Many years ago, V.P. Singh was returning home after a long political day. Back in those days, he was trying to revive the Jan Morcha. The former Prime Minister had been meeting people and garlanding statues all day. In the evening, I asked him what does he think of statues.
“It is important to honour our past. These men and women have sacrificed their lives for the nation, and we have to remember them,” he said.
In a quick riposte, I asked, “Would you like your statues to be built”? He laughed a little and said, “No. If people want to honour me, they should build schools instead. Our nation needs more schools, my statue won’t help anybody.”
Almost two decades later, I understand what he meant. He was a Gandhian socialist, who didn’t want personal glory. Being the last king of Manda, he was more of mendicant (fakir) than a Raja at heart. Till his dying days he wanted the underprivileged people of our nation to prosper and was against the idea of government money being wasted on him.
Today, as India mourns the loss of former prime minister Manmohan Singh, one begs to ask the question, how does our nation honour prime minsters after their death?
No doubt Manmohan Singh was one of the principal architects of modern India, who laid the foundation of our economic policies, but will we honour his life and memory, beyond the politics?
The Prime Minister who implemented the Mandal Commission Report
For answers, we must look at the treatment given to my babba (grandfather) and former prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. If Manmohan Singh changed Indian economic paradigm forever, it was V.P. Singh who started a social revolution by giving millions of Indians access to the corridors of power.
He is credited with introducing the world’s largest affirmative action programme – implementing the Mandal Commission report – which gave a majority of Indians, a chance to become change maker by active participation in government jobs and other fields.
Although, V.P. Singh had a short tenure between 1989- 90 as the prime minister, but during that time he fought for social justice and successfully fractured thousands of years of rigid social order. From Mandal commission to awarding the Bharat Ratna to B R Ambedkar, all his actions were aimed towards giving underprivileged Indians justice.
Before the 90s, government jobs and education was dominated by upper castes exclusively. But almost 35 years after his historic tenure, the representation of other backward classes (OBCs) has gone up. The effect of his decision was so monumental that the BJP, which was a relatively new political outfit in the 89-90, had to reorient its entire political strategy. Narendra Modi, an OBC as the prime minister is a ripple of this reorientation.
V.P. Singh was a master of coalition politics, and he successfully formed the second non-congress government through his Janata Dal with support from the Left and the newly emergent BJP. He was a beloved leader of the socialist movement, who even after his tenure as prime minister, was continued to be revered as one of India’s most clean and honest leaders.
He even gave voice to various social movements ranging from anti-corporate land acquisition to communal harmony despite cancer and failure of both kidneys.
So why is it that he has no memorial anywhere in India? The question becomes more murky as subsequent Prime Minister such as P.V. Narshimarao, Chandra Shekhar, I.K. Gujral and Atal Bihari Vajpayee have their memorials.
However, no political party or successive government has honoured V.P. Singh since his death in November 2008. One needs to ask, does it not dishonour our nation, if we consciously forget her heroes due to political ideologies? Does it not dishonour the office of the prime minister?
If Sardar Patel is a national hero, so is V.P. Singh. Then why is the government ignoring him? The effort to erase him from the history is so severe that there is no government university, hospital or even road named after him.
V.P. Singh’s legacy lives through his work
So where does V.P. Singh live and how do we honour him? V.P. Singh lives through his work. Whether people acknowledge him or not, thousands of OBC government officials – incumbent and former – along with the newly empowered OBC groups that now walk as kingmakers, kings and queens, are the legacy of V.P. Singh.
From the idea of the Right to Information (RTI) to the fight against communal forces and preventing the Babri mosque demolition in 1990, all owe a little thanks to him. His legacy lives both in the pages of history and in the present.
It is quite discomforting, that successive governments couldn’t even find a piece of land in Delhi or any other place to honour him. They have consciously broken with tradition to make the nation forget him. But India remembers V.P. Singh. And if the government still wants to honour him, I say, they should open a world class university in the trans-Yamuna region of Allahabad for underprivileged students or else pick the district with the worst education and health, and build schools and hospitals for the people there.
This would be a fitting memorial V.P. Singh. The Parliament should establish a law so that all future Prime Ministers are accorded memorials which should not only include statues but schools, universities and hospitals in their memory, so that even after their deaths, needy people will get help through them.
(Indra Shekhar Singh is a writer and the grandson of the former prime minister V.P. Singh)
