Some thoughts for Charan Singh's squatter son

So, what did Chaudhary Charan Singh do to deserve a colonial bungalow in the Lutyen's zone of New Delhi be converted into a memorial for him?

Is it for the dubious distinction of being the only prime minister who could not face Parliament even once? He had to suffer the mortification of having to resign on his 24th day in office.

Is it for his blinding ambition to, somehow, anyhow, become the prime minister of India? So blinding that he begged for, and received, support from the very same Indira Gandhi, opposing who defined his politics and mandate.

Is it for the cynical betrayal of the mandate of 1977? The mandate that had miraculously delivered the first ever non-Congress government in the Centre by rejecting the tyranny of a dictator that Indira Gandhi had become; the solemn pledge to preserve which, he had taken at the samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat. He fell for the bait of the PM's office dangled by Mrs Gandhi. He felled the Janata government by engineering a split, in cahoots with most of the leading socialists of the day.

Is it for his opportunistic defection from the Congress and breaking of its Legislature Party in 1966, only to become the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh? He became the chief minister with the help of those parties who he opposed in the elections as a Congressman.

Is it for creating a caste-based vote bank among the Jats of Western UP and Haryana and fostering, hypocritically, the politics of dynastic succession in his own family? After all, he always made a big show of opposing the Nehru-Gandhi line of succession publicly.

There is one reason though. He stood up to Nehru in 1956, at the Avadi Session of the Congress, to oppose his Soviet inspired ideas of "farm-cooperatives". Those days, crossing Nehru's path took some courage. Probably, it was entirely to the Kulak's credit that the Indian agriculture was spared a sure disaster. Something that Soviet Union had to suffer, big time.

If, only for that one reason, then go ahead and turn Chaudhary Charan Singh's own village in Baghpat, into a pilgrimage for the farmers of India. Turn his own farm into a model farm - a farm worth emulating for all the farmers of India - to visit and be inspired by. A Lutyens bungalow can never represent a leader of farmers, in whose name it is being sought by his squatter son.