Azaad- An Autobiography

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India's tumultuous political history, revealing backroom stories, humorous anecdotes and Invaluable life lessons come together in Azaad, Ghulam Nabi Azad's frank, unflinching autobiography about his life and career alongside some of the most powerful leaders from India and the world. As Ghulam Nabi charts his political odyssey, he showcases the grand arc of the great India story through the most dramatic political transformations of the last five decades.

The heart of this autobiography is devoted to his half a century-old association with the Congress party. He offers candid, captivating accounts of his relationship with the members of the Gandhi Parivar-former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay, Maneka, Sonia Gandhi and her children, Rahul and Priyanka. From devising a strategy with Indira Gandhi to bring Rajiv into politics and convincing Sonia to become the party chief to his mediation efforts in the tussle between Rahul Gandhi and Himanta Biswa Sarma-Ghulam Nabi explores the challenges of leadership and the consequences of daring to bring fresh thinking into the political landscape.

He also offers a personal perspective of working in government and in Opposition. He does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on leading politicians from across the political divide from his confrontation and comradeship with former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, political tricks played by N.D. Tiwari and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to his personal equation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Insightful, intimate and utterly entertaining, Azaad is Ghulam Nabi's own journey, in his own words.

It is a book that belongs on the reading list of every political aficionado.

GHULAM NABI AZAD is chairman of the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP).

A former member of the Indian National Congress (INC), he joined the party as block general secretary in Kashmir in 1973. During his 50-year-long association with the Congress, he has held multiple positions including state president, general secretary, and thereafter national president of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC). He was general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) a record number of times and member of the Congress Parliamentary Board (CPB) and Congress Working Committee (CWC) for more than three and-a-half decades. He has served as a Union Minister in the governments of Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh, both during UPA I and II, from 1982 till 2014. The seventh chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir from 2005 to 2008, Azad served as the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha for seven years till his retirement in February 2021. He resigned from primary membership of the Congress party in August 2022 and launched his own regional party.

I am somewhat in agreement with the observation of the international bestselling author Stephen King. I did not think that I had either the aptitude or the tools to pen the story of my life. I was so busy throughout my political career that I did not find time to read as much as I wanted to. Further, I did not keep notes, nor did I maintain a diary. In the past years, I did try once in a while to scribble my thoughts. I would begin and then discontinue. The exercise continued in fits and starts until I finally ended the agony by giving up. Writing. I believed, was for scholars and researchers and for those who were gifted with the talent to write stories.

Whenever I managed to catch up with friends and well-wishers from across the country and spend some quality time with them, we would discuss the country's politics. I would share with them my experiences and set right the erroneous perceptions they had about people and events. In more recent months, my friends began to egg me on to share my experiences in the form of a book. They said that readers would not only be interested in what I had to say but also had a right to know, since they are stakeholders in our democratic system.

They also pointed out that I was privy and party to significant material and events, and they deserved to be shared. I had worked with the stalwarts of our political system, from Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi to P.V. Narasimha Rao, Sitaram Kesri and Manmohan Singh. I also had the opportunity of working with the present leadership of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. My friends suggested that I was, thus, in a position to compare the functioning of the old leadership with the current leadership of the party, particularly the Gandhi family, with whom I have had a chance to work through three generations.

I feel proud that during Sanjay's time, I worked as the president of the Indian Youth Congress's (IYC's) Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) unit and as general secretary of the same in the most difficult times for the Congress party. Working with him was challenging and a great experience. He was intelligent and undoubtedly the most dynamic youth leader of his time. After Sanjay's death, I not only worked with Indira ji as president of the IYC from 1980 to 1982 but was also a deputy minister in her government from 1982 to 1984 (till her death). During Rajiv's and Rao's tenures as prime ministers (PMs) and party presidents, I was the general secretary in charge of several states and a Union minister holding a number of portfolios from time to time. I continued to hold important responsibilities during the presidentship of Kesri, Sonia ji and Rahul. In short, I was always in the thick of things.

As a parliamentary affairs minister with three PMs, I got the golden opportunity to have an interface with parliamentarians cutting across political parties and personally got to know senior leaders of other parties, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, Madhu Dandavate, Murli Manohar Joshi, Indrajit Gupta, George Fernandes, Jyotirmoy Basu, Chandra Shekhar, Somnath Chatterjee, Basudeb Acharia, Gulam Mehmood Banatwalla, Ram Jethmalani, Chitta Basu, Geeta Mukherjee, Jaswant Singh, Frank Anthony, Chandrajit Yadav, Ram Niwas Mirdha, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Ebrahim Sulaiman Sait, Sheikh Shahabuddin, Rasheed Masood, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, S.B. Chavan, Sharad Yadav, Sharad Pawar, Balram Jakhar, Shivraj Patil and many others. Although some of them were far senior to me both in terms of age and experience, I shared a cordial relationship with them.