Life And Legacy Of The First Family Of Madhya Pradesh – The Shuklas

In today’s times of polarised political opinion and binary straightjacketing, leaders across parties are expected to publicly follow set templates of words, tweets and actions. Madhya Pradesh has long been acknowledged as a strong fortress of what’s today called right-wing politics. So the fact that the first chief minister of the state was a leader inspired by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who studied in a gurukul environment donating seedha to his teachers and pioneered pro-Hindi and pro-Brahmin movements, would perfectly fit the political pigeonhole. Until one recognises that Pandit Ravishankar Shukla represented the Congress – then a big tent, not a social engineering machine.

As far away as possible from the modern-day secular Congress stereotype, Shukla was heavily influenced by the Lal-Bal-Pal school of militant nationalism in his early association with the Independence movement. A staunch Hindu, Shukla joined the Theological Society of India to discover the vastness of his religion. He also played a big role in convincing the several princely states in current-day Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to join the Indian Union. Akin to what Sardar Patel achieved nationally, Shukla did, at a smaller scale.

Shukla had other parallels with Patel’s life and works as well. Like the Sardar who led the Bardoli satyagraha in the wake of a famine, Shukla rose to political prominence working for the people during a famine in Chhattisgarh in 1900. Patel was a plague survivor and had helped his friends and people of Gujarat at the time of the spread of the disease. Shukla similarly had to tend to his plague-affected wife soon after his wedding.

Shukla worked closely with Mahamana Pandit Madanmohan Malviya for almost two decades. Under Malviya’s influence, he established the Kanyakubja Mahasabha for his Brahmin community. He also launched the Madhya Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and actively promoted Hindi over English as a medium of education and communication.

He was part of the Congress governments in Central Province and Berar state, the precursor to the current Madhya Pradesh state. Unsurprisingly, he was the premier of the Central Province and Berar state from 1946 to 1950.

When modern-day Madhya Pradesh came into existence in 1956, Shukla was appointed the first chief minister ahead of Takhatmal Jain of Madhya Bharat and Shankar Dayal Sharma of Bhopal, the other two states which merged with the old Madhya Pradesh to bring the state to its current shape. He, however, governed the state he helped architect for only two months, as he died on 31 December 1956, after assuming office on 1 November.

Shukla’s base was Raipur – the hub of political activity of the pre-1956 Madhya Pradesh and now the capital of Chhattisgarh. He was survived by six sons, including Shyama Charan Shukla and Vidya Charan Shukla. Both his sons controlled state politics between them for many years after their father’s death. The difference was that they represented the new Indira Congress, the political faction which outgrew and buried the parent big tent starting 1967.

Shyama Charan Shukla, the elder of the two sons of Shukla to embrace politics, first became a member of the Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly at the age of 32 in 1957. He won easily from Rajim, a seat he would go on to win six more times, in 1962, 1967, 1972, 1990, 1993 and 1998.

Shyama Charan went with the old guard in the party split of late 1960s, but quickly aligned with Indira Gandhi in the ensuing power struggle. His loyalty was rewarded with his first chief ministerial stint in 1969, when the rag-tag Sanyukta Vidhayak Dal government of Govind Narain Singh fell. He got a second term at the helm when the Emergency was in force. He was the chief minister for over a year between 1975 and 1977. Aristocratic in his tastes and fond of sartorial indulgences, Shyama Charan was known by the bureaucracy as a midnight worker – his meetings would often last till dawn and his days started late.

He was on the wrong side of the Congress power equation again when the party split in 1977, but continued to wield influence, especially in Chhattisgarh. Staying outside the party, he continued his tussle with other Congress stalwart, Arjun Singh, who had emerged as the net gainer of Shyama Charan’s separation from the party. Shyama Charan was re-admitted to the party, despite objections by Singh.

In a bid to gain power in Bhopal, enemies of the common enemy, Arjun Singh, came together. In the late 1980s, Shukla aligned with Madhavrao Scindia and Motilal Vora, eventually getting a third term as the chief minister, which lasted three months. However, this internal rivalry left Congress in disarray, leading to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning its first term in the state in 1990. The slogan of “Nayi chetna, nai umang; Moti, Madhav, Shyama ke sang” instead paved the way for Sunderlal Patwa of the BJP to become the face of change in the state.

Shyama Charan, however, could not find favour in Delhi with both the P V Narasimha Rao regime and the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress. His political sanyas was catalysed with Digvijaya Singh taking over as the Madhya Pradesh chief minister in 1993. His last shot at power was when Chhattisgarh became a separate state in 2000. Shyama Charan was a member of the 1998 Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly but was superseded by Ajit Jogi as the first chief minister of the new state. He did win the 1999 Lok Sabha election from Mahasamund, but it was a small compensation for his long Congress association. He died in 2007.

The younger political son of Shukla, Vidya Charan, often known by his initials VC, was a maverick. He embodied the power-hungriness of the post-Indira Congress more naturally than his elder brother. While his brother managed the state politics, VC spent more time in Delhi. He won the Mahasamund Lok Sabha seat in 1957 at a young age of 28. He won nine Lok Sabha elections and held posts in various central ministries including civil supplies, communications, defence, external affairs, finance, home, information and broadcasting, parliamentary affairs, planning and water resources.

VC aligned early with Indira Gandhi, unlike his elder brother. His first cabinet stint was from 1967 till 1977 with her. As Sanjay Gandhi rose to national prominence, VC tagged along and came to be known as one of his closest political associates. As the information and broadcasting minister during the Emergency, VC was best remembered for interfering with Bollywood.

He was instrumental in banning Kishore Kumar from public broadcast forums. He was suspected to have had a role in burning the prints of Kissa Kursi Ka, a dissident movie made by Congress Rajasthan Member of Parliament, for which he served a jail term. This made him one of the few Emergency-time Congress coterie members to pay some price for the death of democracy. There were also the stories of a host of Mumbai-based actresses living on the edge in the fear of a phone call from Delhi.

VC continued as a minister with Rajiv Gandhi at the helm. As Rajiv’s downfall started, VC smelled the power shift and went along with Vishwanath Pratap Singh, joining his Jan Morcha. He was a minister in the Singh government. When Chandra Shekhar upended Singh, VC went with him, the quest for power staying constant. As Narasimha Rao came back to lead a Congress government, VC was magically back with the party, serving a full ministerial term in Delhi.

Only in the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress dispensation was he ignored along with his elder brother, in favour of Ajit Jogi, forcing VC to start his own party. This party later joined the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party, where he headed the Chhattisgarh unit. Some of his candidates helped the BJP win against the Congress in the 2003 assembly elections.

Not satisfied with the lack of power, VC jumped ship to BJP. He was the BJP candidate from Mahasamund in 2004 but lost the Lok Sabha election. Why the BJP admitted the face of Emergency in the party in the quest for one single seat remains an enduring mystery of Madhya Pradesh politics. VC returned to the Congress in 2007 after he managed Sonia Gandhi’s intervention. However, he was not rehabilitated in Delhi and continued to vie for a Chhattisgarh role, competing against Jogi.

A maverick life ended equally dramatically. A Naxal attack on a convoy of Congress leaders in Sukma caused 27 deaths in May 2013. VC sustained three bullet injuries. He was airlifted to Raipur and then Gurgaon in critical condition. He subsequently died at the age of 84. He was said to be preparing for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, before his life and political journey was cut short.

Amitesh Shukla, son of Shyama Charan, holds the dynasty fort in Chhattisgarh. Having served in the Jogi government between 2000 and 2003, he continues to be politically active from Rajim, the seat his father held.

As the Shukla family’s influence waned in the last decade, the twin states now find themselves ready for the next batch of Congress dynasts taking the centre stage.

Shyama Charan’s contemporary, Madhavrao Scindia’s son Jyotiraditya will be the putative chief ministerial candidate of the Congress party in Madhya Pradesh in December 2018. Digvijaya Singh, who denied Shyama Charan and VC their second wind in the state, will mostly see his son contest the state election from the family bastion of Raghogarh. Ajay Singh, son of Arjun Singh, whose state career was effectively ended by Shyama Charan, is fighting to stay relevant in the wake of a resurgent Jyotiraditya Scindia. And Ajit Jogi, VC’s bête noire, has staked it all separating from Congress for the sake of his son Amit Jogi in Chhattisgarh.

The Shuklas could once stake claim to being the first family of Madhya Pradesh, and certainly that of Chhattisgarh. As Madhya Pradesh turns 61 on 1 November, the aura of the Shukla dynasty has since faded.

Dynasties however thrive and dynasts prosper.