The revival of V P Singh, and why Stalin makes a natural partner

V P Singh’s politics spawned the rise of an OBC leadership in the country – Mulayam Singh Yadav and son Akhilesh, Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel, among others – with many of them ruling their respective states for more than quarter of a century. It also saw the emergence of Narendra Modi, an OBC leader, as PM in 2014.

However, none of them has openly acknowledged V P Singh’s role in the way that Stalin has now done.

Akhilesh’s presence at the Chennai event had a special significance. His father Mulayam’s differences with V P Singh were legion. Had they held together, the trajectory of north Indian politics might have been different after 1990.

Referring to his decision to implement the Mandal report and give 27% reservation in government jobs to OBCs, which opened a Pandora’s box and led to a chain of immolations by upper caste youths, V P Singh had once quipped ruefully, “Goal kar diya, par taang toot gayi (I scored a goal, but broke my own leg).”

Akhilesh Yadav’s presence at the Chennai event had a special significance. His father Mulayam’s differences with V P Singh were legion. (PTI)

On my travels during the last few years, including for my book How Prime Ministers Decide, I made it a point to ask the younger people I met, particularly in rural areas, about the PMs whose names they had heard. Jawaharlal Nehru? The answer was always a “Yes”. Indira Gandhi? “Yes, yes yes”. Rajiv Gandhi? Also a “Yes”.

But few had heard of P V Narasimha Rao. None had heard of Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar, H D Deve Gowda or I K Gujaral. All had heard of Atal Behari Vajpayee, as well as Manmohan Singh, who is too recent a PM to forget, and Narendra Modi, who dominates the scene today as the incumbent PM.

What however surprised me was that while all had also heard of the diminutive Lal Bahadur Shastri (of “Jai jawan, Jai kisan” slogan, and for “having fought and won a war with Pakistan” fame), despite his briefest of stints at the top, none had heard of V P Singh, who Mandalised Indian politics.

At one such gathering in a rural area of Aurangabad district in Maharashtra, where no one had heard of V P Singh, many among them were young OBC men. A couple of them were even beneficiaries of the policy of reservations initiated by the late PM!

Revered by some and reviled by others for bringing a genie out of the bottle which could never be put back, the reason no political entity has owned V P Singh as their icon is not only because he was an upper caste leader (Rajput). It’s also a harsh fact that a leader’s persona is often built up and carefully crafted by others. How much they are remembered depends on the extent to which their party, or family, has cultified them. (Cultification can also lend an element of charisma to a leader.)

Today, the wheel has come full circle. The Opposition under the 28-party INDIA alliance is all set to play the Mandal-2 card, by demanding that a caste census be held in the country. They suspect, and Bihar has shown this via a caste survey, that such an exercise is likely to reveal a larger number of OBCs in the country than the 52% disclosed by the 1931 Census.

This might lead the OBCs to demand a greater share in jobs, educational institutions and possibly even in Parliament and state legislatures – and help the Opposition parties mobilize political support.

By endorsing the demand for a caste census, the Congress, which has over the years lost the support of OBCs in north India, has jumped on the bandwagon.

The Gandhi family may or may not have forgiven V P Singh for leading the Bofors campaign that eventually caused the dethroning of Rajiv Gandhi as PM in 1989, but today, even Rahul Gandhi is embracing the Mandal principle.

Sonia Gandhi had forgiven the late PM enough to seek his help, with V P Singh bringing DMK leader M Karunanidhi on board when she was crafting the UPA in 2004. Karunanidhi had promised his support initially to Vajpayee and the NDA.

Still, after V P Singh’s rise and his Mandal politics, the Congress never managed a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha elections. While Narasimha Rao led a full-term Congress government from 1991 to 1996, he managed a majority after luring leaders from other parties.

What V P Singh’s politics did was to strengthen the regional parties, leading to a coalition era which lasted for a quarter of a century – till Modi came to power in 2014. The late PM recognised the inclusion of regional parties on the national stage as partners in his National Front government, and giving them a stake in national governance, as one of his achievements.

In fact, he brought the DMK into his government even when the Dravidian party had not won a single seat in the Lok Sabha in 1989.

It is not surprising for Karunanidhi’s son then to invoke V P Singh’s name today, given the relationship his father enjoyed with the late PM. In any case, the DMK was born out of an anti-Brahmin (or, pro-OBC) movement for self-respect and social justice led by E V Ramasamy Periyar.

What does the installation of V P Singh’s statue in Chennai tell us about the politics that is currently unfolding? Of course, it is about a changing India and an India that is democratising, in the sense of power devolving to those who have been on the peripheries (like the OBCs and the extremely backwards.) But it could also be an attempt by regional parties to band together more closely (Akhilesh with Stalin to begin with) to bargain for seats and leadership with an ascendant Congress, within the larger INDIA alliance in the 2024 big battle.

The resurrection of V P Singh today is a tool in the hands of the regional parties, to use “social justice” to combat the BJP more effectively. But it may also be about striking hard bargains with the Congress.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)