Between faith and caste

{ VINOD SHARMA } Political Editor

Having known Debashish Mukerji and the subject of his work, former Prime Minister VP Singh, rather well, I couldn’t have not read The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India. As a journalist with a ringside view of VP’s emergence as India’s Mr Clean who quit the Congress to become the PM, I went through the book not as much out of curiosity as out of an urge to recall the man who’d often say: “Mandal (affirmative action) can’t be contained, it’ll break free of kamandal (the BJP’s Hindutva).” His words resonate still with every effort of the then-sceptical religious Right to now reach out to the backward class identities he’d sought to empower, albeit as a gambit to ward off threats to the nondenominational secular state bequeathed by the makers of our Constitution. Over three decades since, Mandal remains a factor in our polity embodying a see-saw between faith and caste (class). There can be disagreement over many things about VP, but not the “disruptor” moniker Mukerji has chosen for him. Indian politics changed forever after he culled out the 1980 Mandal Commission report to enforce 27% reservation for backward classes. The book is noteworthy for the meticulous research that has gone into its making. A chapter that stood out in my reading is on the abduction and release of then home minister Mufti Sayeed’s daughter in exchange for five jailed terrorists. What a disastrous start it was of VP’s short tenure as PM.