Indira Gandhi used to keep an open house. She was accessible to the rank-and-file members. She assiduously greeted every visitor who came across the country to meet her every morning,” wrote Heptulla, who shared close ties with Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.
Giving further insight of the differences between Indira and Sonia, the former Rajya Sabha deputy chairman writes: “I could reach out to her (Indira) anytime and would inform her about things on the ground in my own way.”
Though she continued in the Congress party, the seasoned parliamentarian recollects, Sonia began to suggest that she would eventually join hands with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar.
“It was strange of her to think so. Sharad has specially asked me to not leave, advising me that since I was holding the office of presiding officers,” she adds.
Heptulla goes on to mention that she had even reassured Sonia of how she remained steadfast in her allegiance to the Congress president’s mother-in-law when the former prime minister was out of power.
Sonia, she writes, trusted very few people and “I felt she did not trust me”. “Ironically while suggesting I would join Pawar which I did not, Sonia went ahead and formed an alliance with him.”
Pawar was expelled from the Congress in 1999 for highlighting the Italian origin of Sonia Gandhi. He then went on to form the NCP that year itself. The NCP was a part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from 2004 to 2014.
Najma gives vivid details of how she and other senior Congress colleagues worked fastidiously to convince the party rank and file of Sonia’s ascension as the party president.
“Ghulam Nabi Azad and I worked tirelessly to convince the party leadership and cadre that she was indeed ready and capable of being an effective leader. During the election that followed her takeover, I assisted her with all her speeches. While she travelled and addressed large gatherings in various states, I conducted thorough research, liaised with local party functionaries and identified relevant issues for her to address,” she writes.
But all her support, she writes, proved insufficient to convince Sonia of her loyalty. “I also believed that Sonia’s mistrust stemmed from my close working relationship with Narasimha Rao.”
Every Congress leader was expected to operate under the umbrella of a single family controlling everything, she writes. “The fact that Sonia Gandhi became the longest serving president of the Congress party is not a matter of pride in a democracy but rather a cause for lament. She never called me and I never contacted her.”
The former Congress general secretary resigned from the party in June, 2004, ending her nearly three decades of association with the party. By that time, she had become increasingly close to the BJP which sent her to the Rajya Sabha.
‘Indira was victim of poor advice’
In contrast to her fallout with Sonia, Heptulla is effusive in her praise of Indira as seen in one of her interactions with the former prime minister after the Congress party lost to the Janata Party coalition in 1977.
“I still remember vividly one rain-soaked July day in 1977 in Delhi, when she gave me a lesson on surviving in a world where betrayal and trust, rise and fall were the norm. She was out of power then. When I arrived from Bombay to meet her, she was closing the drawing room door against the rain after bringing me inside. I had never seen her looking so tired. ‘What has happened?’ I exclaimed. She was quiet for a long time. I searched her face for clues. She did not smile or grimace, just sat still.”
“’I was Prime Minister, but I did not know the nuances of running a country,’ she said. Bit by bit, she told me how people she had faith in—from her trusted bureaucrats and advisors to a Bengal politician and friend—tried to control her. When she began to break free from their shackles, and take her own decisions, they wanted to teach her a lesson. Their politics of patronage tipped her towards her downfall.”
Three years later, Indira returned to power in January 1980 with a landslide victory notching up almost two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha.
“She came back, of course, but I always marvelled at how she had changed. This time around, she was tough, shrewd, ruthless and skilled in the use of power,” Najma writes.
Regarding Indira and the Emergency that brought about her fall in 1977, Najma writes that the late leader was “a victim of poor advice from her advisors and poorer judgment”. “I never got a chance to discuss the Emergency with her (Indira), but I did get the impression that she regretted it deeply,” she writes.
To illustrate Indira’s resilience, the veteran leader mentions her encounter with the former prime minister after her son Sanjay Gandhi was killed in an accident in June 1980.
“…she gestured to me to come into the house, she took me into the dining room from a side door. I leaned on the table and started to cry, she attempted to console me and said in a hollow voice, ‘you have arrived straight from the airport, would you like a cup of tea’.”
Najma recalls how Indira, who had lost her son, consoled her as she was in tears in the room. “She sat next to me and said, ‘I would like you to go back to Bombay and get elected so that you can work with me’,” a day before Najma filed nomination for the Rajya Sabha.
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Memories of Rajiv
Najma recalls an episode after the Bofors scandal broke out in April 1987 to highlight how former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was open to her suggestion of placating the opposition.
“…Rajiv wanted me to get the regular business of the upper house back on track. I decided to employ creative strategies to earn the confidence of the House. The first step was to make myself accessible to the MPs and this started lunch meetings,” she writes.
When Congress members wanted her to suspend opposition MPs, she writes that she decided to take up with Rajiv himself.
“…I met Rajiv, I told him, ‘Sir today, you are in opposition, someday you will be in power. Would you want such a precedent to be set? As the presiding officers, it’s my duty to yield the floor and allow MPs to discuss their ideas .Rajiv said, ‘Congress members ask me to throw you out.’ I said, ok, throw me out, no problem. With his characteristic good humour, he said ‘no, no I don’t want to, I will tell them Najma has become too fat. I can’t throw her out.’ We both burst out laughing,” she writes.
Najma shares another lighter moment with Rajiv Gandhi when she allowed a new opposition member to give maiden speech on the last day of session at midnight.
Close to midnight, she writes, the MPs were getting anxious to end the session. “…not only was the speech pedantic, it was inaudible too. Within a few minutes, the prime minister gestured that I should ring the bell to end it.”
When she ignored his request, Rajiv sent her a note saying ‘why must we all suffer while the honourable member loses his maidenhood.’ “Luckily for me, by the time the note arrived, the speech had come to an end.”
Conniving Fotedar
The former Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson narrates how Makhan Lal Fotedar, a close confidant of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, humiliated her and other Congress leaders.
Najma recalls how Fotedar kept her in the dark about Rajiv’s instruction to her that she be present with him at the signing of the accord with National Conference (NC) leader Farooq Abdullah in November 1986.
“Fotedar did not inform me. I was in parliament and by chance came across Abdullah. He looked surprised. ‘What are you doing here? You should have been in Srinagar by now for the signing of the accord tomorrow. I informed (Vincent) George,” she writes.
It was Rajiv Gandhi’s personal secretary who came to her rescue and she went on to fly with the then prime minister to Srinagar, she recalls. “Fotedar plan could have caused great harm to my career and reputation.”
She writes about a meeting in which she requested Rajiv Gandhi to relieve her of her responsibilities to look after the party affairs of Jammu and Kashmir. Those present at the meeting included Fotedar, Congress veteran G.K. Moopanar, senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad among others.
“I told Rajiv, Sir I have finished my jobs, the elections are done and the new government has been formed, now please take me out of Kashmir.
“Rajiv said, ‘why.’ I said, ‘Fotedar saheb is going to push my car into a ditch someday.’ Fotedar face turned white, Azad gasped in stunned silence, Moopanar looked thunderstruck while Rajiv was at loss of words.”
“I continued, ‘he has behaved so badly with me and cast such aspersions on my character that any woman with an iota of self-respect would find unacceptable. I have suffered so much, but continued to work because of you’.”
Rajiv, she recollects, refused to accept her resignation as general secretary.
Ties with BJP leaders
About her ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Heptulla recalled an incident after the 2002 Godhra riots when journalists were criticising the then Gujarat chief minister for maintaining a studied silence through the first week of violence
She writes how she told the media about how Modi had helped the Bohra community during the communal riots.
“I had very good relationships with them because my husband belongs to that community. The chief of the community had rang me up and told me that there was a large community of Bohra in Gujarat and they never participated in any rioting. He asked me for help. I rang up Modi and told him…,” she adds.
Modi responded and the Bohras supported the BJP in the 2002 elections, she mentions.
In her recollections of her ties with leaders from across the political spectrum, Najma shares fond memories of BJP veteran L.K. Advani and his family who stood by her “through thick and thin”.
After her husband Akbarali A. Heptulla died, she writes, Advani’s wife Kamla called her everyday to ensure that she was not alone at the time of meals. “…if I was, she made sure I shared my meal with them.”
Najma then mentions an episode to highlight how she was warmly greeted by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee after she was elected president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 1999.
“When he heard the news, he was delighted, first because the honour had come to India, and second, it had come to an Indian Muslim woman. He said, ‘You come back and we will celebrate.’ I could also connect to the vice-presidential office instantly,” she mentions.
The former Manipur governor then writes she was kept waiting for an entire hour on the phone to speak with Sonia Gandhi, who never came on the line even as she was calling from Berlin.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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