LATE ARJUN SINGHJI: HOW I REMEMBER HIM

In the last twelve years of my service in I.A.A.S. from where I retired as Director General in 1990 I had interacted with top political leaders of India in different ministries and mostly in the meetings of the Public Accounts Committee. But more people came to meet me at night to consult me astrologically at my residence. I went to the houses of four politicians for different reasons: to the house of late Dinesh Singhji to meet some old and experienced astrologers on his invitation: to late Charan Singhji when he was the prime minister for astrological consultation twice when he had expressed a desire to meet me and to the house Shri Natwar Singhji to meet a remarkable Irish psychic. But for astrological consultations Dinesh Singhji and Natwar Singhji came to my house.

The only exception I made was in the case of late Arjun Singhji whom and whose wife I met for the first time in 1986 when I had gone to their official residence when Arjun Singhji was Telecommunications Minister in the government of Sri Rajiv Gandhi. The reason was the instruction of a great saint Mauni Baba whom I had first met in the house of late  Sri Nagendra Singh, former judge of the International  Court of Justice and with whom I had lost touch. Later I came to know from a woman disciple of his that after the death of Nagendra Singhji , Baba was coming to the house of Arjun Singhji in Delhi. In my presence, once Baba told Arjun Singhji and his wife to consult me only for astrology and asked me to give them consultation in their house.

Before I had met Arjun Singhji and his wife, his daughter Veenaji had come to meet with Sri A.U.Singh Deo, now a member of Rajya Sabha, at my house and looking at her horoscope I had asked her to concentrate on social work which she has been doing very well and with great enthusiasm. Later, the second son of  Arjun Singhji , Shri Ajay had come to me meet me and I had asked him who had advised him to join politics. Surprised, had asked me what was wrong. I had told that he was going to get involved in a big controversy and that happened when the Churhat lottery episode became explosive for some years till it died down.

Why Baba gave such an instruction became clear to me later when I came to know that an astrologer of Delhi, more notorious for sensational prediction than real ability, had told the wife of Arjun Singhji that her husband would be shot dead and a pistol shot would penetrate his forehead.  There were some matters which had better been discussed in the privacy of his house and that suited me.

In so many meetings of ours, we never discussed politics and if we had, some bitterness could have crept in. With the passing of the Gandhian era, greatness in public life had collapsed into opportunism, pseudo secularism had become a vote catching shibboleth. I had served as a personal volunteer of Mahatma Gandhi in Sevagaram in my early teens and am only one year junior to Arjun Singhji in age. As the son of an idealist great and famous editor of the National Herald, the founder editor of the National Herald, late Sri K.Rama Rao, I had personally seen from closest quarters the famous political leaders of the Gandhian era and known them personally in the pre independence era. I had my own political convictions though it is the government service I drifted into and kept my political opinions to myself. Arjun Singhji knew it and appreciated that I had my own strong private political convictions. Fortunately, no occasion arose ever for us to discuss politics and disagree disagreeably.

No big occasion arose for the next four years for me to give any major prediction to Arjun Singhji. In 1990, when the Congress party was out of power an article had appeared in the Navbharat Times, the Hindi sister paper of the Times of India, under the name of Arjun Singhji, pathetic in tone and a half willing acceptance of fate. He had undergone an open heart surgery and was resting in an air conditioned room of a hospital. It was as though the razzle dazzle of politics was only a faint memory now and what awaited him was oblivion.

I looked deeply into his horoscope and kept the readings to myself till one day Mrs.Arjun Singh sent me a message to meet them in the hotel room. I went there , saw the depressed face of Arjun Singhji and straightaway told him that in 1991 the Congress Party would come back into power and he would be an important cabinet minister. The rest is history---in 1991 the Congress party formed a government at the centre under the late P.V.Narasimha Rao and Arjun Singhji became HRD Minister.

Having retired in 1990, I had to vacate the government bungalow in six months and while I was preparing to move, Arjun Singhji asked me not to move and made me the vice chairman of the Sanskrit Parishad where the work was of financial nature , for which Sanskrit scholarship was not required. I could retain the government bungalow. But after a year a half, I requested him to relieve me of this post as I wanted to move into a small private flat I had decided to buy and not remain dependent on the charity of government. He and his wife were surprised and I moved away to east Delhi but remained in touch with them throughout often going to their house for dinner or lunch and occasional astrological consultation.  

If I ever envied Arjun Singhji it was for his huge library, a great collection of various books which have now been donated to some library. He was one the best read politicians India ever had though this facet of his personality was not known to many except me  because often he referred to some book to seek support for his arguments. Academically , he and his children have been brilliant.

Strangely, one day Arjun Singhji asked me to meet him privately, not in the presence of his wife for an astrological prediction sometime in 1998 and asked me whether his life span was over as an astrologer had told him. I assured him that for another eight or nine years there was no danger except health problems which would increase and that he would once again become a cabinet minister at the centre.

NDA in power then had introduced astrology as a subject of study in non Sanskrit universities but in 2004 when the UPA came into power and Arjun Singhji became HRD minister for the second time, I had asked him whether he would allow astrology to continue. He smiled and said that he would not touch the decision as he knew more than eighty percent politicians consulted astrologers and were not opposed to astrology. 

Some years later he was dropped from the cabinet of Manmohan Singhji and I told Mrs.Arjun Singh that her husband's career was over and they should expect it all as the final sun set on the long career of Arjun Singhji.

The mahadasha was changing, from Jupiter's to Saturn and I had seen it as ebbing away of his stellar political career and life itself. In Saturn Saturn Venus period he breathed his last on 4 March 2011.

( From a souvenir SADBHAVANA produced by Smt Veena Singh on her father in April 2016)

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