New Delhi: On Friday, moments after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Centre’s decision to confer the Bharat Ratna on former prime ministers P.V. Narasimha Rao (1991 to 1996) and Charan Singh (July to August 1979), reporters accosted former Congress president Sonia Gandhi outside Parliament for her reaction to the development.
The reporters pressed her into issuing a response: “Well, I welcome it. Why not?”
As Sonia exited the Parliament building, leaving a volley of questions trailing behind, it was left to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to issue an elaborate statement on the matter.
On X, Kharge posted that the Congress welcomed the decision of the Centre, lauding Rao’s role in “nation-building”.
“Under his government, India embarked on a transformative journey with a series of economic reforms that played a pivotal role in shaping the middle class for generations to come. He also made significant contributions to India’s nuclear programme and a number of foreign policy achievements marked his tenure, including the ‘Look East’ policy,” Kharge said.
His statement also invoked Charan Singh’s “pro-farmer policies” and the wide respect that he commands among “our annadatas (farmers) and khet mazdoors (agricultural labourers) in the country”.
More than Kharge’s adulatory statement, however, it was Sonia’s visible discomfiture outside Parliament that captured the Congress’ difficulty in dealing with the BJP’s latest curveball.
Because, more than anything else, it is the icy equation that Rao shared with Sonia that pushed him into political oblivion after his five-year term as PM ended in 1996.
In books authored by them, Congress veterans such as Natwar Singh and K.V. Thomas have attributed the bitterness between Rao and Sonia to the latter’s unhappiness over the slow pace of probe into the 1991 assassination of her husband, former PM Rajiv Gandhi (1984 to 1989), under Rao’s stewardship as PM.
Natwar Singh, who briefly served as the external affairs minister in the first Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, notes in his book One Life is Not Enough: “An impression was created by one or two senior members of the Congress Working Committee that she (Sonia) was not happy with the (economic) reform process and that Rao was ignoring her. Almost all the senior members of the Congress party were aware of Gandhi giving him the cold shoulder.”
At one point, records the book, Rao even confided in Natwar Singh that “I can take on Sonia Gandhi. But I do not want to do so. Some of her advisers have been filling her ears against me. I don’t take them seriously. Sonia’s case is different. Her attitude towards me is affecting my health. If she wants me to go, she only has to say so. I have done my best to meet all her desires and requirements promptly. You worked closely with her and must know and should know why Sonia is so hostile to me”.
Incidentally, Rao, who was the first PM not belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi family to complete a five-year term, landed the top job accidentally.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination left the Congress without a president, as many leaders such as Sharad Pawar, Arjun Singh and N.D. Tiwari started vying for the post, Rao, who was preparing to retire, emerged as the surprise pick, which eventually paved his way to the PM’s post.
The accounts of Gandhi family loyalists such as Mani Shankar Aiyar, however, are wholly hostile to Rao, particularly over the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 when the latter was PM. For them, the Gandhi family’s aversion to Rao was more ideological than personal.
For instance, speaking to ThePrint in August ahead of the launch of his autobiography Memoirs of a Maverick, in which Aiyar accuses the former PM of “facilitating” the demolition of the mosque, he held Rao “singularly responsible” for pulling the Congress away from its secular moorings.
“It was under Narasimha Rao that the Congress started separating itself from its strong anchoring in the secularism of the Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru kind,” Aiyar said.
At the launch of the book, Aiyar also described Rao as the “first BJP prime minister of India”.
Many years later, even after the Liberhan Commission report exonerated Rao of all charges relating to the demolition of the mosque, the Congress remained silent.
Rao was even denied a ticket to contest in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, with then Congress president Sitaram Kesri — who was also unceremoniously shown the door soon after — citing Rao’s “inability to protect the Babri Masjid” as the reason behind it.
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‘Sonia did not want a memorial for Rao anywhere in Delhi’
After Sonia took over the reins of the Congress in 1998, the erasure of Rao’s imprint was complete as he did not even find a place in the newly-constituted Congress Working Committee (CWC), the highest decision-making body of the Congress.
After his death in 2004, Rao’s body was not allowed to be taken inside the 24, Akbar Road, Congress headquarters in New Delhi, located barely 200 metres away from his official residence on Motilal Nehru Marg, and the cortege was parked outside its premises for people to pay their respects.
Sanjaya Baru, who was the media advisor to former PM Manmohan Singh, wrote in his book The Accidental Prime Minister that while Rao’s children wanted the former PM to be cremated in Delhi, like other Congress PMs who even have memorials built for them, “Sonia did not want a memorial for Rao anywhere in Delhi”.
“Later that evening, I was told the Congress party had got Rao’s family to agree to fly his body out to Hyderabad by deploying Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy to persuade them to fall in line. The Congress party refused to allow Rao’s body to be brought into the party’s headquarters on its way to the airport, and Sonia chose not to be present at the Hyderabad cremation,” wrote Baru.
While Rao died a lonely man, he remained a part of the Congress, despite the rancour and acrimony.
In 2020, the Congress attempted a change in tack. As the party’s Telangana unit launched a year-long centenary celebration of Rao, who was born in the state’s Warangal district, Sonia sent a written message heaping praises on his “bold” leadership, saying she took pride in his accomplishments and contributions.
In a separate message, Rahul Gandhi also lauded Rao’s contribution which “continues to shape modern India”.
“From joining the Congress party in his teenage years to becoming the prime minister of the largest democracy, his remarkable political journey reflected his grit and determination,” Rahul had said in a statement then.
Charan Singh criticised Congress
On the other hand, Charan Singh, who was a towering farmer leader of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh in the pre and post-Independence years, did not just quit the party in 1967, but was also instrumental in dissolving all the state governments led by the Congress after the Janata Party came to power in 1977.
As home minister in the Janata Party government, Charan Singh also got former PM and Congress leader Indira Gandhi arrested from her residence that year.
It is another matter that Charan Singh’s short-lived 23-day tenure as PM, following his rift with Morarji Desai, Janata Dal leader who served as PM from 1977 to 1979, was thanks to the outside support extended by the Congress then led by Indira Gandhi.
But as he refused to drop certain criminal charges against Indira that had led to her arrest earlier, she withdrew her support, and the Jat leader was forced to resign as PM in August 1979. He, however, continued as caretaker PM till January 1980.
In the subsequent years, Charan Singh remained a bitter critic of the Congress.
He had famously berated the party in a speech delivered in the Uttar Pradesh assembly in 1976 for its hero worship of Indira.
“Your president says Indira is India and India is Indira. You should be ashamed. This doesn’t happen in any democratic country. It’s your weakness. It’s your mistake,” he had said in his speech delivered in Hindi, as reported by The Indian Express.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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