At the first official state dinner of his presidency, on November 24, 2009, Barack Obama, the first non-white President of the United States, hosted Manmohan Singh, the first non-Hindu Prime Minister of India. In the oldest and the biggest democracies of the world, that era was a high noon of liberalism. A coalition of minorities appeared ascendant, in both countries. Though Manmohan Singh would not be counted as a political leader like Mr. Obama, he too represented a political process that was common to both India and the U.S. — the climax and then the crisis of liberalism, on the social, economic and international affairs fronts. Mr. Obama and Manmohan Singh understood each other better than they both would the politics of their own countries. Manmohan Singh had a keen sense of global developmental challenges — he championed the India-U.S. civil nuclear deal, economic liberalisation and also amended New Delhi’s position in climate change negotiations. As a child of Partition and as a Nehruvian, Manmohan Singh understood the necessity of religious harmony. His presence, decisions and indecisions would transform Indian politics. It is essential to take note of it in order to understand the present-day politics of India.
The 2004 vote
There were two paradoxes in Manmohan Singh’s rise as Prime Minister in 2004, both of which speak to the vibrancy of Indian democracy. The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 marked a low point in Indian pluralism. Sikhs made up about 1.72% of India’s population, and the fact that one of them could become the Prime Minister 20 years later, marked a high point. The majority Hindus did not find anything problematic.
The second paradox is that the vote in 2004 was one against the celebration of the market. Manmohan Singh who became Prime Minister, was a votary of the market. He would reluctantly follow a welfarist agenda dictated by democratic politics.
Now, to his presence, decisions and indecisions. The United Progressive Alliance-1 was a coalition of religious and linguistic minorities and subaltern social groups. But when it was reconstituted following the 2009 elections, subaltern representatives from the Hindi belt were left out. The Left was replaced with Trinamool Congress (TMC); the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam continued. Political power in India between 2004 and 2014 was controlled, along with Manmohan Singh, by Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, Pranab Mukherjee and A.K. Antony. The coalition elected two Presidents of India, Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee, and Hamid Ansari as Vice President of India. Religious and linguistic minorities were represented for all 10 years, but subaltern castes were pointedly expelled in 2009 by Congress managers. Nobody in the above list, save perhaps Sonia Gandhi, had any capacity to get an extra vote for the Congress in the Hindi heartland. In fact, the very optics of the overwhelming presence of religious minorities and upper caste Hindus at the top turned out to be one of the causes of the shift by the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalits in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014. This has parallels with what would happen in the U.S. in 2016.
Manmohan Singh was indecisive on many issues, but there was one question — apart from the India-U.S. nuclear deal — that he put his foot down for. This was to veto the social justice agenda pushed by cabinet colleagues Arjun Singh and Meira Kumar, Minister of Human Resource Development and Social Justice Minister, respectively, in UPA-1. There cannot be a reasonable explanation for the surprise surge of the Congress in 2009 in the heartland — it won 21 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, for instance — without taking into account the OBC quota in higher educational institutions driven by Arjun Singh and OBC parties in UPA-1. The battle of wits between the two Singhs on the quota question is instructive of the imbalance between secularism and socialism justice that made the UPA’s promise of progress short-lived. Manmohan Singh owned it.
Singh vs Singh
Manmohan Singh resisted Arjun Singh’s plans for expanding quotas. It all started with a Supreme Court judgment in 2005, which brought into dispute the power of the state to enforce the reservation policy in admissions to private educational institutions. Many States had quotas in unaided institutions, which were questionable after the Court decision. Arjun Singh championed it and Parliament amended the Constitution to insert a clause to Article 15, which specifically enabled reservations in “admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority educational institutions”.
A new anti-reservation movement erupted in upper India while peninsular India remained calm. The then Human Resources Development Ministry under Arjun Singh drafted a Bill that proposed OBC quotas in all government institutions of higher education which already had Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe quotas; and for all three categories in private ones. The Manmohan Singh-led Prime Minister’s Office instructed Arjun Singh to bifurcate the Bill — one for aided, and a second for unaided ones. Arjun Singh got both drafts ready. Late evening on a day before they were to be taken up by the Union Cabinet, Manmohan Singh instructed that the Bill for private ones be kept aside. Though the move for caste quotas in private institutions was halted, quota in government institutions of higher education rallied OBC communities in the heartland behind the Congress party in 2009.
Manmohan Singh and the technocratic, Delhi-based Congress managers interpreted the 2009 results as an endorsement of the employment guarantee scheme, or even the U.S. nuclear deal. Arjun Singh was denied a berth in the new Council. Meira Kumar was restrained as Lok Sabha Speaker. Ms. Kumar had tried to implement an item in the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP). It had said: “The UPA government is very sensitive to the issue of affirmative action, including reservations in the private sector. It will immediately initiate a national dialogue with all political parties, industry and other organizations to see how best the private sector can fulfill the aspirations of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe youth.” Ms. Kumar convened a meeting of industry leaders to open a dialogue, inviting the ire of Manmohan Singh, who instructed her to cancel it. Nobody in the National Advisory Council, whose mandate was to implement the NCMP, said anything. Meanwhile, OBC MPs were pointing out in 2006 that not a single Governor in the country was from among their communities. On this question, Manmohan Singh remained silent — indecision.
The parallel line
This hostility towards social justice politics was happening alongside a discussion on the welfare of Muslims, Dalits, and OBC Christians. The Court’s Inamdar judgment on reservations in private educational institutions and the appointment of the Sachar Committee to study the condition of Muslims happened months apart in 2005, triggering fresh debates on communal and caste questions. The Congress, partly by intention, pitched the Muslims against subaltern Hindus, thinking that this could break the OBC-Muslim social coalition that had emaciated the party in the Hindi heartland. But the consequences were unintended. OBC/Dalit segments of the heartland became the most fertile ground for Hindutva subsequently, as they came to believe that non-BJP parties were trying to provide quotas for Muslims at their cost. It is not a coincidence that the badly drafted line by Manmohan Singh about minorities having the first claim over national resources continues to haunt the Congress.
In fairness, Manmohan Singh was following a traditional Congress line of ignoring the OBCs and focusing on the rest. Arjun Singh sensed the ground had shifted and that the OBCs counted. The other politician who sensed that by 2009 was Narendra Modi, who addressed subaltern Hindus. Arjun Singh crossed swords with two Congress Prime Ministers — once on secularism and then on social justice. In 1992, he resigned from the P.V. Narasimha Rao Government for its failure to protect the Babri Masjid. In 2009 he was denied a cabinet berth by Manmohan Singh. The Congress party included in its 2024 election manifesto a promise of OBC/SC/ST reservation in private educational institutions — an idea stalled by Manmohan Singh. Rahul Gandhi today wants to rebuild the Congress on the twin plank of secularism and social justice. Manmohan Singh had an opportunity.
Published – January 16, 2025 12:16 am IST
This post was originally published on here
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