V.P.Singh (June 25, 1931-November 27, 2008) belonged to an era when those in public life were wiling to do anything to remain ministers. But then, he was an exception to that rule. Hence, when he died, on November 27, 2008, after battling cancer for over a decade, Singh did not belong to any party. Many politicos who owe their present positions in office to their association with V.P.Singh were not seen around when his body was consigned to flames on the banks of the Sangam at Allahabad.

The media, engaged with the tragic developments in Mumbai found it appropriate to report his death in just a few column centimeters. The visual media did not care to do that also. Well. The managers of the show in the production rooms of the various TV channels must have chosen to ignore the report of V.P.Singh’s death that day because they were all flooded with ``exclusive’’ footage on the terror in Mumbai. It is another story that even in doing that, they were more concerned with the Taj, Oberoi and the Trident hotels and the shootout at the Victoria Terminus waiting hall did not really excite them.

Well. V.P.Singh could not have chosen the time of his death. And in a sense, he was among those who believed that the desire to preserve one-self was inimical to the law of nature and dialectics.

A day after his return from London in 1993, Singh addressed a public meeting at the Vithalbhai Patel House lawns in New Delhi. He was still a MP then and the Janata Dal had not broken into so many pieces as it is today. There was tremendous pressure on him, that day, to take over as Janata Dal’s president. And it was also imminent that the party will not survive long if he did not agree to lead it. V.P.Singh, however, was firm that he was not game for it. The seed, he explained the crowd, shall not attempt to preserve itself. The plant can grow only when the seed allows itself to be destroyed and that is the law of the nature.

Likewise, he explained that his role was over with the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s report. The changes that it provoked in the body politic and the dynamics it generated in the political discourse demanded a new set of leaders who then will have to negotiate a new set of issues. V.P.Singh was aware of all that and he was categorical in rejecting all the pressure and the pleadings by the Janata Dal’s leaders that he become the party’s president.

Incidentally, the day before he addressed the public meeting, Singh had also shared with his close friends in the party as well as in the media the medical records that suggested that he was beginning to suffer from cancer. His kidneys had begun to malfunction by then and dialysis was the only way he could be kept going. And I remember having met with him in the week after his public address where he ruled himself out as president of his party. In that casual but long meeting we had, V.P.Singh explained that with his failing health, he will only lead the party and the nation into a disaster if he persisted in active politics.

His reasoning was as follows: A leader must have the physical strength to stay in touch with the ground reality directly. He must see and hear things himself. In the event a leader does not have the physical fitness to be on the move, day after day, and interact with the people directly, he will depend on inputs from a close band of followers. Such inputs will obviously reflect the predilections of the follower and not the reality. In other words, a leader shall not depend on a coterie for information. ``With the state of my health now, I will end up depending on a coterie and that will be disaster,’’ he said.

He stood steadfast on the decision that he was not after public office again. V.P.Singh chose the time to resign as MP. He refused to intervene in the Janata Dal’s affairs even when the party underwent a series of splits and simply went into hiding when pressure came to be mounted upon him to be the Prime Minister in May 1996. Those were days when the mobile phones had not become a part of the human body and civilisation! And when M.Karunanidhi, Chandrababu Naidu, Lalu Yadav, Deve Gowda and Ram Vilas Paswan landed at his 1, Teen Murti Marg residence late in the afternoon on that day in May 1996, to handover the Prime Minister’s job to him, they were told that V.P.Singh had gone out somewhere.

They all left after about an hour, waiting for him and decided on H.D.Deve Gowda as Prime Minister. V.P.Singh returned home only after all that was over. He was incommunicado all the while! Even his cynical friends were then convinced that he meant what he said at the public meeting at Vithalbhai Patel House lawns. That it was against the law of nature for one to try preserving himself.

But then, V.P.Singh did not lead the life of an ascetic. Even while he spent a lot of his time painting pictures, writing poetry and with his camera (all these were his passions), he did devote some of his time and the little energy that he had between two dialysis sessions to agitate for the people and their rights. He did lead protests by the farmers in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh against their land being taken away for the setting up of a SEZ by the Ambanis. He did follow the political discourse very closely. He did express his views. He believed in the fundamental principle that change was inevitable and that the common man was always the moving force behind any change.

All this is not to say that he was a man without blemishes. Like anyone in the public domain, V.P.Singh too was guilty of several commissions and omissions. He believed in politics as the art of the possible. This led him to compromise on a lot of principles. Some of them led the polity into a crisis. But his most significant contribution to the political discourse was Mandal. It altered the course of political India in such manner that was never imagined. And Singh will be remembered for that and as one of the few political leaders who were honest to the core.