The conversation was occasioned by the arrival of Jairam Ramesh's unique new look at Indira Gandhi - now out as a volume called Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature - but, inevitably it drifted off in many directions including the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru, the BJP's Indira admiration, and the current state of the Congress. Excerpts:

Q: Isn't this a slightly impolitic time to invoke Indira Gandhi? Everytime you say the Modi government is authoritarian, you'll get slapped by Indira and the Emergency in return.

A: (Laughs) This is a somewhat unusual year. 2017 is the centenary of two Russian revolutions, the centenary of the Champaran satyagraha, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration which completely re-did the Middle East and the consequences of which we are still living with, the centenary of John Kennedy's birth and also of Indira Gandhi. I thought this was a fitting year to remember Indira Gandhi anew, in a way she seldom has been. There have been many biographies of Indira Gandhi, but all of them are political works, reflections on her as a quintessential politics and power person. I wanted to see if I could bring her out of the two images she is always boxed in - Durga, and authoritarian architect of the Emergency. The question that I asked myself was: who did she think she was? As I delved more into the primary material, I discovered that she saw herself as a naturalist first and foremost. There is a letter from 1977 to Pupul Jayakar in which she says something like go tell Morarji Desai it is the environment that concerns me, I am not interested in politics.

Q: But a hardcore politician she essentially was.

A: Of course, she was born to politics, lived her whole life surrounded by politics and then she became prime minister. But she was fundamentally a different person inside of herself than is normally portrayed. She was a pioneering naturalist. It was a private passion, but she converted it into a public duty. You could say, so what if she was interested in nature, big deal. But what she did with this love of hers was to make it a political issue and foreground her concerns in a way nobody before her had done. On nature, conservation, environment, wildlife, although she inherited much from Jawaharlal Nehru, she went far beyond him in doing constructive things about them as a leader. The entire conservation and environment protection edifice is her doing. The ministry of environment itself was her creation. All of this began to come to me when I was environment minister myself. I began to see another Indira Gandhi, beyond the Durga-Villain of Emergency binary. And I thought it was essential to put this very important aspect of her out in the public. Her love for nature is probably the only thing that remained constant in her life, her politics changed over time, but not this. By the way, her short stay in Santiniketan played a role in this. In one of her letters she calls Tagore "ecological man"; so the Santiniketan stint made a deep impress. And very few people know that Indira Gandhi knew Bengali. She had her own translation of Ekla chalo re because she was unhappy with the official one. A lot of people who have begun to read the book have come back saying, we never knew Indira Gandhi had this side to her. Even some of my BJP friends. Because she is always associated with power and politics and authority.

Q: The BJP has many Indira Gandhi fans, especially the BJP today.

A: The BJP is more anti-Nehru than anti-Indira, that is very clear.

Q: Why is that you think?

A: I think it goes back to Bangladesh. There is good evidence to believe that (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee called her Durga on the 16th or 17th of December 1971. He denied it later, but he did call her that. The BJP's project is to demonise and denigrate Nehru, but it remains ambivalent on Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi also was comfortable with shankaracharyas and swamis, she was close to the Ramakrishna Mission and would go to Belur Math, she would go regularly to Kamakhya, in 1983 she went to Haridwar to court sadhus with such public fanfare. She had that side to her. Nehru, the public Nehru, would never do any of this. Nehru recognised India is a profoundly multi-religious society, but his project was not to build a secular society, his project was to build a secular state. Classically, the Congress has never been in denial of Hinduism. Gandhi was a proud Hindu, the Congress had many leaders who foregrounded their Hindu identity, Nehru himself has written eloquently of the glory of India's ancient history. But I think he was also much more aware of the composite nature of the India he was in.

Q: Do you get a sense, though, that the current BJP under Narendra Modi has a sneaking admiration for Indira Gandhi?

A: They love muscular nationalism, of course. But there is a big difference between Indira Gandhi and Modi. Indira Gandhi grew up in a secular democratic ethos, which Vajpayee, and to a great degree, Advani did too. There is a huge difference between Vajpayee and Modi, not to speak of Indira Gandhi. Advani, as home minister, has gone to New York and praised Nehru. I cannot imagine Modi doing that. There were certain values of the Nehruvian era that went beyond political parties and cultures. Modi and his people have nothing to do with that era, they have a huge quarrel with it. Modi does not separate the personal from the political, Indira Gandhi and Vajpayee could do that. Another thing: if you read some of the letters and notes that Indira Gandhi wrote, she comes as a very self-deprecatory person, a trait Modi cannot be accused of having. But yes, the BJP does remain ambivalent on Indira Gandhi, except the Emergency probably. They like muscular nationalism, even this thing of the strong leader, I agree. But Nehru they just can't stand, they want him buried.

Q: Why are you not able to build the narrative around Nehru afresh? The Congress is taking it lying down.

A: (Sighs) Yeah, we have to get our act together. We are not able to turn things politically. Demonetisation created havoc, we were not able to capitalise. There is a jobs famine, agriculture is in deep crisis, the economic slowdown is real, GST is going to create more complications. However, Modi has been able to convince people that whatever he is doing is for their good and that they will have to bear difficulties. He uses the media brilliantly, he is aggressive, energetic, and one of his great advantages is that he is able to play good cop to Amit Shah's bad cop.

Q: I repeat my question: why is the Congress not able to do something about it, the oldest party of this country? What is preventing the Congress from playing its own politics, Opposition politics?

A: I think we have to resolve the leadership issue sooner than later. Mr (Rahul) Gandhi has delayed his taking over for far too long, and the expectation now is that he will take over by October.

Q: But what would that resolve?

A: That will convert a de facto situation into a de jure one and that brings operational advantages. My view is, and this is only my view, that he feels hamstrung because he is Number Two. He will feel less hamstrung if he is Number One.

Q: What will that do, allow him to get his own team and push his ideas more independently?

A: He is slowly getting his team, he has got a lot of young people, talented people, on board. He means well. But the Congress style is change through evolution, change doesn't happen overnight. It cannot be a U-turn, it has to be cautious. He thinks hard, and he thinks strategically. But I think he has to think of 2019, and not of 2024.

Q: Looking at the way the Congress is proceeding, you might suspect the party has written off 2019...

A: Well, he has to think 2019 because if you do not, there may not be a 2024. That is his biggest challenge. He has to energise and we have to show up in 2019. I think we still can do a 2004, the way India Shining collapsed. Considering all the bubbling discontent and the economic turndown, there is no shortage of issues on which we can build. But the Congress has to learn to work with other parties, that is very important. We have to build a conglomerate.

Q: Where is the hitch?

A: I think the natural impulse of the Congress is we are the party. I have heard Pranab Mukherjee say so many times, before he became President, that the Congress is the natural party of governance. That is how the party thinks deep down. We have to now realise that we are up against serious competition. We are competing with the BJP nationally, with regional forces in the states. And anti-incumbency is not automatic. Look at the number of chief ministers who keep winning, Navin Patnaik, Shivraj Chouhan, Raman Singh. You have to work, and you have to work with other parties. We have to change the way we think.