To those few who have closely watched his rise and fall in the ebb and flow of Indian politics, Jaswant Singh embodies thinly camouflaged elements of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes.

The canny likeness to the invincible Caesar who was let down by those he trusted, a Hamlet-like journey of self-limiting revenge against one or several newly revealed foes that plotted to rob him of his political heirloom, his parliamentary constituency of Barmer on the Pakistan border — these are some images that readily come to mind about the soft-spoken politician battling for life with a head injury from a fall at his Delhi home last week.

The former Indian cavalry officer might also be likened to Macbeth, a decorated soldier of distinguished valour getting lured by fate in the macabre alleys of murky politics. Though not the one to plot to overthrow any Duncan he had professed loyalty to, Jaswant Singh betrayed enough fatal flaws in his ideological pursuits.

He nearly disallowed my request to recite a couplet instead of shooting a question at him when he allowed himself to lead the chorus for a major military stand-off with Pakistan in December 2001.

Though not the one to plot to overthrow any Duncan he had professed loyalty to, Jaswant Singh betrayed enough fatal flaws.

‘Jang me qatl sipahi hongey/ Surkh roo zille ilaahi hongey’ (‘In war, the foot soldiers die/ For the halo, for which the monarchs vie’).

The foreign minister retorted brusquely, but not insensitively. He had been a soldier too, he said, and didn’t need a lecture on valour. He was familiar with the sufferings of the fighting men in war. Saying that, he brought the crucial press meet to a closure.

Jaswant was thrown out from the Bharatiya Janata Party at the behest of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, all for writing an objective book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The author was to go on to become an intellectual bridge with the Pakistani intelligentsia, not least because he had shown unusual candour in assigning blame for Partition on not Nehru and Jinnah alone but on Sardar Patel, the ‘iron man’ of resurgent Hindutva.

His views on Patel’s complicity in the bloody division of India were bound to rankle Narendra Modi under whose watch during the recent elections he was thrown out for a second time from the party. He never went back to the fold.

To return to his withering observations on Patel, on March 8, 1947, the Congress Working Committee adopted its resolution on an ominous division of Indian states, going behind the backs of Gandhi and Maulana Azad.

“These tragic events [in Punjab] have demonstrated that there can be no settlement of the problems in the Punjab by violence and coercion and that no agreement based on coercion can last,” the resolution backed by Patel and Nehru read. “Therefore, it is necessary to find a way out which involves the least amount of compulsion. This would necessitate a division of the Punjab into two provinces, so that the predominantly Muslim part may be separated from the predominantly non-Muslim.”

Earlier, Nehru had gone to the extent of recommending a communal trifurcation of Punjab, Jaswant notes in the Jinnah book. The proposal baffled him. “It is difficult to accept that Nehru had offered this solution seriously, or was it more an insidious design to further narrow the funnel of Jinnah’s options?”

Singh underscores the date of the resolution to fortify his critique of Nehru and Patel. “The date of the adoption of this Resolution by the Congress was unfortunate for it was when Gandhi was away on his great healing mission in Bihar, Maulana Azad was ill and also absent. Patel and Nehru had both known, all along, that the two absentees would oppose the Resolution. It was, in fact, about three weeks later that Gandhi, finally through a letter, asked Nehru the reason for this Resolution.”

You could feel him as he notes Patel writing to Gandhi: “That you had expressed your views against it, we learnt only from the papers.” Nehru was more brazen with Gandhi. “About our proposal to divide Punjab, this flows naturally from our previous discussions,” he claimed.

Jaswant Singh’s description of the communal upsurge of the 1920s finds an echo in the polarisation even today. Religious festivals got associated with almost all communal conflicts of the 1920s. “So much so, that British observers then began to refer to ‘Hindu-Muslim’ clashes of the period, derisively as the ‘cow-music’ question.”

Left to himself as a former soldier, Singh has been wary of military solutions to cross-border as well as domestic issues. As former defence minister and foreign minister did he think the army should be used in places like Kashmir when there are public protests?

“You forgot to mention that I have also been a soldier,” he told the questioner. “I think it’s wrong to use the army in such a manner. The army is not meant for policing functions. Please don’t lightly or casually talk of employing the army against our own citizens, whether it is here or against the Maoists. I can’t think of anything less desirable ... I personally believe that the factories that are producing Maoists are active on a daily basis in every police thana, every tehsil and patwari’s office. Governance depends on grievance redressal system. If grievance redressal is blocked, what will the army do?”

The last public stance of the 76-old politician came replete with Shakespearean fanfare, music, high emotions and colourful election political rallies. ‘Jaswant Singh ji ri sena bhaari/ Saari Marwar mein sobha nyari/Gaon, gaon ro kehno hai, ab apman ro badlo leno hai,’ the Muslim Manganiyars sang, seeking revenge for the insult to their Rajput hero by the people he had helped become strong. They sang to the rhythm of dhol, khartal and morchang, rousing a surreal war-like emotion in the stretches of the Thar desert while, unbeknown to them, their hero headed for defeat, not his first, but possibly his last.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2014