Book Review

One Life is Not Enough – By Natwar Singh

About the author:
Entitled to politics Natwar Singh is rarely known to be as an IFS Officer who served for
31 years. The fourth son of Thakur Govind Singh of Deeg and his wife Thakurani Prayag
Kaur, Singh was born in the princely state of Bharatpur to an aristocratic Jat family
related to the ruling dynasty of Bharatpur. He attended Mayo College and Scindia
School,Gwalior, both traditionally for Indian princely clans and nobles, and took an
undergraduate degree at St. Stephen's College, Delhi. He subsequently studied
at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University and was a visiting scholar for a period
at Peking University in China.
Mr.Singh was invited to politics in the year 1984. Singh joined the Congress party
and was elected to the 8th Lok Sabha from Bharatpur constituency in Rajasthan.  In
1986, he became minister of state for external affairs. He was in the throne in external
aff0airs until the Congress party lost power after being defeated in the general elections
of 1989. The party later came to throne with the perspective of P.V Narsimha Rao who
was one of the refined former prime minister. Mr.Singh unafforded any seat though he
played a vital role during the time. Mr.Singh assumed office on 23 May 2004 as India's
minister for external affairs. His tenure proved controversial. Oil for food scandal was
one of the largest intra state controversies which forced him to quit the government.
About the book:

In the latest of the insider autobiographies, former External Affairs Minister Natwar
Singh’s book ‘One Life is Not Enough’ is learned to have given an account of what took place
within the government during UPA-I as also the Manmohan Singh-Sonia equation in
government, that he, as the Gandhi-family confidant, and key Cabinet Minister to PM
Manmohan Singh, the ‘ultimate insider’ was privy to.
The book is meant to be his autobiography, but most of the commotion is not about his
'undisciplined childhood' spent with his feudal family in Bharatpur or his days as a young IFS
officer (who's interested anyway in that); it is the chapters that are an 'expose' on Sonia Gandhi
that are grabbing eyeballs.
Singh's previous publication, The Legacy of Nehru, which is a eulogy of a man who
should "occupy the top place in Indian history", indicates that his credentials as a chronicler are
rather subject to whether he stands in favour with the Gandhis or not.
 
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mentions his contribution to the
negotiations in Washington in her autobiography, saying that it would have been impossible to
conclude the deal without Mr. Singh. At one point in her book, No Higher Honor, Ms. Rice
describes how Dr. Manmohan Singh had decided against the nuclear agreement, but she and
Mr. Singh hadn’t given up. “Natwar was adamant. He wanted the deal, but the Prime Minister
wasn’t sure he could sell it in New Delhi. We pushed as far as we could toward agreement,” she
describes. It remains to be seen if this book will shed more light on the processes that finally
swung the deal.
Review of the book:
“I believe that life is a journey without maps. Many leaves have turned in my garden. There is now
no losing or winning, there is only self-realization. Each dawn is no longer a promise” is how this memoir
of a former diplomat-turned-politician-turned-Congress baiter, especially the Gandhi family, begins. He is
a man with many hats, and being a writer and voracious reader are not the least of them.

One Life is Not Enough: An Autobiography by K. Natwat Singh, a man whom I greatly admired once but
choose to loathe now, is an engaging read which takes us deep into the murky world of Indian politics.
This twenty-chapter autobiography is one of the best I have read by an Indian. I would proudly place it
alongside former Outlook magazine editor Vinod Mehta’s Lucknow Boy. It is brutal, absorbing and but not
necessarily honest.

Some of the chapters like The Early Years, Once a Nehruite, Working with Indira Gandhi, Emergency,
The Two Summits, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Rajiv Gandhi Years, The Tragedy of Sri Lanka, The
Decline of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi and The Volcker Conspiracy caught my attention. The book is
informative, and insightful. Natwar writes, “I feel ashamed of myself, for doing what is expedient and not
what is right.” He also writes,”I do not subscribe to the gospel of equality.”

Defiance is a prominent part of my character, he says. And this defiance, more than anything else, will be
what the book will be remembered for. A loyalist of the Gandhi family, the Volcker Report has destroyed
the bond of friendship that once existed. I can feel a tinge of sadness for this bitter man whose way with
words have fascinated me during the eighties and nineties. One Life is Not Enough by K. Natwar Singh is
a good example of what not to write and say when age catches up with you and you have a hard pill to
swallow.

Attributes of the book:

Author: K.Natwar Singh COVER PAGE

Country: India

Language: English

Genre: Non Fiction Book

Publisher: Rupa Publications India

Publication Date: 31’July 2014

Pages: 464

With Due Respect From,

S.Visesh Gopal