New Delhi: The most distressing part of his tenure in the finance ministry was the opposition that he sometimes faced from his own colleagues which was more pronounced in the BJP Parliamentary party, former finance minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha has said.
"The worst part was that these discussions did not remain confidential; they became public and were highlighted in the media and the impression gained ground that he did not enjoy the confidence of the entire party," Sinha says in his memoir, My Years as a Finance Minister, Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer.
Although a strong nationalist and a staunch believer in swadeshi, he had wide area of convergence with the RSS even as there were some issues on which he differed, Sinha says even he consulted RSS leaders before he finalised the 1998 budget who expected him to prepare a swadeshi budget.
On his relations with the RSS, Sinha says that one reason for his unhappiness in the finance ministry was that "I had lost the confidence of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the RSS, with whom I had worked so closed earlier in the swadeshi movement." There was a widening communication gap between 'them' and 'us', he says.
"The misunderstanding became so serious that Dattopant Thengadi, one of the senior most leaders of the RSS, known as a patron saint of swadeshi, went to the extent of calling me a apradhi (culprit), in a public meeting in Delhi. He described how I had deviated from the path of swadeshi after I had become finance minister", Sinha says.
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