OBC leaders must embrace VP Singh

The emerging consolidation of the Other Backward Classes in Uttar Pradesh will likely continue regardless of whether the Samajwadi Party or the Bharatiya Janata Party wins the Assembly elections there To give this process of consolidation a fresh impetus and ideological coherence OBC leaders must now reclaim those leaders who fought for their cause but hegemonic discourses banished them into oblivionNo one deserves to be reclaimed more than VP Singh who was prime minister between December 2 1989 and November 10 1990 His decision to implement the Mandal Commissionrsquos recommendation for granting 27 per cent reservation to the OBCs in Union government jobs turned them with due apology to Karl Marx from ldquocastes by themselvesrdquo into ldquocastes for themselvesrdquo This transformation presupposes social groups comprehending the mechanism of their own exploitation which is what Uttar Pradesh is witnessing todayYet even OBC leaders seldom remember Singh because of the backdrop to his decision on OBC reservation Tired of then Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal perpetually threatening to raise a banner of revolt Singh dropped him from the Union Council of Ministers on August 1 1990 An enraged Lal announced he would hold a rally on August 9 triggering fears that he planned to rally OBC MPs behind him to split the Janata Dal the mainstay of the National Front coalition governmentSingh announced his decision on OBC reservation on August 7 This was projected in the media narrative as a cynical spurofthemoment manoeuvre against Lal Three decades later Debashish Mukerjirsquos The Disruptor How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India published late last year puts out a chronology showing that the implementation of OBC reservation was always Singhrsquos projectThree weeks after becoming prime minister he appointed a committee under Lal to do preparatory work for implementing OBC reservation But Lal was disinterested because his own community of Jats was not in the OBC list of the Mandal CommissionIn January 1990 PS Krishnan a walkingtalking encyclopaedia on the social justice movement became the secretary of the Social Welfare Ministry In an interview with Mukerji Krishnan said that implementing the Mandal report was the ldquoforemostrdquo item on his ldquoagenda of things to get donerdquo That would not have been possible without Singhrsquos consent In March then Social Welfare Minister Ram Vilas Paswan was handed over Lalrsquos briefOn May 1 Krishnan prepared a note on the Mandal report for the Cabinet While vetting it then Cabinet Secretary Vinod Pande told Krishnan ldquoWe have to find a way out of the Mandal problem for VP Singhrdquo Krishnan countered ldquoProblem VP Singh wants to enforce Mandalrdquo In May Singh wrote letters to chief ministers seeking their opinion on the Mandal reportSingh wanted to announce the decision on Independence Day but Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav advised it must be done before Lalrsquos rally on August 9 Krishnanrsquos note was presented to the Cabinet on August 2 for approval Sure Singh wished to use the Mandal report as a weapon against Lal but its implementation was also advanced because of the parliamentary party meeting of the National Front on August 3At that rambunctious fourhour meeting Mukerji writes an angry MP declared OBC reservation would never be implemented by upper caste prime ministers Singh delineated the steps he had taken to implement the Mandal report The MP retorted ldquoBahaneybaji Excusesrdquo Provoked Singh asked the meeting to set a date for implementing the report Thus was August 7 chosenYet the media made a casteist presumption Singh a Rajput and an erstwhile royalty to boot could not have had empathy for the OBCs at the expense of his fellow upper castes whose share in Union government jobs shrunk overnight It is a testament to the power of hegemonic discourses that the elitersquos narrative about Singh convinced OBC leaders as wellIt must be remembered that reservation before 1947 barring the Madras Presidency was introduced in the princely states of Kolhapur Mysore Travancore and Cochin Three out of these four princely states were ruled by Kshatriyas the varna category to which apart from VP also belonged Arjun Singh who was instrumental in introducing OBC reservation in higher education in 2006By inducting the two SinghsmdashVP and Arjunmdashinto their pantheon of icons OBC leaders could broaden their movement beyond caste and turn it into a larger fight for equality and equity These twin quests were symbolised by VP Singh who gifted over 200 acres to Vinoba Bhaversquos Bhoodan movement His government framed laws for establishing the Prasar Bharati and the National Commission for Women Bureaucratic delays nixed his plan to pass a law on what we now know as the right to informationIn later years Singh contributed his mite to the RTI movement earning the admiration of Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey counted among the principal architects of the RTI Act In their obituary on Singh who died on November 27 2008 they wrote that he would always be remembered for implementing OBC reservation Yet it would be a grave injustice to him and posterity if ldquohis role as a statesman politician in establishing the rights of the poor is not acknowledgedrdquo Time for OBC leaders to write their own historiesThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper