H.N. Bahuguna Left an Indelible Mark on India's Political System
This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ‘The Early Parliamentarians’, exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building.
A veteran parliamentarian, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna popularly known as H.N. Bahuguna was a maverick who left an indelible mark on the Indian political system. From a freedom fighter who was put behind bars for his participation in the Quit India movement 1942, Bahuguna went on to be a Union minister and later the chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Bahuguna was perhaps one of the only Congress politicians who refused to obey the orders of Indira Gandhi when she was the most powerful political leader during the days of the Emergency.
From being the All India Congress Committee general secretary in the party to his appointment in the Congress governments at the Centre, to breaking away from the grand old party of India, to floating a new party and joining the Janata alliance, to returning to the Congress fold two years later before leaving it again, Bahuguna was dubbed the “Natwarlal of Indian politics” by his political opponents.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Born on April 25, 1919 in Bughani, Pauri Garhwal (now in Uttarakhand), he pursued his early education in the Garhwal region and higher education at Allahabad University, which shaped his academic and political career.
Rising from the lowest strata in politics, he touched the zeniths in his political career with an ideology of patriotism, detachment from selfish motives, uncompromising commitment to fundamentalism and regionalism, and remaining dedicated to secularism.
An accidental confrontation with the Deputy Commissioner Garhwal Region at the age of 11 drew him towards the Indian Civil Service, a top bureaucratic hierarchy in the British Empire. The young boy, determined to make way into the civil services, began to learn and study the English language, a prerequisite then for the Indian Civil Services.
In 1937, he moved to Allahabad for further studies and was admitted into the Government Intermediate College. His political germination began when he founded the first "Students Parliament" in the college and was elected its "prime minister".
In 1939-40 he was enrolled in a BSc course at Allahabad University. The university, besides being known as the Oxford of the east, was also a centre of the freedom movement. M.K. Gandhi by the year 1940 had already beckoned the youth to join the freedom movement. In 1941 when the president of the Allahabad University Union was declared an absconder, Bahuguna was elected his substitute.
His plunge into the freedom movement was deep. The British declared him a rebel and Bahuguna had to go underground. Subsequently a reward of Rs 5,000 was offered by the British to anyone who aided in his arrest. Bahuguna was jailed several times in the prisons of Allahabad and Sultanpur.
Finally in 1942 he was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment till 1946. At the 'Amhat' jail in Sultanpur he was plagued with tubercle bacillus, a fatal infection in the lungs. The British offered to release him on health grounds subject to an oath that he would never participate again in the freedom struggle. Bahuguna declined. He was finally released in 1946 on completion of the jail sentence and completed his graduation in arts.
India finally attained independence on August 15, 1947. The post-independence period saw Bahuguna playing a major role in trade unions. He was instrumental in organising labour unions in Allahabad. In 1953, he became a member of the Indian National Trade Union Congress.
His first electoral victory came in 1952 when he was elected as an MLA in the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha from Karchana and Chail constituency in Allahabad. His electoral success coincided with his elevation in the Congress government. In the assembly, he impressed all with his deep understanding of the legislative process. The proceedings in the house reflect his deep concern for the proletariat, the downtrodden and minorities.
He was again elected to the UP Legislative Assembly, this time from Sirathu, in 1957. The same year, Govind Ballabh Pant, then the chief minister UP, impressed by Bahuguna's political acumen, appointed him parliamentary secretary and entrusted to him the portfolio of labour and industry. In 1960, he was elevated to deputy minister with the same portfolio.
In 1967, Bahuguna was made the finance minister in the UP government. The sharp administrator in him was gradually becoming manifest. His genius was getting acclaim and subsequently he was appointed the general secretary of the AICC in 1969. His organisational deftness brought closer to the rank and file of the Congress party.
During the Congress party split in 1969, Bahuguna sided with Indira Gandhi and eventually joined her council of ministers as a minister of state for communication in 1971. The rank as well as the portfolio was seen as a demotion by Bahuguna’s supporters but he accepted it without any fuss. and this helped him become UP’s chief minister in 1973 when an armed revolt by UP’s Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) unseated Kamlapati Tripathi. With elections barely months away, the newly appointed chief minister delivered by winning the assembly elections comfortably. He would go on to resign from this post on November 29, 1975.
Bahuguna, however, soon developed differences with Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency years, prompting him to resign as chief minister in 1975.
Disillusionment with Congress
Journalist Krishna V. Ananth in his book India Since Independence: Making Sense of Indian Politics elaborates on the later years of Bahuguna after he resigned from the chief minister’s post in 1975 and formed CFD with other disgruntled Congress leaders like Jagjivan Ram and Nandini Satpathy. Their exit “…indeed, was the decisive factor that led to Indira’s Congress being wiped out of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar”, writes Ananth.
In an interview to BBC, Bahuguna once spoke about his disillusionment with the Congress leadership and then prime minister Indira Gandhi during his tenure as Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
“As soon as I took an oath for the chief minister’s position, I had a fight with Indira Gandhi on a fundamental issue. She felt that I should consult her for every work. My stand was that “back seat driving” was not possible. A CM who runs such a big state has to take his own decisions…She wanted me to take her son (Sanjay Gandhi) across UP just like the CMs of Rajasthan and Maharashtra. I declined (to do so). I told her that he should walk on his feet, work, move ahead but this cannot happen on my shoulders.”
In his book An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1967 to 1987, American scholar Paul R. Brass writes about Bahuguna’s chief ministerial days.
Bahuguna introduced “measures of benefit to the Harijans”, established “a happy rapport with the Muslims” by acting boldly to suppress “anti-Muslim rioting”, and took measures to eliminate “rural indebtedness”, Brass writes.
However, “Indira Gandhi had no interest in such issues as she moved steadily toward total power by installing political lackeys who had little if any popular support in their states. Insofar as UP was concerned, this meant that the rather garrulous Bahuguna had to be displaced from power by Indira Gandhi — or rather by Sanjay Gandhi — within a year and replaced as chief minister by N.D. Tiwari.”
Brass also writes about Bahuguna in a section on the imposition of Emergency and how most chief ministers were kept in the dark concerning the plans for an Emergency or its implementation.
“The chief minister of UP, H.N. Bahuguna testified that he “came to know about the proclamation of Emergency” at breakfast with two central government ministers, who “were as surprised as he was about it”.
1977 saw Bahuguna parting ways with the Congress. He had joined the band of leaders like Jagjivan Ram to create Congress for Democracy. Bahuguna first served as the general secretary of the CFD which was merged into the Janata Party on May 1, 1977. In 1977 he was elected to parliament from Lucknow constituency. He was subsequently appointed as cabinet minister in the Department of Petroleum and Chemicals by Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
1979 saw him become the finance minister in the Union government. But by then, the Janata Party was plagued with conflicts amongst several pressure groups. Bahuguna again disenchanted again, and Indira Gandhi took pains to convince him that the Congress still stood by its ideals of socialism and secularism.
He went back to the Congress in 1979 and the next Lok Sabha elections saw him win the Garhwal seat as a Congress leader in 1980 with a thumping majority. But he was restless again in the Congress. He left the party and resigned from his Lok Sabha seat as well.
He re-contested and won again in 1982 as an independent candidate.
Between 1982-84 he formed the Democratic Socialist Party. Later he joined the Lok Dal of Charan Singh and became its vice-president and subsequently its president. Starting from 1952, Bahuguna was either a member of the UP assembly or in the Lok Sabha for 32 long years, till 1984.
In 1984, he contested his last Lok Sabha polls as a Lok Dal nominee from Allahabad, a seat from where he had begun his political journey. Bahuguna, however, lost the seat to Congress candidate and film star Amitabh Bachchan by a huge margin of 1,87,000 votes.
Four years later, Bahuguna fell ill and had to undergo a heart surgery at a hospital in the US. He passed away on March 17, 1989.
Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India’s major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India’s freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.
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