Sonia chose Manmohan Singh as PM since he was no threat to Rahul, notes Obama in biography

NEW DELHI: While he praises former PM Manmohan Singh’s sagacity and policies in the first volume of his biography, former US president Barack Obama notes that Singh owed his position to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and had been chosen as he posed no political threat to Rahul Gandhi, who was seen as the leader in waiting.

“(Singh) owed his position to Sonia Gandhi... More than one political observer believed that she’d chosen Singh precisely because as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her ... son Rahul, whom she was grooming to take over the Congress party,” Obama says in the book.

Obama’s book, ‘A Promised Land’, is an account of his presidential years and has elicited attention in India for a lot that he has said about his interactions with Indian leaders. He has spoken of his childhood familiarity with Ramayana and Mahabharata, that he can make a dal and keema and enjoys Bollywood movies.


He holds Singh in some affection — “I would find Singh to be wise, thoughtful and scrupulously honest” — but expresses doubts about the succession plan. Singh was also his first-ever state banquet guest in 2009. The banquet finds no mention in the book.

The book highlights some of the twists and turns of India-US relations in those years. For instance, as senator in 2006, Obama introduced what would be known as a “killer amendment” to the India-US nuclear agreement, later known as the Hyde Act. He even entertained a visit by then ambassador Ronen Sen, accompanied by then foreign secretary Shyam Saran, joint secretary S Jaishankar and Raminder Jassal in his offices in Washington.

The Indian delegation failed to move him from his amendment, but it was voted down. On his watch, though, India’s hard-won nuclear waiver at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was diluted when guidelines were changed to allow ‘enrichment and reprocessing’ rights to only NPT members.

On his first visit to China in 2009, Obama displayed an earnest desire to address what he saw as the world’s big challenges from Sudan to Iran and the global economy to Afghanistan, together with China as equals. India followed these developments with concern. China, ironically, saved the day, because Beijing did not really want to play second fiddle to the US.

Obama also has some frank words on Pakistan. “Although Pakistan’s government cooperated with us on a host of counter-terrorism operations... it was an open secret that certain elements inside the country’s military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even Al Qaeda, sometimes using them as strategic assets to ensure the Afghan government remained weak and unable to align itself with Pakistan’s number one rival India,” he writes.