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Rao's next novel will tell all on Ayodhya

Former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao's much-awaited political novel, The Insider, a sardonic account of politics in post-Independence India, has been released.

Written in the style popularly described as autobiographical fiction -- part fact and part fiction -- Rao's 767-page book, which, incidentally, was released by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Wednesday, is the story of a south Indian village boy. He gets caught up in the Independence movement, graduates to state politics and ends up in the top job.

In the preface, the former prime minister admits that the protagonist Anand is modelled on himself.

''The story he tells has about it the truth (albeit fictionalised) of the insider,'' he writes.

The rest of the political landscape shows characters who are self-seekers, sycophants or plain crooks.

Rao had nursed the story for more than 20 years, working on it whenever he got time from his hectic political activities.

Besides Rao and Vajpayee, others present at the book release function included Penguin Books India chairman Aveek Sarkar, Managing Director and Editor David Davidar and author Khushwant Singh, a consultant to Penguin.

Vajpayee described The Insider as a "profound contribution" which threw useful light on a slice of the country's life.

Trying to lay to rest all speculations regarding which crook or sycophant in the scathing novel referred to which real life personality, Rao said only the characters of Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were true to life.

''The back-room politics, conspiracies, deals, crooks, moneymen and musclemen are ubiquitous and everybody knows about them. I have not referred to any one individual or incident in particular,'' he said.

Rao said his book was an account of the ''inner corrosion'' in India's polity. The book looked at the ''criticality of legislation as the main instrument of social change.''

The former prime minister said the sequel to the book, which would bring the events up-to-date, would be published shortly. The novel, which, according to his publisher Sarkar, would be more 'revealing' than the first, detailed the history of events surrounding the temple-mosque controversy in Ayodhya. Rao was still working on it.

UNI

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