When obituary becomes opprobrium, history takes a step back. The malicious mudslinging against Manmohan Singh, who passed away last week at 92, by political pygmies and self-serving sycophants exposed all that is wrong with Indian public life. The soft-spoken and unassuming Singh, who served as prime minister for a decade, is suddenly being spotlighted by both friends and foes.
Those who dismissed him as Sonia Gandhi’s spineless camp follower are inventing new adjectives for his stellar achievements and personal humility. For them, he was the role model of global leaders and a super-economist of international celebrity. Meanwhile, BJP & Co, who rarely missed a chance to ridicule Singh, flooded the media with tributes to his magnanimity, credibility and desirability among all communities, castes and religion. Singh has become king—but only after his death.
The vituperative verbal volleys between the ruling party and the opposition resemble a political badminton game where the dead dignitary is the shuttlecock. Sadly, even before Singh’s body was moved from his residence to the AICC headquarters, he became a ceremonial trophy which everyone wanted to own—though only in spirit—so that they could grow their political capital.
The Congress, which conferred on him almost 10 posts from central government secretary to prime minister, saw his bier as the bed of reincarnation to revive its oxidised image of a party without a credible, respectable leader. It invoked him as its gift to the nation. Within 24 hours, he acquired a status taller than Jawaharlal Nehru’s. The entire Gandhi parivar turned up in full force at the cremation.
While the NDA government ordered a send-off with full state honours, like is done for all former PMs, the Congress demanded that Singh’s last rites be performed at the Raj Ghat complex, where half a dozen leaders were cremated.
It asked the government to donate land in the same area on which the Congress could raise a memorial on its own dime. Unfortunately, in its obsessive and excessive bid to grab attention and sympathy, it invoked Singh’s Sikh identity and charged the BJP government for insulting India’s first Sikh PM. For the sake of vote politics, Singh was reduced from Maximum Leader to Minimum Mascot of a small community—Sikhs comprise under 2 percent of India’s population.
The Grand Old Partymen conveniently forgot how its leaders crippled his premiership by foisting its loyal civil servants and ministers on him. However, Singh was perennially projected as a symbol of wisdom and humility, which became a mannequin of economic salvation at Congress forums. He was chided to listen more and talk less.
The Congress’s naked exercise of identity politics angered a section of the Sikh community. Some leaders went emotionally ballistic against the Centre for not giving appropriate respect to Singh. They reduced him to just a Sikh leader, rather than the national icon who steered India out of many crises on the job.
The fault for the unsavoury controversy also lies partially at the doorstep of the Modi government. Perhaps the bureaucracy didn’t adequately brief the top leadership about precedent. Barring a few leaders, most previous PMs and a few deputy PMs were cremated on the banks of the Yamuna. The Union cabinet, which convened after Singh’s death, decided to find a suitable place for his memorial; but chose Nigambodh Ghat for the funeral.
Never before has any PM been cremated there like a commoner. While the BJP sarkar denied a proper place for Singh’s last resting place in the Raj Ghat complex, it launched a vicious attack on the Congress for humiliating Singh when he was alive.
Numerous BJP leaders posted old videos of Congress leaders dissing Singh. While Modi praised his predecessor and was personally present at the funeral with senior cabinet colleagues, the IT and railway minister, who has 1.5 million followers on X, tweeted: “Dr Manmohan Singh was reduced to a proxy PM. Real power was wielded by Sonia Gandhi through the National Advisory Council”, and, “The ultimate insult came in 2013 when Rahul Gandhi publicly tore up an ordinance approved by the cabinet chaired by Dr Singh as prime minister.”
Undoubtedly, the central government unintentionally erred in dealing with the situation arising out of Singh’s death. However, its supporters made a feeble attempt to justify their government.
They were quick to dig up the Congress’s record of shabbily treating its leaders disliked by the Gandhi parivar. Eight PMs—Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and even the accidental prime ministers Charan Singh, Chandrasekhar and I K Gujral—have memorials in the Raj Ghat complex.
Even Sanjay Gandhi, who held no government post, got heavenly real estate, perhaps because he was the shadow PM during the Emergency. Deceased deputy PMs Devi Lal and Jagjivan Ram, and President Giani Zail Singh were also allotted space in the exclusive cremation conclave.
The Gandhi family is terribly harsh towards anyone who opposes them. For example, the first non-Congress PM, Morarji Desai, was honoured in Ahmedabad, and Gandhi bugbears P V Narasimha Rao and V P Singh in Hyderabad and Allahabad; not a single memorial was raised in their memory anywhere. The Congress and the Gandhi parivar were highly vindictive against Rao and V P Singh; they never forgot or forgave the latter for breaking the party and inflicting a humiliating defeat on them. On the other hand, the BJP has given them a place of pride in the newly-curated Prime Ministers’ Museum in New Delhi.
Since crematoriums for famous persons acquire historical significance over a period of time, as the Gandhi Samadhi has, ruling parties claim ownership of their legacy. Soon after their death, a special trust is created, headed by a central government nominee and including one or two members of the family of the departed.
According to insiders, the Modi government would be erecting a memorial like Vajpayee’s and will include Singh’s wife and daughter in the trust. The Congress and the Gandhi parivar would be kept out of it to prevent them from leveraging prominence at future anniversary functions. Since four members of the Nehru-Gandhi clan occupy huge acreage in the complex, the Centre has decided to carve out a small portion for a Manmohan Memorial to ensure that visitors to deceased Gandhis would be compelled to pay respects to Singh as well.
The poisonous politics over Singh’s death is meant more to diminish the Nehru-Gandhi hagiography than to elevate the dear departed former prime minister. To the chagrin of the Congress, Manmohan Singh will not only be the eternal king of the Congress, but an alternative relic of royalty. This will be a more lasting tribute to the man who changed the Indian way of life, though that was not the Congress’s intention. In the circus of public life, history is the ringmaster and its participants are acrobats. Some are clowns, too.