The man who shook things up

In his absorbing biography, ‘The Disruptor’ – How Vishwanath Pratap Singh shook India’, veteran journalist Debashish Mukerji looks at the life and career of the former Indian Prime Minister

By Shevlin Sebastian

In mid-2000, I used to work on the editorial desk of The Week in Kochi. We used to handle reports and stories sent by about 40 reporters and editors from all over India. It was not an easy job. The quality of the writing was mixed. Sometimes, reports landed late, and we had to work at high speed to edit them, make the pages with the help of the designer before sending them to the press.

Among the writers, the Delhi-based Debashish Mukerji was one of the best. So when a desk hand was assigned a copy of Debashish, he knew there was nothing to be done. A spell check, add the headline and intro and make the page. Debashish’s writing was simple and lucid.

So, it was no surprise when I read his biography of VP Singh, India’s former Prime Minister, called ‘The Disruptor - How Vishwanath Pratap Singh shook India’, it was an absorbing read. What I liked much about the 542-page book was that Debashish focused on the human side, too. So that made the book engaging. We could see things from VP Singh’s point of view.

Politicians, as we all know, rank low on the list of people to admire. They seem to belong to a tribe, who, to win an election, have no qualms of shedding the blood of their countrymen through riots and agitations. Many have blood on their hands but they go through life blithely, always aiming for the next top prize. Nothing fazes them at all. It seems to us the law of karma never catches up with them. Some leaders live on into their nineties smiling at the cameras, while they have left behind the wreckage of thousands of ruined families, whose members have died in various riots. Sometimes, you wonder whether they have a conscience at all.

It was, therefore, surprising when Debashish recounted an incident that took place in 1948. When his elder brother Sant Bux stood for election as president of the Allahabad University students’ union, VP Singh went all out to help him during the campaign. Soon, a rumour spread like a wildfire on the campus that one of Sant Bux’s rivals had spat from a balcony on some girl students sitting below.

Later, VP Singh came to know that this incident had not taken place. But since it played to Sant Bux’s advantage, he kept quiet even though VP Singh aspired to tell the truth all the time. Not surprisingly, Sant Bux won. But decades later, VP Singh, in an interview, said he regretted he kept quiet.

The biography details milestones in VP Singh’s life: implementing the Mandal Commission Report, and as finance minister giving the go-ahead for numerous raids on the biggest business houses of the day, as well as investigating defence deals, when he was defence minister. There is also a focus on the impact of the rath yatra by BJP leader LK Advani, the handling of the kidnapping of home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiyya, and arranging the biggest airlift evacuation in India’s history, of people stranded in Kuwait.

This book feels like an award winner. It won’t be a surprise if it does win a prize for biography next year.

While talking casually to Debashish, he told me it took six years to write the book. “The research took three years, the writing two, and waiting for the book to be published took another year,” he said. “I was not doing this full time as I was also earning a living, which often took up the bulk of the day. Also, I work slowly. There were long gaps during which I did not work on the book at all.”

As for the research, Debashish used a 900-page unpublished transcript of an interview which the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library had conducted with VP Singh. “This transcript is the foundation on which the book rests,” he said. “I also did 30-40 interviews of VP Singh’s friends and acquaintances.”

Debashish also read every single previous book written not only about VP Singh but also about India in the 1960s, 1970s, and the 1980s (about 50-60 of them) along with newspaper archives of the ‘Hindustan Times’ and ‘Indian Express’ of the same decades, plus every issue of ‘India Today’ and ‘Sunday’ from the time they were started, in 1976 up to 1991, plus some parliamentary debate archives.

The research was done either at the Nehru Library or on the net. “VP Singh’s family told me that a chunk of his papers lay dumped at his ancestral home in Manda, but that no one had sifted through them, and I did not either,” said Debashish.

Asked about VP Singh’s qualities as a person, Debashish said, “As a person, he was obsessed with financial integrity. This is very rare for a politician and indeed works to his disadvantage. He was large-hearted and never sought to be vindictive or petty. He was very articulate, had a brilliant mind, was incredible at assimilating information, and understanding issues. All those who interacted with him kept repeating he was a ‘fine gentleman’.”

VP Singh united a fragmented opposition to defeat the Congress, bringing together even the BJP and the Communists, which was an incredible feat. “But such a disparate opposition soon fell apart, so it is a moot question whether he would have done better to build a party of his own which would have taken longer but would have had a solid base,” said Debashish. “Also, he grew as a person and a politician—from blind obeisance to Indira and Sanjay Gandhi to confronting Rajiv Gandhi, growing more and more assertive with experience.”

Regarding his negative attributes, Debashish said, “VP Singh was very suspicious of people. He feared they were misleading him or trying to take advantage of him. He could be very obstinate and indeed ruthless, as seen in the campaign against dacoits in Uttar Pradesh when he spoiled his reputation by allowing fake encounters. He also refused to compromise despite the turmoil created by his decision to implement the Mandal Commission Report.”

Strangely, VP Singh was ambivalent about power. “This is weird for a politician since the entire purpose of politics is to capture power,” said Debashish. “He wanted power, but did not want to be seen as ambitious or seeking it. He was obsessed with his image, caring very much about what others thought of him.”

A loner since his childhood, it is no surprise to know he was not a warm person. Journalists covering him told Debashish that even after doing the beat for years, they were no closer to him than when they began.

Interestingly, few people will know this, but VP Singh contributed to the rise of the BJP. In the 1984 Lok Sabha election, said Debashish, the BJP had two seats; in the 1989 election, when it allied with VP Singh’s Janata Dal, it won 85 seats. Thereafter its advance became unstoppable—120 seats in the 1991 election, 161 seats in the 1996 election and finally 182 seats in the 1998 election after which it could form the government at the Centre for the first time, with the help of allies.

“So the tie-up with VP Singh, when he was at the height of his popularity, helped the BJP,” said Debashish. “In his defence, it can be said that the pre-Babri Masjid demolition BJP had a very different image from the post-demolition BJP. Before December 6, 1992, the BJP and its earlier incarnation, the Jana Sangh, used to be part of all opposition attempts to oust the Congress from power; no one realised what BJP would one day be capable of. And of course, VP Singh did stand up to the BJP over the Babri Masjid issue, losing his government as a result when the BJP withdrew support.

Asked about an anecdote that he found fascinating, Debashish said, “Uma Shanker Dikshit (the late Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s father-in-law) visited VP Singh on Rajiv Gandhi’s behalf and tried to patch up things between the two. He was in his late eighties then, arthritic and leaning heavily on his walking stick. VP Singh had quit after ordering an investigation into the defence deal to buy four submarines from the West German firm HDW, in which, he had been informed, illegal commissions were paid.”

He ordered the probe without consulting Rajiv, who was furious—the implication being that Rajiv himself was involved in the deal. Dikshit told him, “I’m sure Rajiv Gandhi isn’t neck-deep in the HDW payoff. But he is nose-deep. What else did you expect? Black money is as crucial to the functioning of a political party as this walking stick is to me. Without this walking stick, I can’t even go to the bathroom. You were trying to take away Rajiv Gandhi’s walking stick.”

VP Singh’s reply to the Nehru Library interviewer: “There was nothing I could say to that, except to insist that political funding should be transparent.”