One Life Is Not Enough

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One Life is not Enough,
K Natwar Singh.

The autobiography of former diplomat and Union Minister K Natwar Singh,” One Life Is Not Enough” is a must read for all students of contemporary history.
Natwar Singh is famous for his erudition and felicity of the English language.
The eminently readable book has some explosive disclosures :
1. Nehru violated the oath of secrecy by disclosing to Edwina Mountbatten, the classified details of the talks with China.
2. Sanjay Gandhi was seeing and deciding on key Govt files during the 1975 emergency, when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister.
3. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took the disastrous decision to send the Indian Army into Sri Lanka to destroy the LTTE, without consulting any of the key personnel, including the ministers present with him at Colombo.

K Natwar Singh is the most eligible person to write about the Nehru- Gandhi family. He was a classmate of Nehru’s sister Krishna Hutheesingh’s son. Indira Gandhi was the witness at his marriage to the daughter of the Maharaja of Patiala.
As an IFS officer, Natwar Singh worked under Indira Gandhi as a diplomat and as a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet. He tutored Sonia Gandhi to make speeches.
He became a trenchant critic later. He writes that during the Manmohan Singh Govt, not a leaf moved without the approval of Sonia Gandhi, and that she had access to all the Government files.

I have been a longtime admirer of the literary talents of K Natwar Singh . He writes beautiful prose, breezy and witty . As a diplomat he could meet the greatest of the writers all over the world. His book reviews in the “Frontline” magazine were worth waiting for.
No wonder, since he had the best of education, in Mayo College Ajmer, Scindia School Gwalior and St Stephens College Delhi, before being selected to the diplomatic service.
– Joy Kallivayalil.

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