. Thus his contributions to economic growth and to a more enlightened foreign policy are ignored, while his admittedly pusillanimous attitude towards the kar sevaks in Ayodhya is foregrounded ... To forget his achievements, but to remember his mistakes, is a product of cold and deliberate calculation."

Commenting on the report of the Liberhan Commission, which exonerated Rao for his role in the Babri Masjid demolition, Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta writes:

"He surely failed as prime minister to prevent the tragedy at Ayodhya. But his rivals in the Congress did their own party such disservice by spreading the canard that his (and their) government was responsible for that crime. This, more than anything else, lost them the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar ... any dispassionate reading of recent political history will tell you that this is a self-inflicted injury. The Congress has itself built a mythology whereby the Muslims have come to hold their party as responsible for Babri as the BJP ... If you take Justice Liberhan’s indictment of so many in the BJP seriously, you cannot at the same time dismiss his exoneration of Rao, and the government, and the Congress Party under him. You surely cannot put the clock back on so much injustice done to him, like not even allowing his body to be taken inside the AICC building. But the least you can do now is to give him a memorial spot too along the Yamuna as one of our more significant (and secular) prime ministers who led us creditably through five difficult years, crafted our post-Cold War diplomacy, launched economic reform and, most significantly, discovered the political talent and promise of a quiet economist called Manmohan Singh."