Charan Singh Quotes

The true India resides in its villages.

He decided to appear in public a ‘socialist’ by professing to “nationalize” the sugar industry but, in private, he had gone into a deal with sugar barons...The man whom he had appointed as Receiver was cane inspector Man Singh, his own brother! No Chief Minister in UP had ever indulged in this sort of nepotism.

That abolition of the privy purse will strengthen and ensure success of democracy is pure bunkum. Advanced countries like Britain and Japan are not less democratic or less progressive for the maintenance of their kings and princes. Royalty was not abolished even by socialist parties when they came to power in these countries.

In 1977 he allied his peasant- and agricultural-based Indian Revolutionary Party with the Janata Party of Morarji Desai and subsequently served as minister of home affairs (1977–78) and deputy prime minister (1979) in Desai’s coalition government Factional quarreling broke apart the Janata coalition in 1979, and in July of that year he became prime minister with the support of his former political enemy, Indira Gandhi, who had imprisoned him during the state of emergency of 1975–77. Within a month Gandhi withdrew her support from him, who thenceforth headed a caretaker government until Gandhi was returned to power in the elections of January 1980. He never again held high office.

Born into a culture of familism and casteism, yet critical of the same, Charan Singh lambasted all and sundry in a saintly language which aimed to bridge the chasm between modern aspirations and traditional roots.

He became a lawyer and in 1929 joined the Indian National Congress movement. He was jailed several times in the struggle for Indian independence. He served in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) state assembly from 1937 on and was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1967–68 and 1970.

He studied law, but unlike many Indian leaders who rose to political power as practicing lawyers, he became known not as a lawyer but as a politician.

Their strategy was simple. Moral domination. Nehru was a thinker. But Rajiv, Sonia, and Rahul are no intellectuals. They took a different route. They redefined morality. Secularism included. Anti-Congress was new immoral. Pro-Hindu became anti-Muslim. India was morally polarized. Morality is subjective. No one can say with guarantee what is pure morality. Masses were forced to choose between moral standards (Secularism, unity in diversity, inclusive etc.) and quality of life (development). People who wanted quality of life were made to feel guilty. Hindus who wanted to celebrate their religious freedom were made to feel guilty. Muslims who wanted to be part of mainstream India were made to feel guilty. They filled India’s psyche with fear, hate and guilt. They hated all indigenous, grassroots thinkers. They hated Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, P.V. Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and now Modi. They are the land grabbers of Sainik Farms and Adarsh Societies of India. They run NGOs. They run media. They coin useless and irrelevant jargon to confuse the masses. They have designations but no real jobs. They are irrelevant NRIs who want us to see a reality which doesn’t exist. They want a plebiscite in Kashmir. They defend stone-pelters. They want Maoists to participate in mainstream politics. They want Tejpal to be freed. Yaqub to be pardoned. But they want Modi to be hanged. They are the hijackers of national morality. Secularism included. They are the robbers of Indian treasury. They are the brokers of power. They are the pimps of secularism. They are the Intellectual Mafia.

He was different. He had little taste for the finer side of the politics no interest in political philosophy; and he had hardly any values. In any scheme of things, his one target was personal interest. He was anti-Nehru, anti-Indira, anti-Desai, anti-Ramon carrying it, ignoble. He was also given to anger.

Non-Jats also vote for him. How many districts are there in UP and how many districts are there in which in which this animal of a Jat is found? Is there anything in my life to suggest that I am casteist? In 1954, I wrote a letter to Nehru, it is on record, in which I suggested that all candidates for gazette jobs must marry outside their own caste. And if a man married inside his caste while holding such a job, he would have to resign.

The first thing our leadership in 1947 should have done was to delegalize all communal bodies. All organizations whose membership was confined to a particular caste or religion should have been disallowed from the political field.

No national leader was identified so closely with the interests of the peasantry. He doggedly sought to protect the interests of peasant proprietors against the inexorable juggernaut, as he saw it of collectivism.

He withdrew his parliamentary support in the summer of 1979 with the aim of becoming prime minister himself, just as he had become Chief Minister of UP by depriving state governments of legislative majorities...He briefly became caretaker prime minister, supported by Congress (I) as part of his deal with Indira, betraying the millions of UP men and women who had voted to get rid of her and Sanjay.