PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh: entwined in death as in life

For the past 33 years, the life stories of former Prime Ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh had been deeply intertwined. Any appraisal of Rao’s prime ministerial tenure was incomplete without mentioning Dr. Singh’s historic budget of 1991. Likewise, commentaries on Singh’s distinguished public service career couldn’t skip a reference to the chance Rao took on him in 1991; plucking him out of the bureaucratic brass to name him India’s finance minister and change forever the country’s economic trajectory.

The demise of Singh on December 26, three days after Rao’s 20th death anniversary, instantly stirred up glorious recollections of that ‘jugalbandi’ between a consummate career politician and his ‘accidental’ finance minister. Less than 48 hours after Singh’s demise, even before his pyre was lit at Delhi’s Nigambodh Ghat, an ugly prologue to their otherwise illustrious partnership is being scripted by the BJP and the Congress.

Also watch: Has Manmohan Singh been wronged in death as well?

If Rao and Singh’s lives were linked by their successful steering of India out of imminent economic doom, their deaths, two decades apart, are now entwined by petty politics.

Congress vs BJP over Manmohan Singh's memorial

The BJP-led NDA government’s malicious decision to deny permission for Singh’s last rites to be performed at the Rashtriya Smriti Sthal adjoining Rajghat – the designated cremation ground for “departed national leaders” – and instead have them carried out at the Nigambodh Ghat (used by ‘commoners’) has been condemned by the Congress party, and the wider Opposition.

On December 27 (Friday), Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting that Singh’s last rites be held “at his final resting place that would be a sacrosanct venue for memorial for the great son of India (sic). This is in keeping with such tradition of having memorials for statesmen and former Prime Ministers at the very place of their funerals”. Congress sources say following Kharge’s telephonic conversation and letter to the Prime Minister on the issue, Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi and KC Venugopal had also requested Union defence minister Rajnath Singh to intercede in the matter.

Also read: Govt insulted Manmohan Singh by holding last rites at Nigambodh Ghat: Congress

By Friday evening though, it was clear that Modi had rejected the request. However, after the Congress and other Opposition outfits, including former long-time BJP ally Shiromani Akali Dal, created a furore over the “insult to India’s first and only Sikh Prime Minister”, the Union home ministry, through a late night press release, clarified that home minister Amit Shah had communicated to Kharge and the family of late Dr. Singh that “the government will allocate space for the memorial”. “In the meanwhile, cremation and other formalities can happen because a trust has to be formed and space has to be allocated to it (for the memorial)”.

On Saturday, however, the controversy snowballed further. Even as Modi, Shah and other senior central ministers were paying their last respects to Singh at the Nigambodh Ghat, the BJP unleashed multiple leaders to call out the Congress’s “hypocrisy” by recalling the “disrespect it showed to Rao after his death”. The BJP sought to portray the Centre decision to allocate space for a memorial dedicated to Singh as a sign of Modi’s magnanimity towards a political rival with party leaders and a section of the mainstream media stressing that it was Singh who, as Prime Minister in 2013, presided over the Union Cabinet’s decision banning the creation of new memorials in Delhi for “departed national leaders”.

Rao's grandson slams Congress

For good measure, Rao’s grandson and BJP leader NV Subhash gave lengthy bytes to sundry news channels and agencies slamming the Congress for its double standards and recalling how the party, at Sonia Gandhi’s instruction, had “not even allowed Narasimha Rao’s body to be kept inside the Congress office... his cortege was parked on the pavement outside and the Congress did not let his funeral take place in Delhi, where he spent all his life; they told the family to have the cremation in Hyderabad and did not even build a memorial for him in Delhi... it was PM Modi who got his memorial built (Gyan Bhumi at the Ekta Sthal complex near Rajghat) in 2015 and honoured him with Bharat Ratna this year”.

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The grave disrespect that Sonia had purportedly shown to Rao after his death had now, in the aftermath of Singh’s demise, come back to haunt the Congress party and the Gandhi family 20 years after the ugly episode of slamming the gates at Rao’s cortege played out at 24, Akbar Road on December 24, 2004.

Sonia and Rao had shared a frosty relationship and the Congress, till a few years ago largely refrained from even acknowledging Rao as a member of its pantheon of prime ministers. Unlike Singh, who Sonia continued to share a deep bond with even after the UPA government’s tenure ended with the Congress stooping to its lowest-ever tally in the Lok Sabha in 2014, Rao, whose chequered stint as PM also saw him failing in protecting the Babri Masjid from being demolished by BJP-backed Hindutva goons, was treated like a pariah by his party and its first family once the Congress lost the 1996 polls.

Even now, with the BJP seeking to appropriate Rao nationally and K. Chandrashekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) having tried to do the same in Telangana, the Congress’s reminiscences of its first prime minister outside the Gandhi family who completed a full term in office remain largely confined to perfunctory tributes on his birth and death anniversaries.

Also read: Sharmistha Mukherjee slams Congress amid Manmohan Singh memorial row

Expectedly, as the BJP revived the Congress’s shameful Rao chapter to gloss over the shoddy treatment it was now meting out to Singh, the Congress offered no explanation for its shabby conduct two decades back. Instead, the Congress chose to play up the “shocking display of disrespect and mismanagement” by the BJP at Singh’s cremation.

Rahul's accusations against BJP

In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi, persistently accused by the BJP of disrespecting Singh while the UPA was in power by publicly “tearing an ordinance” approved by the then Cabinet, noted that to date all departed prime ministers had been cremated at their “designated memorial sites so that every citizen could pay their last respects without any inconvenience” and added that the government “should have shown respect to this great son of India and his glorious community”. Priyanka Gandhi echoed similar views and said that “Dr. Manmohan Singh deserves respect and a memorial... the government should have risen above politics and pettiness”.

Neither Rahul nor Priyanka, predictably, made any mention – leave alone express regret – on why the Congress had not shown the same respect to Rao, one of its own leaders, that it now rightly wants the BJP to extend to Singh.

Also watch: How India’s two-term PM Manmohan Singh’s policies shaped a billion lives

A senior Congress leader who had served for a time in Rao’s Union council of ministers told The Federal that the party high command, with its robust condemnations of the “insult” shown to Singh by the BJP, was “trying to over-compensate” for the “same treatment they showed to Rao when he died”. This leader said that though the Gandhi family’s “sense of hurt at the way Singh’s cremation was not allowed to take place at the Smriti Sthal is genuine and cannot be questioned, the party should have known that any objection it raises will only allow the BJP to rake up the Rao chapter... in fact, Modi and Shah would have calculated this move”.

Another Congress leader said the party may not just be compensating for what it did to Rao but also trying to “signal to the Sikh community how much we care... it’s like yet another atonement for 1984”. That Delhi, which is bound for Assembly polls by February and where the Congress is desperate for an electoral revival, has a sizeable Sikh community may also be an added trigger for the party leadership stridently equating the Centre’s decision with an “affront to the Sikh community”, this leader said.

'Insult to Sikhs'

Notably, the AAP, which is fighting visible anti-incumbency to retain power in Delhi, has also invoked the “insult to Sikhs” bogey to slam the Centre, as has the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has been struggling for political survival in Sikh-majority Punjab.

Also read: Manmohan Singh hails Narasimha Rao as father of economic reforms

Late Saturday evening, in a long-winding but predictable video message, BJP president JP Nadda slammed Rahul and Kharge for their “double standards” and “playing politics” over Singh’s cremation. Nadda reiterated the charges made by his party colleagues earlier in the day about the “insult Congress had shown to PV Narasimha Rao” and added that “the party also disrespected President Pranab Mukherjee and did not even convene a CWC to pass a condolence resolution on his passing”.

The BJP president asserted that Modi had, in contrast, risen above party politics and agreed to have a memorial built for Singh just as he had done for Rao and that it was Modi who honoured both Rao and Mukherjee with Bharat Ratna. Nadda added that the Centre’s decision to allocate space for a memorial for Singh was taken though “it was his (Singh’s) government that banned the building of new memorials for former Presidents and Prime Ministers in Delhi through a cabinet decision of 2013”.

It is, however, a different matter that Nadda was being too economical with the truth as far as the 2013 Cabinet decision and the Congress’s reaction to Mukherjee’s demise are concerned. While the Singh-led UPA government did indeed put a stop to building separate memorials for departed national leaders, it did so as a follow up to a Cabinet decision that was taken by the BJP-led NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the year 2000.

A press release issued by the Union Housing and Urban Affairs ministry on May 16, 2013 had stated, “The Union Cabinet today gave its approval for the construction of a Rashtriya Smriti at the Samadhis complex near Ekta Sthal in New Delhi, to establish a place to perform last rites of departed national leaders, namely Presidents, Vice Presidents, Prime Ministers... and such other leaders as decided by the Cabinet”. The statement added that the Cabinet’s decision was taken in view of a previous Cabinet decision of 2000 which had stated, “henceforth, government shall not develop any Samadhi for departed leaders”.

Will the controversy end?

As for Nadda’s charge about the CWC not condoning the demise of Mukherjee; a charge also made earlier in the day by former Congress leader and Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmishtha Mukherjee, a member of the CWC told The Federal, “Pranab da died (in August 2020) when the Covid pandemic was still raging even though the hard lockdown had being relaxed; in fact if I recall correctly, he had developed medical complications after testing positive for Covid and his health deteriorated rapidly after that... so where was the question of convening a CWC in the situation?”.

The CWC member, however, said Sharmishtha’s grievance “is valid, even if her motivation to bring this up now may be suspect given the way she parted with the Congress and subsequently spoke against the leadership” but added that “though Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and all CWC members sent their condolence message to Pranab da’s family immediately after his demise, it was a failure on our part to not issue a CWC resolution”.

“The CWC could not meet in August because of the pandemic but a resolution could have been drafted or we could have passed one when the CWC met in November that year to condole the deaths of Ahmed Patel and Tarun Gogoi, who also we lost to the pandemic; it was a grave oversight but I am sure it wasn’t a deliberate one... I distinctly remember Sonia Gandhi’s condolence message which went on to say that she had learnt much from Pranab da and that she can’t even imagine how the party would move on without his wisdom; she sent this message also on behalf of the party which is as good as a CWC resolution,” the senior leader added further.

The Congress’s protestations against the BJP’s “insult to Singh” and the BJP’s counter-offensive over the affront to Rao are not likely to die down anytime soon. With many Congress ‘dynasts’, including Rao’s grandson, now under the BJP’s refuge, it is expected that the saffron party would field them to slam their erstwhile party for ‘disrespecting its own’. And so, in death as in life, but for different reasons, any mention of one without the other shall remain incomplete.