Keeping up with UP | In the footsteps of Charan Singh’s political journey

A file photo of former prime minister Charan Singh at the India Gate in New Delhi in August 1980.

Circa January 1959. Charan Singh was cabinet minister in the Sampurnanand government in Uttar Pradesh when at the 64th session of the All-India Congress Committee in Nagpur, he vehemently criticised the then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru’s proposal on collective farming, which, it was believed, was inspired by Russia. After returning home, Singh tendered his resignation from the cabinet as he had broken the party discipline at an open forum. However, Nehru wrote him a letter telling him to withdraw his resignation. In his letter, Nehru said that dissent in the party was as important as assent and he saw no justification in Singh’s resignation. The Jat leader withdrew his resignation. He quit the government a few months later over other ideological differences with Nehru.

Dr KS Rana, vice chancellor of the University of Technology, Jaipur has authored a book on Charan Singh with whom he had a close relationship since 1980. Rana’s several anecdotes throw light on Singh’s political ambitions and manoeuvring.

“He was not opportunistic, as many think. He was ambitious but he never compromised on the farmer’s issues,” Rana said. He recounts how after hearing complaints against a police station at an Arya Samaj function in Etawah, Singh disguised himself as a farmer intending to lodge a complaint. When the cop demanded money, he filed a complaint and stamped it with his CM’s stamp that he often carried in his pocket.

“How many leaders today will raid police stations and tehsils, incognito, without their paraphernalia?”

The demand for a Bharat Ratna for Singh was first raised in 1989 — two years after his death— but it went to Dr BR Ambedkar that year. However, what his son, Chaudhury Ajit Singh could not manage despite being in the Union cabinet of various political parties four times, his look-alike grandson Jayant Singh and Rashtriya Lok Dal chief, did in one go.

Singh’s influence once spread across the northern belt in UP, Haryana and Rajasthan. Singh was also a pioneer in engineering defections and forming coalitions of small parties; he also had a keen mind to socially engineer winning combinations of caste alliances. He created AJGAR (Ahir, Jat, Gujar, Rajput) — to which he added Muslims as they belonged to the peasantry — an alliance which was one of the most substantial in West UP.

On again, off again with Congress

Charan Singh’s relationship with the Congress dates back to pre-Independence days. Though he snapped his by then 38-year-old association with the Congress in 1967, this did not stop him from taking the support of the grand old party to fulfil his political ambitions. He opposed the continuation of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani in the Union cabinet (in 1977) till they severed their ties with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, another pre-Independence organisation that now serves as the ideological fount of the ruling BJP).

Singh even opposed his own party (Lok Dal at the time) candidate from Fatehpur Sikri at a public meeting. Addressing a gathering, he told the audience, “I have come to know my candidate consumes liquor. If this is true, then let him lose the election.” In the 1980 Lok Sabha election, he replaced his party candidate with an Independent during his public address there itself only because he was told he was unpopular.

In a similar vein, when it came to the Congress or its leadership — Nehru and later Indira Gandhi — he did not mince words in criticising economic reforms that were detrimental to the farming community. But the champion of the farmers continued to pursue his political ambitions and agenda.

Rana recalls how Singh reportedly warned Indira Gandhi against Khalistani movement leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale saying, “He will not harm us, but you”. Many thought the leader with socialist leanings had risked his career by making this fearless statement.

However, the back and forth with the Congress party continued for the formation of various governments despite his socialist leanings.

Equipped with an MA and a law degree, Singh won his first election from Chhaprauli (Baghpat) in 1937, and subsequently in 1946, 1952, 1962 and 1967. He was imprisoned in pre-Independent India by the Britishers and in Independent India by the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency.

After parting ways with the Congress in 1967, he formed the Bhartiya Kranti Dal, engineered defections in the Congress within a month of state elections and pulled down the Chandra Bhanu Gupta-led Congress state government in UP. He became CM with the support of other socialist groups and the Bhartiya Jan Sangh, forming the coalition, Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD). The Congress was breaking in other northern states too, but Charan Singh could last as CM for only a few months. Gupta returned to power after winning a mid-term poll in 1969, albeit with a wafer-thin majority. Singh replaced Gupta a year later — a result of a split in the Congress in 1969 and the support from one of the factions that supported Indira Gandhi. Within a few months, however, Indira replaced him with TN Singh.

During the Emergency, Indira sent Singh to jail. The Janata Party, a coalition of several opposition groups, ousted Indira and formed the government in 1977 and Singh became deputy prime minister in charge of Home. At the time, he demanded action against Indira Gandhi for the excesses committed during the Emergency. He even sent her to jail, but she was released by the court in a day. He resigned as his own party leaders were infuriated by the political fiasco, but returned to the cabinet as finance minister soon enough. His differences with the then PM Morarji Desai led him to resign yet again.

In July 1979 he became the country’s fifth prime minister, with the support of Indira-led Congress, and was invited by the President to form the government. However, a month later, he resigned without facing a trust vote in the Parliament.

Rana once asked Charan Singh about his decision to resign instead of telephoning Indira to thank her for extending him the support to form the government. He reportedly told Rana that he had learnt about a deal to exonerate Indira over the Emergency cases. “On the eve of the trust vote, the Congress veteran Kamlapati Tripathi called on [Charan Singh] asking [him] make a courtesy call on Indira Gandhi before driving to Parliament. [He] decided to meet Morarji Desai at 8.30 a.m. and Indira Gandhi at 9 a.m, but in between that time, [he] came to know about a deal struck between Indira and her son Sanjay with senior socialist leader, who had defeated Indira Gandhi in 1977 from Rae Bareli, Raj Narain, over withdrawing the Emergency cases against her. [He] went up to her house but returned from the gate itself.,” Rana recounted. She felt humiliated and the Singh’s government collapsed.

That was the last straw in his relationship with the Congress. Singh suffered a stroke in 1985 and died in 1987. By then, the Congress was back on the rise.

Succession trouble

Charan Singh may have seemed a bit mercurial, but he had a clear idea of winning combinations. He was grooming Mulayam Singh Yadav as his successor, when Singh’s son, Chaudhary Ajit Singh, quit his job in the United States and returned home to stake a claim on his father’s party. This split the party into two factions: Lok Dal-A and Lok Dal-B.

The two parties faced off in 1989 and Mulayam became CM for the first time. They both belonged to Janata Dal, which was ruling the Centre under the leadership of Prime Minister VP Singh. Ajit and Mulayam never became friends. Mulayam formed the Samajwadi party in 1992, and Ajit Singh flip-flopped his way to the Union cabinet, allying with different parties but his party’s base kept shrinking. The last Lok Sabha election he won was in 1999.

Charan Singh rechristened his party as Bhartiya Lok Dal in the 1980s and Ajit Singh reconstructed it as the Rashtriya Lok Dal — what it’s still called today, and is run by Ajit Singh’s son, Jayant — in 1996. Its best performance in the UP assembly elections was in 1974 when it won 106 of the 425 seats under Charan Singh. Thereafter, its numbers dwindled and the Congress swept the assembly polls in 1980 and 1985.

The party saw a resurgence in 2002 when RLD won 14 out of the 38 seats it contested in alliance with the BJP in the UP Assembly elections. In 2007, it independently won 10 of the 254 seats; in 2012, the RLD allied with Congress and won nine of the 46 seats and in a solo show in 2017, the RLD won only one seat.

Many Jats had the impression that the late SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav was instrumental in opposing reservation for Jats in the court, when he was chief minister. The subsequent Muzaffarnagar riots during SP’s regime in the state demolished the Jat-Muslim unity created by Charan Singh. Interestingly, according to Rana, even Charan Singh never supported quota for Jats. “You belong to the great Rajput clan, would it not be demeaning to beg for quota?”

Jayant Singh allied with the Samajwadi Party in 2022 and won eight out of 33 seats. However, in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, both Ajit Singh and his son Jayant failed to win their seats. Ajit Singh died in 2021. In the 2022 state elections, a large chunk of Jats had moved to the BJP despite their anger with the Narendra Modi dispensation over the controversial farm bills, which the government later withdrew.

Interestingly, RLD leaders have always remained in demand in every government though their Jat voter base forms around 3.7%. There was a time when the Jats used to recount an interesting tale of Charan Singh appearing in their dreams on the polling day eve of every election, demanding that they support his son Ajit Singh. Often they said we spent sleepless nights as they could not ignore the diktat of their icon. Perhaps they will sleep soundly this time around as the RLD has reopened its account with the BJP, and Jayant may find space in the new government if formed by the NDA in the 2024 general elections.

From her perch in Lucknow, HT’s senior journalist Sunita Aron highlights important issues related to Uttar Pradesh

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