Short-Term Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar Was a Rebel in Politics

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.

Former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar was a veteran parliamentarian who was elected to the Rajya Sabha three times and to the Lok Sabha eight times. A born rebel, he has the distinction of having politically fought many prime ministers including first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, her son Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.

A rebel in the Congress

First elected as a Praja Socialist Party (PSP) member in 1962 to the Rajya Sabha, he sat in the opposition benches. His first act as an MP was to confront Nehru, who was then the prime minister. A commission of enquiry was constituted to probe corruption charges made against then Punjab chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon. Chandra Shekhar asked the prime minister if the government had received the commission's report. Nehru replied he had not seen the report. Chandra Shekhar raised the issue the next day again, pointing out that some newspapers had carried excerpts of the report.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The prime minister accepted that his memory had slipped and that the report had been received. “I am sorry,” he told Chandra Shekhar. Nehru was impressed at the way Chandra Shekhar persisted with his query. He later asked one of his deputy ministers, Dinesh Singh, “Who is that bearded young man? Singh told him, “He is a PSP member from Uttar Pradesh and has just been elected to the Rajya Sabha.”

Singh advised Chandra Shekhar the next day to meet Nehru. The young generation met the old generation and thus began Chandra Shekhar’s long Pprliamentary career spanning nearly half a century. Soon after Nehru's death in May 1964, Chandra Shekhar joined the Congress party along with Asoka Mehta, N.D. Tiwari, S.M. Krishna, Vasant Sathe etc.

Later Chandra Shekhar was Indira Gandhi’s confidante and an elected member of the Congress Working Committee at the time of the 1969 Congress split. She asked Chandra Shekhar to give a note on economic policies to be pursued by the party. He called a meeting of top left-oriented economists and suggested that they should prepare a note as desired by Indira. She read out this note at the Bangalore session of the AICC, which later came to be known as her 10-point programme. This paved the way for the abolition of privy purses as privileges to ex-rulers, bank and coal nationalisation, and her slogan for ‘garibi hatao’.

Chandra Shekhar came to be known as a 'young Turk' for his conviction and courage in the fight against vested interests. The other 'young Turks', who formed the 'ginger group' in the Congress in the fight for egalitarian policies, included leaders like Krishna Kant, Mohan Dharia, Ram Dhan and Lakshmi Kanthamma.

Chandra Shekhar always stood against politics of personalities and favoured politics of ideology and social change. This propelled him more towards his erstwhile leader Jayaprakash Narayan and his idealist view of life during the turbulent days of 1973-75. He soon became a focal point of dissent within the Congress.

He vehemently criticised his own leader Indira for her policies. When Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975, Chandra Shekhar was arrested for 19 long months under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act in spite of the fact that he was a Congress MP, and a member of the Central Election Committee and Working Committee, top bodies of the Indian National Congress.

Early years

Chandra Shekhar was born on April 17, 1927 in a Kisan Rajput family at Ibrahimpatti, village in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh.He did his graduation at Satish Chandra P.G. College Ballia and MA from Allahabad University in 1951.

He was known as a firebrand in student politics and started his political career with Acharya Narendra Deva in the Socialist Party. After completing his studies, he became full time party worker in the socialist movement.

He was first elected secretary of the district PSP, Ballia in 1951. Within a year, he was elected joint secretary of the PSP's State unit in Uttar Pradesh. In 1955–56, he took over as general secretary of the party in the State. His career as a parliamentarian began with his election to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh as PSP member in 1962.

Chandra Shekhar was elected to Rajya Sabha again in 1968 and 1974 from Uttar Pradesh as a Congress candidate. In 1977, he first entered the Lok Sabha from Ballia as a Janata Party member and was elected President of the ruling Janata Party on May 1, 1977. He was president of the Janata Party from 1977 to 1988.

Subsequently he was elected to Lok Sabha from Ballia as a member of various incarnations of Janata Party in 1980, Janata Dal in 1989, SJP in 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2004. He lost that seat only once in the 1984 election.

Chandra Shekhar was an outstanding parliamentarian. He was honoured with the outstanding Parliamentarian Award in the year 1995. Whenever he spoke or intervened in the parliament on controversial matters, the whole House heard him with rapt attention and the government paid heed to his opinion. He spoke, extempore with conviction, and never looked at notes.

Bharat Yatra (1983)

Chandra Shekhar undertook a padyatra through the country from Kanyakumari to Rajghat in New Delhi covering a distance of nearly 4,260 km from January 6, 1983 to June 25, 1983. The padyatra was undertaken to renew rapport with the masses and to understand their pressing problems. Chandra Shekhar started his Bharat Yatra from Kanyakumari on January 6, the same day his Janata Party was swept to power in Karnataka.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

He finished his march at Rajghat in New Delhi on June 25, the eighth anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency and also the day India won the Cricket World Cup.

In 1988, his Janata party merged with other parties and formed the Janata Dal under the leadership of V.P. Singh. After the 1989 general elections, Chandra Shekhar felt he had greater legitimacy to head the Janata Dal Parliamentary Party than V.P. Singh.

Not only was he the senior politician who had been an MP long before V.P. Singh entered Uttar Pradesh politics, he might have believed that he had the support of the majority in the Janata Dal Parliamentary Party.

But Arun Nehru, who had left the Congress party along with V.P. Singh in 1988, allied with Devi Lal and ensured that when the time came to elect a leader, they would quickly endorse V.P. Singh, giving Chandra Shekhar no opportunity to manoeuvre things his way. Angered by the way he had been shunted out of the prime ministerial race, Chandra Shekhar stormed out of the meeting.

A short-term PM

He always held a grouse that V.P. Singh and Devi Lal entered into a pact to deprive him of the prime ministership and used it against V.P. Singh at the height of the post-Mandal agitation to break the party and bring down his government in 1990. He formed another party, Janata Dal (S). With the support of his 64 MPs and Rajiv Gandhi's Congress party, he replaced V.P. Singh as the eight prime minister of India in November 1990.

During his tenure, Manmohan Singh was his economic advisor. He along with Montek Singh Ahluwalia prepared a series of documents on economic liberalisation but could not pass in parliament because Congress withdrew support.

Jairam Ramesh in his book To the Brink and Back: India's 1991 Story has written that "Chandrashekhar's Cabinet Committee on Trade and Investment (CCTI) itself had on 11 March 1991 approved the new export strategy which contained the main elements of the 4th July 1991 package of PV Narasimha Rao govt and which paved the way for economic reforms in India.”

However, Chandra Shekhar was prime minister for seven months only, the second shortest period after that of Charan Singh. His government could not introduce a full budget because on March 6, 1991 Congress withdrew support during its formulation. As a result, Chandra Shekhar resigned from office.

As an MP, he made a mark by taking keen interest in espousing the cause of the downtrodden and pleading for policies for rapid social change. In this context, when he attacked the disproportionate growth of monopoly houses with state patronage, he came in conflict with the centres of power.

There were moments of humour in the Lok Sabha. Chandra Shekhar would always call Atal Bihari Vajpayee “Gurudev”. On his part Vajpayee would address him as “Guru Ghantal”. When P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister, he would generally avoid speaking on controversial matters and kept quiet even after being provoked by opposition members. Chandra Shekhar noticed for days how Rao ducked contentious issues and, one day, amidst peals of laughter, called him Mauni Baba (silent saint).

Chandra Shekhar founded and edited Young Indian, a weekly, in 1969. Its editorials had the distinction of being among the most quoted ones of the time. Chandra Shekhar also wrote a book, Meri Jail Diary, when he was imprisoned by Indira. A well-known compilation of his writings, Dynamics of Social Change, was also published.

Chandra Shekhar passed away on July 8, 2007 after a prolonged illness. He was 80.

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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