Arun Jaitley loves cricket. If he were to play cricket he would surely be an all-rounder; good with the bat at any position, safe pair of hands, and a master spinner. In politics and governance, Jaitley balances the pragmatic with the political. He has emerged as the go-to man for the government to interface with a variety of constituencies, from the media to the corporate sector to global. That, in short, is the man..
Arun Jaitley I’m sure is many things to many people but what many people do not know is his personal as opposed to his public and political persona. And who better than to give you that inside slice of a man not known to mix the personal and the political at any turn. And so when his friend Suhel Seth tells you of a small incident in the hills of Nainital it brings into relief a side of this lawyer-politician that makes him seem so human.
Suhel remembers how many years ago when Jaitley was the Union Law Minister, he went to Nainital to inaugurate the new High Court that had been set up there. Since Suhel was a student at St Joseph’s, Nainital, he asked him if he wanted to visit the place. He arranged for Suhel to stay at the Raj Bhavan, along with him. When they entered the Raj Bhavan and the caretaker asked for the required payment, Jaitley was quick to take out the money and pay it. The caretaker was a man called Tewariji.
Later in the evening, when Suhel was hanging around the impressive Raj Bhavan, Tewariji did not lose the opportunity to come and tell Suhel how he had served so many ministers and VIPs but that not one had ever paid the ridiculously low fee of Rs 200 per night and he always had to cough up the cash from his own pocket. Jaitley was the first man to ever pay for it himself. With awe, Tewariji, Suhel remembers, told him that this man Jaitley would go very far. That he has.
You cannot but like Arun Jaitley, even if you don’t agree with his politics. The man is suave, intelligent, sparkling wit, razor sharp, amiable and often smiling. Even when he’s taking you down or out or even ripping apart his adversary, Jaitley does it with calmness and a half smile which is nothing but a smirk. He brings all these qualities to the table when handling his job – when he was the country’s top-notch lawyer or when heading the pecking order in the Modi dispensation.
He is a man who not only has shown an ability to deal with the complexities his job brings, but also balance the pragmatic with the political. More crucially, he has emerged as the go-to man for the government to interface with a variety of constituencies, from the media to the corporate sector to global investors all of whom matter a lot to the Modi administration.
Given that Arun Jaitley loves cricket and has been an administrator of the game as vice-president of the BCCI it would be apt to describe him with a cricketing metaphor—he’s an all-rounder. He can open the innings and also come further down in the middle-order; he possesses a safe pair of hands and most of all, is a master bowler of spin. Just in the last one year, since the BJP was voted into power with a tremendous majority, he has held varied portfolios, ranging from Defence, Finance, Information and Broadcasting and Corporate Affairs.
Probably the most important role he has played is as the de facto spokesperson of this government, robustly and efficiently not just defending its decisions but also explaining some of the U-turns the Modi government has had to take in the past few months
This ability to manoeuvre the treacherous political sands without appearing defensive or indeed needlessly aggressive is what sets him apart—like any good lawyer, he sets out to present the best possible defence of his client.
This is a more valuable skill than acknowledged. Jaitley’s colleagues in the government and in the party tend to come out fists flailing against the UPA and the Gandhi dynasty whenever they are asked a question. Jaitley doesn’t; he is critical of the Congress, but not in a way that sounds crude.
The articulate and suave Jaitley makes up for the crass public spokespersons of the party and provides assurance that the BJP bench has some people with the education and maturity to express the party’s and government’s point of view without getting into a slanging match. He rarely, if ever, displays a needless angularity in addressing an issue. That makes him well-liked by the media, which knows that he will give a good quote but also provide insights and information that is so sorely lacking.
Part of the reason for his widespread media popularity is, of course, his networking skills. A recent profile suggested that he had friends in the media and also in politics cutting across parties and ideologies which had helped him over the years. Perhaps that is the case, but if so, then this quality has helped this government the most since it is largely composed of novices who would otherwise find themselves at sea in the treacherous waters of Delhi. Jaitley is an invaluable man for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Jaitley successfully established his skills as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s troubleshooter when it comes to dealing with the opposition parties and finding solutions to outstanding policy matters. The finance minister has gone out of his way to demonstrate that he cannot be ignored and that he is the Prime Minister’s best bet when it comes to handling important policy matters and dealing with the opposition.
In a cabinet that seems under orders to stay out of the limelight and focus on their work, Jaitley seems to be an exception.
But then he always was an exception. He is the consummate suave Englishtelevision-type Lutyens insider in a cabinet led by a PM who takes pride in being antiLutyens. He was the one prominent BJP heavyweight who lost the Lok Sabha elections when a Modi wave propelled many non-entities to victory. The rumour was Arun Jaitley had decided to fight Lok Sabha elections because the PM wanted only “elected” representatives in his cabinet. He lost but still entered the cabinet as did the likes of Smriti Irani and Nirmala Sitharaman. Obviously, the PM holds him in high esteem.
He’s no Jaitley-come-lately
A BJP secretary and a name with little national resonance in the 90s Modi was a regular visitor to the Jaitley home. It was Jaitley who stuck by Modi post-2002 offering him legal help and tea and sympathy. When Amit Shah had to leave Gujarat in 2010 after the Supreme Court ruling he came straight to the house of Jaitley. A BJP politician recalls “there wasn’t a day these past years the two didn’t share a meal together.” As Jaitley himself told the popular TV courtroom newsdrama, Aap ki Adalat, that despite knowing that his own name was in the race, he batted for Modi as the BJP’s PM candidate early. So let no one doubt his loyalties.
Just call him Mr Congeniality
There’s nobody in Delhi who does not like Arun Jaitley. He’s on the first-name basis with everyone who counts for anything, across party lines. Sharad Pawar and he bond over cricket. When Mayawati wants to speak in a major debate, it’s Jaitley who obliges with an allocation. He even helps out Sharad Yadav when the latter is upset about the party office being moved from the ground floor to the third floor. Jaitely sounds quite like the lovable cuddly teddy bear with an unnamed Trinamool Congress member saying he should be the parliamentary affairs minister because “the select committee meetings are so relaxed because Jaitley knows everyone on a firstname basis.”
The making of Arun Jaitley
It’s not often that the man opens up to the media formally even though he’s known to have informal sessions where he regales the media with his penchant for gossip and humour. In a recent chat with the celebrated British author and historian Patrick French, Arun Jaitley gives us a rare peep into his family and the past.
“We were a Partition family,” he says. “They had nostalgia about Lahore and disliked Pakistan for having taken Lahore from them. It had left wounds. Families who suffered at Partition were conventionally Jana Sangh voters. They were critical of Nehru and even more of Indira. I remember my father thought they had suffered because of Nehru.”
Jaitley’s newly married parents had reached Delhi as refugees in August 1947. His grandmother had been left with six sons and two daughters when her husband,a mid-level railways officer, died in the 1920s. She strove to get them educated, and four of the boys ended up as lawyers. “It’s rare to be so keen on education,” says her grandson. “They brought their clothes and jewellery with them. Nothing else. In Old Delhi, they took various places on rent and were given a Muslim migrant’s house.”
Born in 1952, he says he had a protected childhood. But it was not easy. “Have you ever seen a Punjabi beggar? Punjabis as a community are an aggressive lot. They made shops on the pavements. They set up ‘camp colleges’. At that time, the High Court was in Simla and the Bar was divided between local lawyers, who were Banias and Kayasths and a few Muslims, and newcomers known as the ‘refugee bar’. Some, including my father, got offices in Chandni Chowk or Sadar Bazaar. Education was a top priority because of the Brahmin thing of my grandmother. My sisters and I were sent to convent schools, English-medium.” In the 1960s his father bought a small plot and built a house in Naraina Vihar.
It was in the courtyard of this house, on the night of 25 June 1975, that Arun Jaitley spotted a policeman speaking to his father. He was at the time an activist in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and had been picked by JP as the convenor of his youth committee. “I escaped out of the back door.” The next day, as president of the student’s union of Delhi University, he organised one of the only protests in the entire country. “We had 300 people. At that time, I did not even know the Emergency had been declared.” Then the police made mass arrests, across the city. “I was detained for 19 months between Ambala Jail and Tihar Jail.”
While some were torn apart by the experience of imprisonment, Jaitley seemed sanguine. “Jail is a state of mind. If you’re too anxious to be released, it impacts on your mind and body. If you’re in the struggle mode, you don’t give a damn. You read a lot, play volleyball, badminton. We had a few hundred political prisoners and were all segregated. You eat together, develop relationships. It’s like being in a hostel together.”
A political career
It was in the aftermath that he forged his political career. “In January 1977 I was released and plunged into the election campaign. I was the national convenor of the youth and students. I travelled around India. Lalu, Sharad Yadav, Nitish, Karat, Yechury, Parkash Singh Badal, JP himself, Acharya Kripalani, George Fernandes, Advani, Vajpayee, Nanaji Deshmukh – I have dealt with almost every one of them. I’m one of the few eyewitnesses in the present government of what happened.”
Forty years on, wrapped in a jamawar shawl while addressing the Rajya Sabha, having made plenty of money as a senior advocate, it can be easy to forget this tough side of Jaitley. The connections he formed early on stood him in good stead later. He says he first met Narendra Modi in the 1970s, “when he was studying in Delhi,” and was struck in the 1990s by his “organisational competence.” The relationship seems symbiotic. In the wake of the 2002 Gujarat riots, he gave Modi shrewd legal advice in his dealings with the judiciary and Election Commission. “In 2011, I told colleagues he will be the prime ministerial candidate.”
“I am socially wedded to the middleclass family values of India, strong traditional family values. I am economically liberal. I’m conservative on issues dealing with sovereignty, terrorism and separatism. Then on the gay rights issue, I was one of the first people in the BJP to speak on this subject. If millions practice an alternative sexuality, then can you say it’s against the order of nature? You can’t have a situation where they are all locked up. On caste and religion, it is a matter of freedom of choice – I have a big heart. In my family even when children marry, we don’t ask the caste or community.”
Does he believe in God? Jaitley pauses. “My mother was religious and my wife is very religious. We have a temple in the house with multiple gods, portraits of the Golden Temple and all of that. I’m a practising Hindu but I’m not ritualistic. I do it at formal functions. I follow the customs.”
On his greatest weakness, Jaitley goes off on an extended riff about his favourite dishes. “I was originally a great lover of food but I have health limitations now. My preference is for north Indian food. I like Kashmiri, Punjabi, the Old Delhi food. I like Gujarati and the South Indian snacky food. And I very much like the old club menus, the legacy foods. Continental is otherwise not my great favourite. I like Chinese and Thai, among the internationals. But these days,” he says wistfully, raising his right hand to the sky with its fingers splayed, “I even have to carry my own food on aircraft, for health reasons.”
On his weakness as a person, Patrick French writes for the first time Arun Jaitley falls silent. He tries to think of a weakness, and then gives up. “I’ve never thought of it.”