Today the nation pays rich tribute to the fifth Prime Minister of India, Chaudhary Charan Singh, on his 34th death anniversary. Truly, a great man with great ideas, he was the tallest leader of the peasant class. But he remains a much-misunderstood man in Indian politics. Most people do not know that he was a scholar of great eminence and his scholarly contributions in the fields of agricultural reforms, economics, politics, and social dynamics were widely acknowledged and cited by international scholars. He was a rare breed of politicians who wrote extensively on agrarian reforms and economic issues. Prof. Terence of the London School of Economics was so impressed by his scholarly contributions that he regarded him as an extraordinary intellectual. Some of his outstanding contributions are Abolition of Zamindari, Agrarian Revolution, Joint Farming X-rayed, India’s Poverty and its Solution, India’s Economic Policy: The Gandhian Blueprint, and Economic Nightmare of India. If someone is remotely interested in Indian politics and rural India, then these books become a must-read.
Chaudhary Charan Singh was born on 23 November 1902 in the family of a small farmer in Nurpur village of Meerut district. His father was not an owner of the land, rather a tenant farmer who used to pay revenue to the landlord of the village. A little later the family moved to a neighbouring village Bhadaula. Chaudhary Charan Singh had his early schooling in a rural setting deprived of basic infrastructure. He was an immensely talented student with a keen interest in knowing almost everything. After earning his Master’s degree from Agra college and Law degree from Meerut College, Meerut, he started his practice in Ghaziabad which provided him with a platform to join the Indian National Congress in 1929. Soon, he joined Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement and suffered imprisonment thrice during the freedom struggle between 1930 and 1942.
He was elected for the first time to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly on the Congress ticket from Meerut district with a massive poll mandate in 1937. There was no looking back after that in electoral politics for him. After his second victory in 1946 in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, he was appointed as a parliamentary secretary. He had worked as a Cabinet Minister with several Chief Ministers right from 1951 until he severed ties with the Congress in 1966, and became the first non-Congress Chief Minister in 1967 after an impressive victory of his newly created Bhartiya Kranti Dal (BKD). He became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh a second time in 1970, and after that, he renamed his party Bhartiya Lok Dal (BLD) in 1974.
Chaudhary Charan Singh was a great advocate of peaceful resistance to oppression. When people’s freedom was trampled in 1975, he was one of those prominent leaders who stood up with full force to the emergency leading to his political imprisonment till 1977. After the emergency, when the sixth Lok Sabha elections were held in March 1977, Chaudhary Charan Singh contested from Baghpat seat and emerged as a strong claimant for the post of Prime Minister with a large number of MPs from his camp. But as luck would have it, Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister of the Janata government and Chaudhary Charan Singh the Home Minister, first in March 1977 and later on the Deputy Prime Minister and the Finance Minister. But when the Janata government collapsed in July 1979, Chaudhary Charan Singh became the fifth Prime Minister of India on 28 July and continued until 14 January 1980. Thereafter, he was elected twice to parliament on his Lok Dal party ticket, once in 1980, and again in 1984. After his long and unblemished political journey of over five decades, he left for heavenly abode on 29 May 1987.
His knowledge and understanding of rural life were of unparalleled magnitude and reliability. He did pioneering work for the abolition of Zamindari and the consolidation of landholdings in Uttar Pradesh to the advantage of small farmers. His model of agrarian reforms became so popular in the country that it was adopted by several other states. Often he used to remind the political and the executive class that the passage of India’s prosperity passes through its fields and villages.
Most remained woefully ignorant about his land reform crusade and his unflinching commitment towards providing a dignified life to the poor and downtrodden and which is why he was a much loved and respected leader of rural masses. He was considered unprogressive by some for his opposition to big dams and the soviet model of large scale industry. But this conviction of his was rooted in his understanding of rural life and its problems. He knew that the construction of big dams would lead to the submergence of huge tracks of cultivable land and displacement of villagers besides causing other colossal environmental hazards. Instead, he worked for the installation of tube wells for irrigation and the establishment of small scale industries to provide work to landless labourers and artisans.
He had mooted the proposal for providing 50% reservation to the wards of actual tillers of the agriculture land as he believed they would have a better appreciation of the problems of 80% of the population living in rural India, and secondly, he knew that engagement of too many hands in agriculture would neither eradicate illiteracy nor address the issues of underemployment and unemployment in rural India.
Charan Singh was always willing to sacrifice himself for the cause of the farmers and agriculture labourers. He was the first to have brought the peasant issues in electoral politics, and the only one who opposed Nehru’s resolution on Cooperative and Collective farming during the annual session of the Congress at Nagpur in 1959. He believed that the pooling of agricultural land in the Indian context would be suicidal for the country’s economy. Although he could not succeed in stalling the resolution, his spirit and passion were admired by one and all. The very fact that despite the approval of Nehru’s resolution it was not implemented on the ground validated his foresight and knowledge of rural India in general and Indian peasantry in particular. Notwithstanding his massive mass base and his highly relevant pro-poor policies, he was not given his due in the then upper-caste dominated Congress which he ultimately had to part ways with in 1966.
He was an advocate of smaller states for good governance. He had floated the idea of “Delhi Suba” by merging some western districts from the state of Uttar Pradesh and some districts of Haryana. But when some of his opponents gave colour to this idea of making a Jatistan, he immediately distanced himself from the move because he never wanted to be identified with a particular caste. People remained equally oblivious about the fact that he was the man who had written to Pandit Nehru on 22 May 1952 to accord preference in government services to those who were willingly ready to embrace the idea of inter-caste marriage. But, alas, his opponents tried to portray him as a leader of a particular caste.
He had a much bigger vision for developing political leadership in the country. He enlarged his political influence in almost all the northern states by assimilating all castes and communities. He had identified politically potential people and supported them to the hilt in electoral politics regardless of their castes and faith. They were Banarsi Das Gupta, Ramnaresh Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Madhu Limaye, B.P. Maurya, Karpuri Thakur, Ramvilas Paswan, Rasheed Masood, Sarver Husain, just to name a few.
While he exuded unblemished honesty and uprightness, in truth most of the people barely knew this quality of the man. He remained a relentless crusader against corruption at all levels from the lowest revenue officials to irrigation and transport department, including nexus between police and politicians. He had the integrity to remain uncompromising, all through his political journey spanning over five decades, on issues that were not grounded in truth.
He was a man without fear who always stood up against the odds without flinching. His straightforwardness and characteristic of calling a spade a spade created more foes against him than friends within and across the party. His only unassailable shield was his candour, honesty, incorruptibility and truth. There are numerous instances on record wherein he had cancelled the tickets of his party candidates at the eleventh hour with the slightest hint of their any socially undesirable conduct.
He was a prudent statesman and an astute politician who had great ability and skills in handling all types of situations. But all his political manoeuvrings were based on his principles of honesty, truthfulness, and public relevance of his policies. His forthright approach and straightforwardness gave him an edge over his opponents. The people of the country will continue to remember him for his simplicity, honesty, secular credentials, intolerance to corruption, and above all for his tireless work for the cause of peasantry.
The writer is former Chairman, UGC. The views expressed are personal.