Tilting at windmills Little nameplate slabs deeply embedded in huge stone walls or heavily fringed by masses of bougainvillaea give New Delhi's Amrita Shergill Marg a discreteness its residents have gotten used to. The discreteness certainly proves to be handy during their more embarrassing moments. Take number 7, Amrita Shergill Marg for example. Nothing about the quiet facade indicates the turbulence inside the huge house. It is a rambling old thing and, going by the nameplates which run into three levels, obviously divided between many generations of Sondhis. The driveway is a slushy mess, seconds after the heavy downpour has thinned to a drizzle. The gate lies open, and the 'Beware of Dog' sign is half-hearted enough to be safely ignored. Inside his heavily-draped study where the air-conditioning hums rather noisily, M.L. Sondhi, who has just been unceremoniously shunted out as chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), is in the mood for a fight. 'What they have done is absolutely illegal... I had been appointed chairman of the ICSSR for a fixed term of three years till October 2002 and I cannot be removed,' thunders Sondhi. His voice bounces a tad too loud against the walls of the small, very functional study, but that possibly has less to do with injured pride and more to do with the fact that the former ICSSR chairman is a little hard of hearing. The ICSSR, an umbrella body intended to mould the social science scene by setting up autonomous research centres, has been in the news for quite a while now, with a section of its members making quite a noise over Sondhi's 'arbitrary' style of functioning; while Sondhi resolutely holds that these members are working towards the saffronisation of the ICSSR. However, Sondhi, looking every bit the archetypal intellectual dressed in his trademark bundgala, believes it was his book How India and Pakistan Make Peace that led to his dismissal. 'They had planned a strategy to create an anti-summit mood... and obviously the book annoyed them. Which is why they developed an animus against the conference [Sondhi was in the middle of a conference - Vajpayee-Musharraf: A Preliminary Assessment - when news of his dismissal came through], and against me,' he says. This is his longer explanation for the dismissal. He has a shorter one. 'It's similar to a poem I wrote when Indira Gandhi high-handedly dismissed B.G. Verghese: Mrs Gandhi admired, Verghese was hired; Mrs Gandhi got tired; Verghese was fired. Actually my poem was carried in Newsweek at the time, because I held a demonstration outside The Hindustan Times office. And my dismissal now is just the same kind of thing,' laughs Sondhi happily. Going back to the longer explanation, who does Sondhi mean by 'they'? 'People with a different perspective, the hardliners who want to hold on to their shops of hatred, fear and anger,' he explains. He moves on to an impassioned outburst against hardliners everywhere: 'Kennedy tried to improve relations, look what they did to him. Then there was Mr Rabin and the hardliners finished him off as well.' And back to the Indian hardliners: 'Actually they are small-minded people, who gravitate to positions of importance and don't represent anything of Vajpayee,' concludes Sondhi. The former ICSSR chairman, a staunch Vajpayee loyalist, hopes that the Prime Minister ('to whom I have given a copy of my book') will 'sleep with the book under his pillow so that he can see how the Indo-Pak problem can be solved.' Sondhi also hopes Pervez Musharraf (who too has been presented with a copy of the book) will sleep with it under his pillow. Coming back to the Agra summit, Sondhi adds that Vajpayee has shown 'great skill' in handling Indo-Pak relations. And he traces that back to the time Vajpayee was foreign minister and he removed visa restrictions to Pakistan. 'Then there was his Lahore diplomacy attempt and now Agra, but 'they' always created problems, because 'they' don't want the India-Pakistan issue to ever be solved,' he adds. Sondhi feels the book, which has contributions from more than 30 Pakistani professionals and a couple of Indian academics, is the answer to the India-Pakistan problem because of its people-oriented approach. 'No force on earth can stop the Indo-Pak relationship from improving,' he says rather theatrically. How India and Pakistan Make Peace (Sondhi points out the significance of the tense of the word 'make' in the title), might have triggered Sondhi's removal but 'trouble had been brewing for a long time within the ICSSR', feels economist Bibek Debroy, who adds that he has 'a great deal of respect academically for Professor Sondhi, who had been making the changes that ICSSR badly needs.' Sondhi came to the ICSSR after a long and impressive innings. After resigning from the Indian Foreign Service, he was with the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He represented the Jan Sangh in the Lok Sabha in 1967. Through the years, Sondhi has remained a key member of the BJP think-tank on foreign policy matters. Talking about his work at the ICSSR, Sondhi says, 'Things there have been improving. It is always difficult but we were introducing changes. We had introduced information technology, a lot of work in women's studies, research work on the Northeast... there was a lot happening.' Obviously not enough to stop the tide of resistance against him. 'One gathers that there was a lot of resentment against Sondhi both from the Left wing intellectuals who dominate these institutes and an equal amount of resentment from Hindutva hardliners who felt Sondhi was not using the ICSSR the way he was supposed to,' says Debroy. Sondhi has dismissed all the charges against him - there is a serious charge of financial irregularity - as 'frivolous'. 'And in any case I am the chairman of ICSSR, I was not supposed to be in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the place. My position could be compared to the chancellor of a university. If they feel there were problems in the everyday functioning of the institute, they should be after the secretary, Bhaskar Chatterjee, not me,' he says. Undeterred by his dismissal (he calls it a 'hiccup'), or the temporary appointment of K.S. Sharma, additional secretary in the department of secondary and higher education as chairman of the ICSSR, Sondhi says he is going to 'fight them all legally... and be right back there as chairman till October 2002.' Famous last words?