New Delhi: In 1999, the Congress set up a committee, led by A.K. Antony, to review its performance days after the Lok Sabha elections in which the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won a majority.
The Antony committee, which had senior Congress leaders Mani Shankar Aiyar and Prithviraj Chavan among its members, produced a voluminous report after travelling across states and Union territories.
It argued that the 1991 economic reforms under then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, with Manmohan Singh as the finance minister, had left Congress workers confused about the “ideological purity of the Congress”, according to the second volume of Aiyar’s memoir A Maverick in Politics: 1991-2004 (2024).
Aiyar adds that the Antony committee underlined that the Congress must remain a left-of-centre party with a distinct demarcation between its left-wing approach to economic reforms and the BJP’s right-wing approach.
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That year, when the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body, took up the report for discussion, Aiyar was greeted with a “look of fury” from the “normally calm and collected” Singh, who was “increasingly infuriated” as the meeting progressed.
As tension built, Sonia Gandhi, who was heading the Congress at the time, put off the discussion on economic policies, turning her focus on organisational reforms instead. Aiyar claims he learnt that Singh was upset with the proceedings a few years later.
“As for what happened to our take on economic policy, I was told years later by Meira Kumar that Dr Manmohan Singh had disappeared soon after lunch and she was sent by Sonia Gandhi to find him. She (Meira Kumar) claimed she found him wiping his tears.”
“I cannot and do not vouch for this story as he was perhaps only wiping his face after washing it. But when I was accidentally shown the minutes (of the meeting) years later, the record stated the CWC had reiterated the stand it had taken on economic policy at Panchmarhi the previous year,” Aiyar wrote in the book.
A year earlier, in 1998, a CWC held in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, adopted a resolution that the Congress would continue to prioritise economic policies anchored in socialism, while adding that “when circumstances change, policy must also change”. It was a tacit acknowledgement of the transformative changes that Singh’s policies had ushered in.
In many ways, that perfunctory acceptance defines the relationship that he shared with the Congress. This, despite having served as the country’s prime minister for two successive terms in coalitions led by the party from 2004 to 2014, becoming the only PM, before Narendra Modi, not from the Nehru-Gandhi family to have occupied the post this long.
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At odds with the Congress
Singh’s outlook on economic and political matters was often at odds with Congress’s entrenched views. While the 1991 economic reforms were the first major occasion when the incompatibility surfaced, under Singh as the prime minister, there were at least three other instances when he initially found himself isolated, only to find Congress toe his line later.
For instance, the Congress initially distanced itself from Singh’s strong advocacy of the India-US civil nuclear agreement. For all practical purposes, he was left to defend himself, particularly when the Left parties threatened to withdraw their support of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
In a 2007 interview to The Telegraph, Singh pulled no punches, saying, “I told them it is not possible to renegotiate the deal. It is an honourable deal, the Cabinet has approved it, and we cannot go back on it. I told them to do whatever they want to do. If they want to withdraw support, so be it.” The newspaper led with the headline ‘Anguished PM to Left: If You Want to Withdraw, So Be It’.
Singh, however, remained adamant, forcing the Congress high command to fall in line. Soon enough, it secured the support of the Samajwadi Party, which had opposed the deal at one point and won a trust vote in the Lok Sabha after the Left parties withdrew support.
It was uncharacteristic aggression from Singh’s end, who could be “cautious in foreign policy”, as former US President Barack Obama would recall in his autobiography A Promised Land (2020).
“While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of US intentions, our time together confirmed my impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency; and during my visit to the capital city of New Delhi, we reached agreements to strengthen US cooperation on counterterrorism, global health, nuclear security, and trade.”
In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, he powered the Congress to victory. Months later, however, he found himself in a fix as the Congress displayed diffidence in endorsing a government joint statement after Singh’s meeting with the then Pakistan PM Yousuf Raza Gilani at the Egyptian resort town Sharm el-Sheikh. The statement was widely panned for its perceived delinking of terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil from dialogue between the two nations and a reference to the charge that India was meddling in the Balochistan province.
The statement said, “Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas”.
It added, “Both Prime Ministers recognised that dialogue is the only way forward. Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed.”
For days, the Congress avoided endorsing the statement. It rallied behind Singh only after former UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi backed Singh—who remained firm about the resumption of a dialogue with Pakistan. In defending Singh, Sonia adopted a nuanced line—she avoided any mention of the contentious joint statement while stressing that Singh had not marked any break from India’s consistent stand that terrorism and talks cannot be decoupled.
‘History will be kinder’
Years later, in 2012, Singh displayed similar doggedness in pursuing the decision to allow 51 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, which was met with uproar not just from the BJP in the Opposition, but also Congress allies and senior leaders of the party. Even on this occasion, Sonia came to Singh’s defence, prompting the party to fall in line.
At a meeting of the Congress Working Committee in September 2012, Sonia backed Singh, accusing the BJP of playing “negative politics” over reforms, while also advocating the need for steps to improve the economy.
However, in 2013, as the UPA 2 government hurtled from one crisis to another, Rahul Gandhi, in a press conference, said an ordinance brought by the Singh-led Cabinet to shield convicted lawmakers from immediate disqualification should be “torn up and thrown away”. Days later, the government withdrew the ordinance.
He never commented on the events leading to the withdrawal after public shaming of his Cabinet by Rahul. In his last press conference as PM, addressed on 3 January, 2014, Singh said, “I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in Parliament… I think, taking into account the circumstances and the compulsions of a coalition polity, I have done as best as I could under the circumstances.”
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
