Now that the Bharat Ratna is conferred, Narasimha Rao will be greatly talked about, his politics, his role in the 1991 Economic reforms, and how the Congress party tried to erase his legacy. But three things less spoken about Rao, the man behind all the politics has greatly amazed me. 

Polyglot and Scholar: Rao knew more than 13 languages including English, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Sanskrit, Persian, Spanish, Hindi and Oriya. In 1977, he was an opposition MP in Lok Sabha and used most of his energies in defending Indira Gandhi. But whenever he could spare time, Rao headed to the languages department at Jawaharlal Nehru University to learn Spanish. He translated Viswanatha Satyanarayana’s novel ‘Veyi Padagalu’ from Telugu to Hindi titled ‘Sahasraphan’. He also translated stories from Marathi and Telugu. In 1998, he published his controversial novel ‘The Insider’, released by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 

Technophile: When Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao served in his cabinet as Defence Minister. One day Rao heard Rajiv complaining to one of his friends about how he intended to ease the import of computers to India, and ‘old guard in my party will not understand’. That evening, Rao called his son in the United States and asked him to send a computer to India. When it reached India, Rao learned computer using manuals in fifteen days. Over the years, he learned to write coding in UNIX and was also familiar with two computer languages, COBOL and BASIC. He was also keeping track of upgrades in technology. In a speech he delivered while inaugurating IT-ASIA, he complained: ‘I use one package of word processing. For years the upgrades are coming and when I look into the literature of what the upgrade means . . . I find very little difference . . . I think we should be careful about these things. You skip four upgrades, maybe the fifth will be really useful to you. It will mean a real upgrade. Pardon me, saying so. This has happened to me.’

Israel and Palestine: For many years post-independence, India was a great supporter of Palestine over Israel, mainly for two reasons, economic and political: Arab Oil and the Congress party’s Muslim vote bank. When Rao became Prime Minister, he realised that India could establish good relationships with the USA by establishing a diplomatic relationship with Israel. Alongside the USA, Rao decided to vote in the 1991 UN resolution to revote the designation of Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination”. Days after that, he invited Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a state visit. When Arafat came to India in January 1992, he convinced Arafat that India could put pressure on Israel only if it established active diplomatic relationships. At a press conference after meetings, Arafat said that that “exchange of ambassadors and recognition are acts of sovereignty on which I cannot interfere . . . I respect any choice of the Indian government”. By the end of the month, India started its full-fledged diplomatic ties with Israel. 

His life is not short of many interesting snippets like the ones mentioned above. Beyond all the politics, Rao was an extremely learnt, humble, enthusiastic, and pragmatic human being.