Book review: Paul R. Brass, An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh and Congress Politics
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023018762830 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
148 Book Reviews
Paul R. Brass, An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh and Congress Politics. New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Volume 1, 1937 to 1961. 2011. 575 pages. `950; Volume 2, 1957 to 1967. 2012. 475 pages. `1,050;
Volume 3, 1967 to 1987. 2014. 309 pages. `995.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023018762830
Paul Brass (PB) met Charan Singh (CS) in 1962 after he had written Factional Politics in an Indian
State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh, his first book, which CS had read; CS told Brass that he had
been much too kind to him. Recognizing perhaps a kindred soul, the author kept in touch with CS over
the years, and developed a rapport with him which resulted in CS agreeing to give Brass access to the
entire set of files he had kept carefully over the years during his long career at the district, state and
central levels, containing speeches, statements, letters and notes on important events and issues, includ-
ing acerbic differences with his colleagues over policy. In writing these volumes, PB felt he had to do
full justice to the wealth of material in the archives, not just on CS, for the light they threw on the whole
texture of politics and administration in UP in all its grittiness, ‘groupism and venality’, and on the recent
history of north India generally. This multiplicity of objectives explains why this work is so long, about
1,350 pages spread over three volumes. Perhaps, Brass is atoning for not having produced the work
before CS passed away in 1987 (he says CS was disappointed, but was too good to say so). The length
is also the result of the author’s excursions into a variety of topics for which CS’s concerns at the time
are no more than a peg. Many of these topics are sought to be brought up to date by field visits and
supplementary material and hundreds of interviews between 1961 and 2010.
The result is a meticulous and yet highly readable history of the life and times of CS. Although there
is considerable overlap between the volumes, with the first taking us through district- and state-level
politics to 1959 when CS resigned from the state cabinet after many years as agriculture and revenue
minister, portfolios which enabled him to make his greatest contribution, land reform in UP. The second
deals with the decline of the Congress as the dominant party in the state and the sources of CS’s discon-
tent with it, leading to his defection in 1967 to form a new party and to the emergence of non-Congress
politics at the state level. Volume 3 deals with his two stints as chief minister leading coalition govern-
ments, his long and complicated struggle with Indira Gandhi, who sought to regain control of the state
before and during the emergency, and all too briefly, his stints in the central government as home, finance
and then prime minister.
The picture that emerges is of a politician with a very unusual combination of qualities. Not only was
CS scrupulously honest, he was what we would call today ‘issues oriented’. He had a firmly held world
view and policy beliefs, which he stuck to rigidly, and which explain his loyal following and steadily
growing appeal at the time among the vast number of medium and small cultivators in north India
(and certainly not just Jats, who are a relatively small group). Third, and as a consequence, he did not
have to depend on the politics of patronage, or of dispensing favours to caste and group followers, political
allies, and government servants (who most politicians cultivate for some future advantage in a mutually
beneficial relationship), unlike rivals like CB Gupta and the vast majority of his other colleagues who
were interested mainly in ‘persons, postings and positions’. He did have a tendency to jump ship, which
led to charges of ambition and opportunism, but it was employed in life-long pursuit of a cause.
Volume 1 is perhaps the strongest, with a clear and comprehensive exposition of the main components
of his land reforms when he was agriculture and revenue minister: the abolition of intermediaries
or zamindars between the state and cultivators, which gave erstwhile tenants the ownership rights and
security of tenure required for land improvements, and later for investments under the Green Revolution;
consolidation of holdings; and third, a ceiling on landholding size (which was not expected to lead to a
redistribution of land, but to prevent the emergence of large holdings in the future, an objective not
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