By M.R. Narayan Swamy, IANS
New Delhi : Chandra Shekhar, who was a committed socialist and a rebel all through his life, became prime minister in 1990 by conspiring against the very government he had helped to form the previous year.
In a sense, that behaviour epitomised the angry Young Turk's political graph stretching over five decades when he made friends across the political spectrum but could never carry everyone along.
Chandra Shekhar did not shine as a prime minister for just the seven months he was in office in 1990-91 at a tumultuous period in Indian politics marked by caste and religious frenzy and the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
And for someone, who showed immense promise right from the time he took to politics during the British Raj, Chandra Shekhar appeared to simply fade away once he ceased to be prime minister.
One of the highlights of his career was a path-breaking, almost Gandhian 4,260 km 'padyatra' (walkathon) he undertook from Kanyakumari in deep south of India to Mahatma Gandhi's Rajghat memorial in New Delhi from January to June 1983 to know the people of India better, as he put it, winning millions of hearts in the world's largest democracy.
But that did not prevent him and the entire opposition from getting decimated in the 1984 general elections following the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Born on July 1, 1927 at Ibrahimpatti in Uttar Pradesh eastern district of Ballia, a place, which the "locals liberated from the British" during the Quit India Movement of 1942, Chandra Shekhar remained a rural man at heart even when he took the national stage later.
He joined the Praja Socialist party in 1951, going up the ladder with committed grassroot work, until he switched over to the Congress Party in 1960s.
His socialist leanings took him close to Indira Gandhi who in 1969 split the Congress Party on ideological grounds. He quickly became a member of what came to be known as Indira Gandhi's "kitchen cabinet".
But the rebel that he was, he soon fell out of favour. In 1975 when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency rule, he was among the first to be arrested and spent his time in jail until early 1977.
Chandra Shekhar then teamed up with leaders of the then Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Congress (O) and Lok Dal to form the Janata Party under the political umbrella of Jaya Prakash Narayan.
Despite proddings, he refused to become prime minister, letting Morarji Desai have the job. He remained however, the political boss of Janata Party.
Much against his wishes, the Janata Party split and, by January 1980, Indira Gandhi was back in power.
Chandra Shekhar tried his best to put together a unified political opposition to the Congress but failed. That is when he undertook the 'padyatra'.
In 1989, he was one of the key leaders of the Janata Dal, which was at the head of the centre-left National Front government that took office after the defeat of the Rajiv Gandhi led Congress.
Chandra Shekhar, however, felt cheated that he did not become prime minister, a post that went to V.P.Singh. Angry, he stormed out of the meeting where MPs elected V.P.Singh to lead the government.
He finally took revenge by teaming up with an equally miffed Devi Lal to bring down V.P. Singh in November 1990. He then became the prime minister with the backing of the Congress, the same party he had opposed all along. His Samajwadi Janata Party was washed out in the 1991 elections.
By the mid-1990s Chandra Shekhar became a vocal critic of the free market policy pursued by the Congress and successive governments. He maintained friendship with leaders of all political parties across the country but aggressiveness kept him politically aloof.
He never hesitated to speak his mind – often angrily on issues that bothered him – from the front row of the Lok Sabha to which he was elected eight times as the head of a virtually one-man party, but he was listened to with respect in attention by both the treasury and opposition.
"Chandra Shekhar was never a conformist, he was always an angry young man of politics," political analyst G.V.L. Narashimha Rao told IANS. "He had his heart in the right place but as a politician he was not successful. He called a spade a spade. That was his problem."