New Delhi, Oct. 18: For 16 years, Harish Chander struggled to sell the book he had authored and published on Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee. Then, he met foreign minister Sushma Swaraj.
The foreign office has procured 360 copies of Chander's book on Mookerjee to stock India's diplomatic missions across the world, after a meeting between Sushma and Chander this past summer, officials familiar with the purchase have confirmed to The Telegraph.
The books include 180 copies of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee - a contemporary study that Chander wrote in 2000, and an equal number of its Hindi translation. They were purchased after a book vetting society within the ministry of external affairs approved their procurement this year during an annual exercise in July just after Sushma met Chander, the officials said.
The purchase by a government led by the BJP - the Jana Sangh's successor - has led to questions within sections of diplomatic veterans because Mookerjee, though an influential political leader, had few foreign policy contributions that could benefit missions abroad.
But these veterans also pointed out that Sushma's foreign ministry was only continuing a tradition of purchasing for Indian missions books that may at least have as much to do with political affiliations as their worth in foreign policy. Some past instances have also triggered controversy.
"I wonder, was it wrong for me to have written on Dr. Mookerjee?" asked Chander, 80, in a conversation with this paper today. "Shouldn't today's Indians know about his work, his contributions, his legacy? I think they definitely should."
The foreign office's library here in New Delhi, and at the missions overseas, have long held books written by or on political figures, many closely affiliated with the Congress that has ruled India the most since Independence.
But while some of those purchases - Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India is available in most Indian mission libraries, for instance - involve books considered seminal works, several others have at least tangentially involved foreign policy.
These include books on Nehru's foreign policy and on his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, who was India's ambassador to the then Soviet Union, the US, Spain, UK, Ireland, and the country's permanent representative to the UN in New York for an unparalleled 22 years. More recently, the foreign office has purchased books on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including one on his foreign policy by a strategic affairs writer.
The foreign ministry is now in the process of publishing a book on Modi's speeches that will be shared with all its missions.
Books that are shared with Indian missions by the headquarters here are also meant as examples of texts that diplomats abroad should cite to their foreign counterparts as reading material on India.
But purchasing books can be a controversial process, as then junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor discovered in 2010.
The foreign ministry had purchased sets of three of Tharoor's already published books while he was in office, triggering charges of conflict of interest. Tharoor had denied any involvement in the decision to purchase his books, and officials familiar with that incident said the Congress MP was correct.
But direct pressure, these officials also pointed out, is often unnecessary and that juniors in any organisation may try and pander to what they think their bosses may like, unless the boss objects to such behaviour.
Even ideologically aligned governments are no guarantee for authors and publishers trying to sell their books.
Chander said he had written to several BJP leaders - including chief ministers and governors who were in the party before they took up the post - about his book. But very few even responded.
"One governor's secretary even asked me who is Syama Prasad Mookerjee?" Chander recalled. "Is it right for the party and its people to forget him now that they are in power?"
