‘He wasn’t for confrontation, always wanted to reconcile’

He was 80 and suffering from multiple myeloma. And yet, I don’t like his depature from that room in Apollo Hospital. He did not belong there. He took pride in being fit, strong and active. He would not concede to pain. Would not allow ailments to pin him down to bed. It was this desire to be up and fighting always that made him ignore a fracture in the toe. Timely attention to that toe would have made his doctors realise that it was something deeper and serious and early detection of cancer would have made him live longer. He did not deserve to die on a hospital bed. He should have gone from the battlefield.

Chandra Shekhar came to politics through the socialist movement like many other young men of his generation and eastern Uttar Pradesh. A strong streak of “anti-establishmentism” made him a revolutionary socialist. But continuous infighting and ego clashes in the name of ideology ultimately brought him to the Congress. Indira Gandhi was then trying to take this Congress out of the conservative slumber and Chandra Shekhar soon became a “Young Turk”.

But there was also a different streak in him. He was a Rajput patriarch eager to keep his clan together.

Accommodate everybody and keep everyone satisfied. The Congress suited him better than various socialist parties. He wanted to reconcile. His role before and during the JP movement is much misunderstood. He was working to bring JP and Indira Gandhi together. Even Mrs Gandhi did not get him right and arrested him along with JP No, Chandra Shekhar was not for confrontation. He kept complaining till the end of his life that some people for their own interest made JP and Indira Gandhi fight and did not allow him to bring them together.

This urge to reconcile mutually opposed and fighting parties made him so effective during the Ramjanmbhumi-Babri Masjid conflict. We have former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao on quote that had the Chandra Shekhar Government lasted for a few more months the conflict would have been solved.

His reason to bring down the VP Singh Government and take charge as Prime Minister was the urgent need to bring down the temperature of the nation fevered by Mandal and Kamandal.

Chandra Shekhar was not an organisation man and therefore never succeeded in building parties and organising movements. His stint as chairman of the Janata Party could not save it from disintegration. Whichever party he presided over after that failed to throw roots and flourish. He undertook a Bharat Yatra and aroused so many hopes but could not build on it. He was not cut out for party politics. He believed in political power unlike JP and Gandhi but did not know how to harness it. He had great friends and believed in maintaining friendships.

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