New Delhi: Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for a new university in Aligarh named after Jat icon Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh. The move came two years after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced plans for the university in 2019, and is being seen as the BJP’s attempt to win over Jats in western Uttar Pradesh, who are seething over the Modi government’s three farm laws, ahead of the assembly polls due early next year.
In his speech after laying the foundation stone, PM Modi said the government is making efforts to empower small farmers, and invoked the names of other Jat icons like Sir Chhotu Ram and former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to assuage the voter base, with Charan Singh’s grandson Jayant Chaudhary, president of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, also angling for the same vote.
The communal polarisation of Jats and Muslims is said to have played a role in western Uttar Pradesh politics after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. The Jat community, however, now stands united against the farm laws.
ThePrint spoke to leaders from the community like Kunwar Natwar Singh and Chaudhary Birender Singh, who said the current protests against the farm laws go beyond communal lines because they affect the entire Jat farming community.
“The BJP is trying to woo the Jats,” said former diplomat and Union external affairs minister Natwar Singh, who comes from the Jat stronghold of Bharatpur, Rajasthan, and has written a book on the Jat king Suraj Mal.
“This move (to launch a university in Mahendra Pratap’s name) is more a political one than an educational one,” he said, but added that the university will stand as a permanent tribute to “an extraordinary person”.
ThePrint delves into the past to profile some other icons of the Jat community who have made a mark on national politics.
Suraj Mal
The Jats are an agrarian community made up of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, and are spread across the northern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, and in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab. The community became wealthy and influential in the region due to its status as landowners, and the ruler who helped cement this status was Maharaja Suraj Mal.
Considered to be the founder of the first Jat kingdom, Suraj Mal founded the kingdom of Bharatpur. He was called a “Jat Ulysses” because he waged wars against both the Mughals and Marathas to protect his community’s land. At the peak of his power in the mid-18th century, he ruled across present-day Delhi, Rajasthan, and western Uttar Pradesh. In 2019, members of the Jat community protested his depiction as a greedy king in the film Panipat.
PM Modi praised Suraj Mal’s valour during a rally in Jaipur in 2018. “Stories about the courage of Maharana Pratap, the valour of Maharaja Suraj Mal, the sacrifice of Panna Dhai, Hadi Rani, and Amrita Devi, and the devotion of Mirabai are part of life in Rajasthan,” he had said.
Chhotu Ram
Sir Chhotu Ram was an important leader for both the Jats and the farming community in pre-Partition northern India. A champion of education for all, he launched the Unionist Party with Sir Fazl-i-Hussain and Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, representing agrarian interests. The party had the support of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh Jats, and formed the government in provincial Punjab in 1937.
Speaking to ThePrint, his grandson and former BJP MP and Union minister of steel Chaudhary Birender Singh said his grandfather was the man who brought agrarian reform to the region.
“My grandfather has been credited with bringing about agrarian reforms in North India, including Punjab in Pakistan,” said Singh. Without those reforms and their results, he added, “modern-day Pakistan would have starved to death”.
“Pakistani farmers still consider Chhotu Ram as their messiah,” Birender Singh continued, saying he had refused the position of chief minister of Punjab thrice because he felt the state ought to have a Muslim chief minister, as undivided Punjab was a Muslim-majority province.
“Muslim farmers were with him until his last breath. Even when Mr Jinnah was at his peak, Muslims in Punjab preferred Chhotu Ram to him because they said he was leading them in the right direction,” claimed Singh.
Years later, protests against the farm laws are uniting farmers across religious lines in the same way that his grandfather’s reforms united farmers, Singh said. It was “high time” for a dialogue between farmers and the government to resume, the BJP leader, who has been at odds with the party’s stance, added.
Chhotu Ram introduced the idea of the Agricultural Produce Market Committees when he was development minister in the provincial government of undivided Punjab. The Unionist Party passed the Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets Act, which allowed for the establishment of mandis, and formed the precursor to the modern-day APMC.
“Chhotu Ram made it clear that farmers should share in the wealth of the country, and that they must get their due,” said Birender Singh.
In 2018, Modi unveiled a 64-foot tall statue of Chhotu Ram in Rohtak, and compared him to Sardar Patel. Former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, a Jat leader, had also installed a smaller statue of Chhotu Ram in 2004.
Mahendra Pratap Singh
Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, after whom the university in Aligarh is to be named, was not just a Jat Hindu leader, but “an internationalist and progressive”, according to academic Shruti Kapila. She was referring to the years he spent living and lobbying abroad to raise support for the Indian independence movement.
The Raja also formed the first Indian government-in-exile, the ‘Provisional Government of India’, in Kabul in 1915, and became its president. He also met leaders across the world, including Germany, Japan, and Russia, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1932. He returned to India in 1946 after three decades in exile.
“He also did a lot for his locality by donating land to build institutions,” said Kapila, whose upcoming book, Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age, features Mahendra Pratap Singh.
The Raja turned his Mathura residence into a polytechnic, and also donated land to the Aligarh Muslim University. He was so popular that he even beat a young Atal Bihari Vajpayee and won a Lok Sabha seat from Mathura in 1957 as an independent candidate, having distanced himself both from the Congress Party and the Jana Sangh.
Ranbir Singh Hooda
Chaudhary Ranbir Singh Hooda was a freedom fighter and the last remaining member of the first Constituent Assembly of India at the time of his death in 2009. He also holds the national record for the maximum number of legislative portfolios, having served as a minister in both Punjab and Haryana.
Hooda was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1947 from East Punjab, and played a role in debates around reservations and the minimum support price of grains for farmers. He held many cabinet positions and served in different legislative bodies — the Constituent Assembly, Constituent Legislative Assembly, Provisional Parliament, Punjab and Haryana state assemblies, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
His son Bhupinder Singh Hooda is the former Chief Minister of Haryana, and his grandson Deepender Singh Hooda is currently a Congress Rajya Sabha MP.
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Charan Singh
Chaudhary Charan Singh was the fifth Prime Minister of India, taking over the position from Morarji Desai in 1979. Hailing from a rural peasant Jat family, he was active in the Indian freedom struggle, was imprisoned several times, and eventually became a leader in Congress.
Charan Singh was prime minister for only six months during a period of political instability following the Emergency — he had also served as home minister and deputy PM in previous years. He focused on agricultural and rural throughout his time in national politics, and was the farmers’ mascot.
He authored books on developmental issues, introduced important legislations like the UP Zamindari Abolition Act and Land Reforms Act, and also worked to relieve farmers from the clutches of moneylenders. He founded the Bharatiya Kisan Union, which he originally started in Punjab as the Punjab Farming Union.
An estimated million farmers organised a Kisan Rally in Delhi on his birthday in 1978. His birth anniversary is now nationally observed as Kisan Diwas, and his memorial in New Delhi is named Kisan Ghat.
“Mentioning Chaudhary Charan Singh and his legacy was a very smart thing to do — the occasion was such,” observed Natwar Singh, referring to PM Modi’s mention of the former PM while laying the foundation stone for the Raja Mahendra Pratap university.
Charan Singh’s grandson is Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary, who has been at the forefront of the farmers’ protests. On Monday, leaders of different khaps from across India got together to present him the traditional headgear, formally anointing him the successor to Charan Singh’s legacy.
Devi Lal
Chaudhary Devi Lal was deputy prime minister of India from 1989 to 1991 in the governments of V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar. He was also the chief minister of Haryana twice. A powerful farmer leader, he played a role in the formation of the state of Haryana.
He joined the Congress as a teenager and participated in civil disobedience during the Indian independence movement, but split from the party in the 1970s. He later founded the Indian National Lok Dal — his son, Om Prakash Chautala, went on to become CM of Haryana. The Chautala name is taken from the family’s ancestral village of Chautala.
Devi Lal also had plans to build an Indian Disneyland in Haryana to develop the state’s economy, with three luxury hotels, lakes for water skiing, and tigers.
He described himself as “a people’s man interested in the welfare of the kisan”. Devi Lal initiated the practice of compensating farmers for crop loss, and introduced pensions and unemployment allowances for farmers. He also waived loans up to Rs 10,000.
Three of his four sons joined politics, and even though the dynasty has since splintered, it is still politically prominent, with Devi Lal’s great-grandson Dushyant Chautala currently serving as the deputy chief minister of Haryana.
Mahendra Singh Tikait
Mahendra Singh Tikait was president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union and a leader of the farming community. Hailing from Uttar Pradesh, Tikait became a national figure in 1988 when he led a march to Delhi to demand reforms for farmers. More than 30 years later, his sons Rakesh Tikait and Naresh Tikait are carrying on his legacy and are prominent faces of the farmers’ protests.
Mahendra Singh Tikait’s rally brought thousands of farmers from western Uttar Pradesh to Delhi’s Boat Club lawns and brought India’s capital to a standstill. The Rajiv Gandhi government of the time eventually conceded to the farmers’ demands, which included the waiving of electricity bills and water charges.
Tikait filled the vacuum Chaudhury Charan Singh had left behind when he died in 1987. Despite his massive following, Tikait never joined any political party, but remained an influential figure in the Jat and the farming communities.
(Edited by Paramita Ghosh)
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