Kozhikode: The Balakot air strike in February 2019 achieved nothing but gave Narendra Modi his biggest election victory; his Rajiv Gandhi moment came in 2019, said Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar, drawing a parallel to the 404 seats Congress won after Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984.

He called on the government to talk with Pakistan and restore the relationship. "There is a certainty that if we tell the Pakistanis we are open to talk, they will be ready to talk," said Aiyar, who knows "Pakistan like nobody else".

He said India, under Narendra Modi, forced Nepal to become pro-China, humiliated other neighbouring countries and put India's interest at risk. "As I sat in the airport at Kathmandu, I was horrified to find that there are more flights from Kathmandu to different destinations of China than to India, and the Chinese have come in."

Aiyar was speaking with foreign affairs journalist Mandira Nayar on 'The Rajiv I Knew' at Manorama Hortus, Malayala Manorama's art and literary festival, in Kozhikode on Sunday.

He said China was no longer across the Himalayas. "People have not noticed. They have come to Pakistan. China and Pakistan are at the same point in the Indus Valley, where Alexander was in 326 BC. They can just walk in from the Indus Basin to the Gangetic Basin," said Aiyar. "That is the threat we have. Instead of dealing with the threat by talking to them... this government picks up two English words and declared it has conducted a surgical strike," he said.

In Rajiv Gandhi's time, India had an opening to Pakistan and China. "When he went to China, he signed an agreement that eventually resulted in Pranab Mukherjee, as the foreign minister, signing the treaty of peace and tranquillity on the border in 1993. Rajiv's visit gave us 35 years of peace on our borders."

But India could not settle the borders and then Galwan Valley took place, referring to the violent fistfight between Indian and Chinese soldiers that left 20 soldiers dead.

Within India, too, Rajiv Gandhi brought peace in Punjab, Assam and Mizoram, ravaged by years of insurgency, he said. Rajiv went to the border of Pakistan to honour the memory of Bhagat Singh and put out his hand of friendship to Sant Longowal and negotiated an agreement with him which ended the rioting, murders and massacres that were taking place in Punjab, he said.

Mizoram had been under insurgency for 20 years from 1966 to 1986. Rajiv offered the same deal to Mizo separatist leader Laldenga that he offered to Akalis and Asom Gana Parishad - political power.

After the election, Laldenga became the chief minister. "And who was the deputy? Lal Thanhawla, the Congressman who Laldenga tried to assassinate for 20 years. Rajiv persuaded Lal Thanhawla to accept this assassin as his Chief Minister and democracy was brought and today Mizoram is the most peaceful state in India despite all these refugees coming in from Myanmar is Mizoram."

Rajiv Gandhi's achievements have been simply obscured by a completely false allegation that he took bribes for the Bofors deal and did not do anything to stop the Sikh riots, Aiyar said. That is why "the full title of my book is not the Rajiv I knew. The full title is 'The Rajiv I Knew and Why He Was The Most Misunderstood Prime Minister of India'," he said.

In 2001, the Supreme Court concluded that neither Rajiv nor his civil servants had any financial benefit from the Bofors deal.

Similarly, Rajiv brought the Sikh riots to an end by calling in the army after finding that the home minister PV Narasimha Rao was "completely incompetent and incapable of taking any decisions".

"But the god had made him (Rao) not with a skin but with Teflon. So no Sikh commentator that I know, no adverse opinion that I know has ever questioned the role of PV Narasimha Rao as home minister in this rioting or rather this pogrom."