Dr. Manmohan Singh passed away on 26 December, 2024, at a time when Narendra Modi, an aggressive political leader, in the sense of Aristotle’s phrase ‘man is a political animal’ is ruling. Before his ten years rule was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first Hindutva ruler, who ruled India for the first time for more than five years by putting a stamp of RSS ideology in the administration. He was a Kautilyan in the BJP cultural nationalist growth. He appeared to be a soft Hindutva man, but was a strategic killer of Congress. His power game was preceded by P.V. Narsimha Rao’s five year rule. PV was a world class Congress Kautilyan. There was a lot of caste and ideological communication between Rao and Vajpayee how to systematically transfer power from the Congress to BJP. Because Rao knew that sooner or later Sonia Gandhi was to become the leader of the Congress party. For both Vajpayee and Rao, Sonia Gandhi was an Italian and Christian, hence never should she be allowed to head the Congress and much more never should she be allowed to become the Prime Minister of India. Actually it was PVN Rao, who started the process of transferring power to RSS from Congress, like the British transferred the power to the Congress in 1947.
Both Vajpayee and Modi of the RSS heritage are rhetorical orators and committed RSS/BJP activists. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, who never knew what aggressive activism succeeded them and ruled India for ten years. While being in power they proved Aristotle wrong that humans could be apolitical animals as well. And yet they changed the course of the Indian economy in a Post-Bill Clinton globalization process and balanced it with Indian mode of welfarism. Those ten years of Manmohan and Sonia made their Hindu Rastra agenda difficult, though they could come to power after Manmohan rule. If that ten year period between 2004 and 2014 were not to rule and the RSS/BJP were to come to power and rule more than 10 years as they are ruling now, the present constitution would have been tossed out by now.
During their ten years rule Indians experienced what democratic welfarism does mean to the Indian poor people’s living. The Indian constitution acquired a new meaning in demonstrating the welfare ideology with an open market economy. Both the Hindutva forces and communists were unhappy with them. We know how CPM withdrew from UPA within their first five years itself. But in the 2009 elections instead of gaining more seats the Left got weakened, opening up more space for the Hindutva forces. Yet the UPA under these non-aggressive leaders got one more term. But that non-aggressive soft spoken leadership of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi paved the way for the aggressive Modi-headed Hindutva forces to come to power in 2014.
Though the Congress lost its political vigour to stop RSS/BJP from coming to power with a new avatar of Other Backward Class alignment, as both Manmohan and Sonia Gandhi remained politically non-aggressive, who could not challenge the RSS/BJP leadership. However, during the 2004-20020014 rule of Manmohan-Sonia period India moved into a new phase. However, they could have tackled the corruption issue put forth by both the RSS/BJP forces and Arvind Kejriwal network before the nation with more political skill and vigour.
Once the RSS/BJP came to power in 2014 they started attacking Manmohan Singh as a puppet ruler always remotely controlled by Sonia Gandhi. His own media secretary Sanjay Baru wrote a damning book against him with the title ‘The Accidental Prime Minister–Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh’. Baru has shown his Marxist brahmanism against a very soft Sikh PM. This book gave enough ammunition to the RSS/BJP forces to attack Manmohan as long as he was alive.
Manmohan said “…what I have done as well as I could do according to the circumstances… It is for history to judge”. This statement he made in a context of repeated attacks on him as PM by the BJP that he was controlled by Sonia Gandhi, remotely. Sanjya Baru’s book provided scope for that attack. Many those who worked with Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, including Aruna Roy by the end of their second term ditched them. Arun Roya just before the 2014 elections resigned from the National Advisory Council and attacked her Government.
Media reported her exit from NAC as follows:
“On her way out, Ms Roy criticised the government for not taking up recommendations of the council on minimum wages to workers under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).” This is a typical brahminic tactic. She worked the whole of that tenure using all the Government perks and just before the election and paved a way for the RSS/BJP. Some other members of that council always put forth agendas of Muslim minorities, but never talked about OBCs and Dalits. Harsh Mander’ s role is an outstanding example.
Quite sadly there was a single noted pro-Mandal OBC on the committee. See names:
The NAC – II consisted of a mix of activists, bureaucrats, economists, politicians and industrialists-
· Sonia Gandhi – chairperson.
· Ashis Mondal –
· Anu Aga
The members who served on the NAC and later resigned are
In this list there is no single pro-Mandal movement OBC intellectual. Not only in this list neither the President nor the Vice-President was an OBC during that period. In fact most of those who were included in such committees were known as anti-OBC. By allowing Hamid Ansari, who could never mobilize votes for the Congress was allowed to remain the Vice-President for two terms. Imagine a Mandal fighter and a life time anti-BJP Sharat Yaday were to be made the president of India during that period. That would have sent a different message to the OBCs of India.
This kind of OBC absence in Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi the RSS/BJP forces, particularly Narendra Modi used to his full advantage.
It is a bare fact that Manmohan Singh was made Prime Minister but, not become one on his own. The maker of him was/is like him is also an unusual non-political humanist—Sonia Gandhi.
During that whole period the RSS/BJP attacked Sonia as Christian un-Indian after she brought the Congress to power. It was almost dying when she brought it back to power. She picked him without an iota of fear of deception. A Sikh, a non-political academic bureaucrat becoming PM was a shock to the RSS/BJP and also senior aspirants in her own party. They thought that both of them would fail soon. Since the RSS/BJP had ruled for five preceding years and deeply felt that five years period was a Shining India. They thought that they would come back soon by pulling the UPA Government down.
The Singh-Sonia combination kept the RSS/BJP waiting for power, with a new humanitarian will for ten years. That combination carved out a new social welfare democracy, with an incredible empathy to the poor of India. This empathy was unparalleled in India’s history. Their hard core Hindutva opponents spread rumours that theirs was an “Italy- Khalistani” combination. Inside the Congress there were forces that wanted to usurp the PM position from Dr.Singh. There were whispers among the Hindutva forces that it was a “Christian-Sikh” regime.
Let us not forget the fact that Sonia’s mother-in-law was killed by her Sikh guards. Yet she decided to put Manmohan Singh with a turban and beard, though was not a conservative Sikh himself, but Sikh by birth and also by faith, to make the PM. He was to command three heads of our armed forces. In those ten years the internal sub-nationalist disruptions disappeared. The Khalistani movement both inside and outside almost died down because of his presence in that position symbolizing the Sikh spiritual heritage.
His presence in that position made national integration an authentic future of India because Punjab certainly felt healed with him becoming the PM. But unfortunately because of the RSS/BJP present regimes religious Hindu nationalism Sikhism is asserting itself in several modes both inside and outside.
However, that was the time of global Islamic terrorism’s ascendancy. In 2001 the major 9/11/2001 happened. After America went after them the terrorists were reequipping themselves. India was their next target. Singh’s Government faced major terrorist attacks. But he handled that crisis with utmost care without offending Islamic civilization.
The UPA Government in those ten years saw the direction of the world and Manmohan Singh opened the Indian economy and tried to integrate with globalized markets. During his ten years period he carefully balanced between privatization, liberalization and anti-poverty programmes. They initiated the implementation of Mandal reservations in central educational institutions along with employment. They also initiated steps to push those reservations into the private sector. The RSS/BJP worked in close consultation with the private monopoly companies to stall that attempt. That is when they became more friendly with monopoly capitalists, who began to turn against the Congress.
Though the implementation of reservations in central universities, IITs, IIMS and central medical universities was half-heard by even the left-liberal and right wing Dwija educationalists, the policy push attempt softened the stand of reserved categories against the Congress. Added to that MGNREGA, Right to Information ACT, Increase of minimum wages, and Aadhar identity steps began to show results among the poor and lower middle classes. The UPA won improved seats in the background of improvement of the rural economy in the 2009 elections.
After the 2009 elections when Manmohan became PM again with Sonia-Rahul support within the Congress there was more heartburn to the aspirants for PM. If Rahul were to become the PM maybe they would not have grumbled so much. Both from outside and inside there was a feeling that a man who never won an election was ruling the country for a second term as well. But Manmohan, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi worked in tandem, except for the ordinance issue that Rahul Gandhi tore in a press meet. Slowly the corruption campaign started against most uncorrupt Manmoham-Sonia, as individuals.
However, the economy stabilized. But the opposition including some anti-Congress NGOs like the one that Arvind Kejriwal headed, with the support of Hindutva forces and institutions headed by Ramdev kind of people worked out agendas of anti-corruption campaign against the Government. It was ironic that they accused Manmohan Singh’s Government, who told his security officer that he feels more comfortable in his own Maruti-800 than in the BMW car convoy of PM. It was also difficult to imagine that Sonia Gandhi, who lived a silently simple life, and was heading a UPA, was looting the nation.
However, they started mobilizing forces against Dr.Singh’s Government as most corrupt. The final blow was the Ramleela Maidan drama of Anna Hazare, Kejriwal and Ramdev and so on. It was in this situation that Pranab Mukarjee, with all his experience, let down the prestige of Singh’s Government by going to the airport with two more ministers to receive Ramdev, who was nobody.
The 2014 elections took place in this background. Dr.Singh and Sonia Gandhi could not, for health reasons, travel in the country to explain their work and achievements. The burden to fight the 2014 election fell on young Rahul Gandhi. The Congress lost that election badly.
However, their achievements were simply incredible during that period. From among the lower castes and farming communities a sizable middle class emerged to participate in the upcoming market economy. For example, even in remotest villages farmers, labourers bought two wheelers. Their food intake improved. Clothing and housing facilities improved. Education system has spread out. Child labour had drastically came down. Children’s health improved.
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But the media switched to judging Manmohan harshly forcing him to make that statement “ “I do not believe that I have been a weak Prime Minister. I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media”.
After Winston Churchill, who ruled Britain to successfully bring Britain out of World War II, without winning an election as PM, Manmohan Singh led India out of brutal poverty without ever winning an election as PM .
Let history keep judging him.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and writer. His latest book is The Shudra Rebellion.
