Number Theory: What explains BJP’s love for Charan Singh?
Charan Singh began his political career in the Congress party and only parted ways with it after the 1967 elections when he was not made the chief minister.
Earlier this month, the Narendra Modi government announced that it was posthumously conferring country’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, to Chaudhary Charan Singh, who briefly served as the Prime Minister of India for six months in 1979-80. Within days of the decision being announced, the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD, now Rashtriya Lok Dal-RLD which was relaunched by Ajit Singh, son of Charan Singh in 1999), currently headed by Charan Singh’s grandson Jayant Singh, the son of Ajit Singh, announced that it was joining the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). While the RLD’s current political strength is not necessarily a threat to the BJP even in western Uttar Pradesh – neither Jayant nor his father Ajit Singh could win even their own constituencies in 2014 and 2019 elections – there is good reason to believe that the BJP’s decision to confer Bharat Ratna on Charan Singh is part of a larger political ideological project to usurp his legacy of anti-Congress politics, without which the BJP’s political project would never have attained the dominance it enjoys today. Here are three charts which explain this in detail.
