'India’s Scholarly Soldier Jaswant Singh Was One of Us': A General Recalls

The old MacArthurism that ‘Soldiers don’t die, they only fade away’ may be wholly untrue for Jaswant.

Image: Namita Chauhan/ The Quint

“That’s a bloody fine steed, I say,” remarked the Cabinet Minister as his eyes rolled gently on the caparisoned Hanoverian Horse neighing gently, and stomping his hind leg whilst standing in a formation, at the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

With a ramrod straight posture, courtly mannerism, and pucca accent, Jaswant Singh was naturally driven to horses, ‘uniform’ (with that trademark Cavalry ‘walking out’ shirt with epaulettes) and holding his head high, at all times—literally and figuratively as the distinguished gentleman spoke his mind as he saw it intellectually and deliberately, and never as a parroted read-out.

A Large-Hearted Knight

Meeting and engaging with him at official functions at the Rashtrapati Bhavan (where I served as the Military Secretary to the President) were a masterclass in dignified restraint, propriety and generosity of spirit towards all those who wore the ‘uniform’.

Yes, he was a senior Cabinet Minister but he was always one of ‘us’, as each ‘sowar’ with his lance of the President's Body Guard or the combatants of the stationed Infantry battalion immediately recognised him and saluted him sharply— and he would unfailingly respond with a large-hearted acknowledgement.

The soldier-turned-politician-turned-scholar was the last of proverbial Knights who were given to unflinching civility, gentility, and refinement that has since been lost in the corridors of power. Our one-on-one conversations were invariably a good-hearted guffaw about Cavalry dash (him) versus a rough and ready ‘Infanteer’ (me), as he wore his cavalry’s Central India Horse (CIH) regimentation on his sleeve and heart.

Today, Jaswant Singh would have been 85 (born on 3 Jan 1938). Sadly, his ‘last post’ as it were, was bugled on 27 September 2020 after six years of comatose silence.

The duty of the soldier to the nation was finally over, and he could rest in peace as Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted, “Jaswant Singh Ji served our nation diligently, first as a soldier and later, during his long association with politics."

But Jaswant’s call to honour ie, soldiering for India was deeply personal and a matter of generational tradition, instinct, and circumstances that could not be traded for empty-posturing or milked for grandstanding of ‘nationalism’.

True to His Uniform, Jaswant Epitomised a Dignified Brand of Politics

As a thoroughbred soldier, he had an acute sense of delinking the Armed Forces from reckless partisanship and was a modicum of sobriety, measure, and ‘distance’. He truly believed and respected the mandate of apolitical anchorage in context to his ‘uniform’, and never sought that for any one-upmanship against multiple pretenders and usurpers of ‘nationalism’, that he ultimately faced in his politics.

Even his inert and ingrained sense of proud nativism was rooted in decided inclusiveness, secularism, and celebration of the diversity that is the vast expanse of the Thar Desert, earning him the rare distinction of the preferred leader irrespective of religious denominations, or his own party flag.

The singular politician was a charming contradiction with his public persona of an aristocratic anglophile with a ‘haw haw’ militaristic accent, as also the most passionate patron of 'Dingal'— an ancient language of Rajasthan. In an unimaginable possibility today, the passionate student of history and languages, the then Cabinet Minister had applied for a course in Urdu! His literary flourishes included over ten tomes of diverse interests and erudition on subjects like the 1971 Bangladesh War, Central Asia swathes, Geopolitics to Jinnah.

Besides Nehru, Jaswant was the only Foreign Minister to contribute to policy discourse where, in his book Defending India, he laments the absence of a strategic culture, a sentiment that was recently echoed by the previous Army Chief who seemed to suggest moderation and rigour before lazily (and politically) bandying concepts like ‘two-front war capability’ etc.

The fastidious Soldier-Scholar-Statesman weighed in and thought through his words rather carefully, as he valued the full import of words like duty, patriotism, security, and sovereignty as a sacred covenant that could not be put on the altar of competitive politics.

Last of India’s 'Liberal Conservatives'

Hailed as the last of the fleeting ‘liberal conservatives’ that India has seen, he described himself as a ‘liberal democrat’. Words like ‘liberal’ and ‘democrat’ had not acquired a pejorative context, then. It was par for course for the old school noblesse oblige, who disdained theatrical and vainglorious pettiness that seems to have engulfed politics today.

Jaswant was a great raconteur and had a sharp sense of humour, that too is missing in the era of revisionism and make-believe virtuosity that seems to be the current wont. He was confident and courageous enough to be self-deprecatory, with accompanying gravitas and much aplomb.

His complaint in the Parliament to the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, that the meagre increase in the income tax exemption for senior citizens was vintage Jaswant, “Sir, Rs 1030? At my age? It would not get me a bottle of whiskey!"

Even though he carries the public blame for the decision of the Cabinet Committee on Security (including that of the Prime Minister, Home Minister, and other senior Ministers) on going to Kandahar, he would smirk and say in his deep baritone, “I didn’t go to Kandahar because there was a good night club there!” More importantly, he covered for the government on his broad shoulders owing to what he called, “part of my continuing sense of commitment and loyalty."

However, the template of a classic Officer and a Gentleman from some mofussil Armoured Corp cantonment never left Jaswant from the sunlit sand dunes of Barmer-Jaisalmer, as he would immediately stand up and show basic courtesies towards the leading lady from the opposition party or address his good friend Somnath Chatterjee ‘from across the aisle’ not by his name, but by the antiquated Parliamentary traditions, ‘honourable member from Bolpur’.

They were in his eyes, simply members of the opposition party and not some pretense of ‘enemies’ of him personally, or that of the nation. His politics was always intellectual, honourable and above all, a matter of trust and loyalty (he was, after all, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s ‘Hanuman’ against all odds).

‘Of Men of Letters and Immense Grace’

Jaswant writes evocatively in his charmingly delightful travelogue, Travels to Transoxiana, “I was born in a land, and in a period which have vanished, having been compressed unnaturally in space and time by circumstance by the assault of that unrelenting invader— ‘the new’. The ‘land’ got ‘lost’ because it was bewildered by this attack of the ‘new’; we were totally uncomprehending of the challenge of those times and had no adequate response to it. In the process, we became so much poorer – ethically, culturally and emotionally."

Eerily, his prophetic words could be exactly superimposed to explain the alien strain of politics within his own partisan persuasion, that were so much at odds with the civilisational mellifluousness of a Jaswant or an Atal Bihari Vajpayee, men of letters and immense grace. The party had changed unrecognisably and couldn’t be a part of this ‘new’.

Like his personal style and subsequent politics, his last fight was one with immense valour and silent dignity that had distinguished him through the rough and tumble of politics. Finally, the old warrior’s heart had had enough, and he gave in, and the last of the chivalrous knights made his way to his Valhalla where all warriors ultimately go – his life was best epitomised by the title of his book ‘A Call to Honour: In service of Emergent India’.

The old MacArthurism that ‘Soldiers don’t die, they only fade away’ may be wholly untrue for Jaswant – from the unforgiving desert winds of the Thar Desert to those like self in the ‘Uniform’ who had the privilege to serve with him, to even the magnificent steeds that he loved so much, he simply refuses to fade away. Sleep well Sir – you fought well, and just, always.

(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)