Free To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story by Jairam Ramesh

speech for posterity in his published collected works, although copies of the speech had been officially printed and circulated after it had been delivered.
    If it were any other speech, it would not have merited much attention. But this was an address to the nation after all. And it was his very first address devoted exclusively to economic issues, in which he explained the country’s predicament in simple, easy-to-understand language and laid out his government’s agenda clearly. I have no idea why this happened! I can only recall the unforgettable conversation in ‘Silver Blaze’ in
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
: 52
    [Inspector Gregory:] ‘Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’
    [Holmes:] ‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
    [Inspector Gregory:] ‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
    ‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.

    51 I tried to get hold of the officially printed copy of this speech from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting but was unsuccessful. Finally, an official copy was made available to me in June 2015 by P.V. Prabhakar Rao, Narasimha Rao’s youngest son (Annexure 8).
    52 Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
(London: Doubleday, 1894).

13
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The Sanskritist Prime Minister
    n 15 July 1991, the motion of confidence—moved three days
earlier—came up for voting in the Lok Sabha. But before the actual
vote, the House was treated to a vintage Narasimha Rao performance.
It was his first major speech in the Lok Sabha as prime minister. Rao
had been given briefs on different subjects. But he decided, as always,
to speak not from text but spontaneously.
    That day, the prime minister was at his philosophical best. At times,
what he said appeared convoluted, but that was par for the course.
He defended what the government had done since it had taken over.
He was not partisan but made the point effectively that the situation
he had inherited had left his finance minister and him with no other
option but to embark upon a series of tough measures—gold sales,
devaluation, talks with the IMF, and trade reforms, with industrial
liberalization also imminent.
    The highpoint of Rao’s forty-five minute intervention came when
he lapsed intoSanskrit:
    What have I done? What had the government done? We know that there are no alternatives to what we have done. We have only salvaged the prestige of this country.
Sarvanashe samutpanne ardham tyajati panditah
. This is precisely what we have done. I do not say that the economy has been booming or is going to boom immediately. What I am saying is s
arvanashe samputpanne
.
    I could see that most people did not understand what the prime minister was saying. I recallA.N. Verma looking at me with a puzzled expression, then whispering, ‘
Kaho, Pandit, kuch samjhe
? (Tell me, wise one, do you comprehend this?)’ Later, I told Verma that theSanskrit saying in the prime minister’s speech means that the wise man, in the event of total ruin, wriggles out by giving up half his possessions; this is done in the hope that he will save himself from total destruction by using what is left properly.
    Even if Rao’s expressions made little sense to those present, he definitely appeared Upanishadic. Moreover, he had unknowingly served notice to theBJP—Sanskrit was not its monopoly!
    The prime minister was not yet done with Sanskrit in the Lok Sabha. He went on:
    Naturally, there is a long distance to go. This is not all. This is not the final solution, this is only the beginning. If you do not have a beginning, you cannot have an end. Therefore, the journey, the
mahaprashthana
, starts today after taking these decisions.
    I think
mahaprashthana
53 may have been more easily understood by those present, but I am not entirely sure. Regardless, it was a nice Indian way of describing the economic reforms programme and giving it a spiritual dimension, as it were. Besides, as the