Imam Bukhari's job to lead congregational prayers, not politics

To keep the Muslims in his sway, Rajiv banned Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses", upturned the Supreme Court verdict on the Shah Bano case and delayed upgrading relations with Israel, as if these were the bread and butter issues for Indian Muslims. Those have never been addressed.

Rajiv's faulty moves on issues he had no instinctive feel for, left the field open for the BJP to expand. P.V. Narasimha Rao found it more important to thwart Arjun Singh's political aspirations, than to build defences against the rising tide of the BJP.

History will judge P.V. as having been a better friend of Atal Bihari Vajpayee than of any Congress leader. Little wonder that L.K. Advani described him as the best prime minister since Lal Bahadur Shastri. And why not? During the 1965 war with Pakistan, Shastri had asked the RSS to take over Civil Defence duties.