New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, recently made a surprising revelation during a programme held in Switzerland. He said that his father was also aboard the IC-421 plane that was hijacked in 1984. According to him, a few hours after learning about the hijacking, he called his mother and told her that he couldn’t come home because the IC-421 plane had been hijacked. It was then that he found out his father was also on that plane.
Who was K Subrahmanyam?
S Jaishankar’s father K Subrahmanyam, was an IAS officer and an expert on international strategic affairs. Born on January 19, 1929, in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam studied at Madras Presidency College. He earned his MSc in Chemistry from Madras University and subsequently joined the civil service. In 1950, he took the civil service examination conducted by the UPSC and was selected. He was an IAS officer of the 1951 batch.
S Jaishankar gave an interview to the news agency ANI in 2023, where he revealed that his father was the Secretary of Defense Production in 1980. K. Subrahmanyam was appointed to this position by the Janata Party government in 1979, but he was removed from the post as soon as Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980.
Trailblazing strategist
K Subrahmanyam was the founding director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), now known as the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis. In 1999, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan but refused to accept it, arguing that journalists and bureaucrats should not accept government awards. He passed away in February 2011.