‘Wise, witty and intensely moving, the book brings to vivid life not just the
personality of Rajiv Gandhi as a man and a leader but a whole phase of modern
India’s political history. The author narrates with total honesty and the most
becoming modesty the story of promise soaring into achievement only to be cut
down by destiny’s inscrutable hand. Habibullah is to Rajiv what Abul Fazl was to
Akbar.’ -Gopalkrishna Gandhi
If you want to know who Rajiv Gandhi was as a person, a friend and a leader, and
what his contributions as prime minister were, Wajahat Habibullah’s thoughtful
book, written with the sure hand of one who knew him from childhood and also
served him professionally, is an unputdownable must read.’ -Pavan K. Varma
On 21 May 1991, Wajahat Habibullah, then the commissioner of Kashmir
(constituting the valley and two districts of Ladakh), had returned home after
inspecting a mysterious fire at Dalgate, Srinagar. Much to his dismay, there had
been another fire, one that left him devastated: an RDX explosion in the south
Indian town of Sriperumbudur had taken the life of India’s sixth prime minister,
Rajiv Gandhi.
My Years with Rajiv is an endearing account of a friendship that turned into an
administrative partnership, one that gave Habibullah an acute insight into Rajiv
Gandhi’s political life. But equally, in this lucid memoir, recounting his years in
the Indian Administrative Services, particularly at the Prime Minister ’s Office, he
walks us through the last three decades of the twentieth century—in many ways,
the most formative years of Indian history.
Habibullah also seeks to demystify the workings of the Indian government and
bureaucracy: the modernisation of the Nehruvian nation, the turbulence of
the Khalistan years in Punjab, the introduction of grassroots policies aimed at
poverty alleviation in rural India, the beginning of telecommunications services,
the Shah Bano case, the opening of the locks at Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi,
Indian interventions in Sri Lanka, and much else. In this, the author, a natural
raconteur, is more than successful, telling the tale in his inimitably candid and
self-effacing manner.
