I am a Jat, born in a Jat family. A Muslim I can become immediately, but I cannot become a Brahmin, I cannot become a Rajput. Nor can I become even a… - Charan Singh

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.

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.

Contrast his uncompromising honesty and unquestionable abilities with his characterization as Jat leader, casteist, windbag, stubborn, opportunist and now obscurantist