Politics of Northern India – serie

An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1937 to 1961 focuses on the role of Charan Singh in the politics of the period while providing a broader perspective on the major issues, controversies, and developments of the time. The book is the result of a careful study of Charan Singh′s personal collection of political files coupled with a series of extensive interviews with politicians, public personalities, and local people. It provides an account of the principal issues and events of the period, including Hindu-Muslim relations, the conflict between the Nehruvian goal of rapid industrialization and the desires of those favoring primary attention to agriculture, issues of law and order, the rise of corruption and criminality in politics, the place of caste and status in a modernizing society, and the pervasive factional politics characteristic of the era.This work is much more than the biography of an important politician; it is also an analysis of issues, movements, and political conflicts that marked the late pre-Independence and early post-Independence era.This book is the first volume of a multi-volume work on The Politics of Northern India: 1937 to 1987.

This volume traces the course of development of Charan Singh′s discontent in the Congress, which aided by the antagonism on the part of Nehru and his daughter towards him, and the decline of the Congress as the dominant party in Uttar Pradesh, led ultimately to his defection to form a new political party and, at last, to achieve his goal of becoming chief minister of UP.Like the earlier volume, this book is based primarily on the author′s personal relationship with Charan Singh during his political career and early access to his massive political files and the author′s own personal interviews with politicians, other public persons, peasants, and others over 50 years, up to the present. It also provides an account of the chief ministership of Sucheta Kripalani—a political outsider catapulted to the top by the power struggles of fractious factions—and at the same time explores against the backdrop of regionalism in UP the considerable yet little-known role played by Charan Singh in issues of states reorganization for northern India.This book is the second volume of a multi-volume work on The Politics of Northern India: 1937 to 1987.

Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1967 to 1987, the third and final volume in the trilogy of The Politics of Northern India, begins with the dramatic political event of the fall of the Congress in the most critical state of UP and the formation of the first non-Congress government. This event was of the utmost concern to Indira Gandhi, for she could not rule the country without a firm political base in the most populous state of the country. Insofar as Charan Singh was concerned, it marked the beginning of his rise to power in the state and the beginning also of the dramatic and complicated struggle between him and Indira Gandhi. The current volume, like the previous volumes, is based upon the author’s access to all the critical documents in Charan Singh’s political life, an access that was provided to him by Charan Singh personally, and which he has used specifically for this work on his political life.