NewDelhi: The demise of the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on December 26 has ushered in a political tempest in India, especially concerning his funeral and memorial arrangements. The Congress party has accused the central government of not following the traditional protocols during Singh’s last rites, thus demanding the allocation of land for his memorial.
The issue escalated further as Congress leaders voiced their displeasure with the decision of holding Singh’s funeral at Nigambodh Ghat instead of near Raj Ghat, where a lot of past prime ministers have been cremated. The Congress President, Mallikarjun Kharge, also urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his letter to hold Singh’s last rites at a place appropriate for a memorial.
In reality, it is not the initial moment that a prime minister’s funeral has been the subject of a heated political debate. So far, there have been three instances where prime ministers were cremated outside Delhi, and two of them did not receive memorials.
P.V. Narasimha Rao, the one who was Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996, died in December 2004. This was a time when Singh just took over office. Rao’s family desired him to be cremated in Delhi, but the state’s most powerful Congress leaders insisted on Hyderabad. Even though Singh would have liked to execute Rao’s last wishes, he was restrained by the party’s sophistry. Finally, it was under the influence of Andhra Pradesh Congress leader Y.S. Reddy that Rao was cremated in Hyderabad. The talks that ensued about whether a memorial would be built for him in Delhi during Congress’s time were never realised.
Likewise, V.P. Singh, who was Prime Minister from 1989 until 1990, also met his end in 2008. In the beginning, it was arranged, but after a family decision, he was cremated at Allahabad instead of Delhi. The cremation took place on the banks of the Sangam river.
Morarji Desai, who reigned from 1977 to 1979, also went through similar circumstances after he died in Mumbai in 1995. His relatives opted for the event to be held on the riverbank of the Sabarmati, with then-Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao attending the ceremony.
Although some past prime ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were furnished with memorials close to their cremation sites in Delhi, others like Rao and V.P. Singh did not gain the same honours.
The current dispute has been addressed by a handful of political leaders and several parties also. Congress’s Gurdeep Singh Sapal stated that the government’s failure to find a place for the memorial of Singh is an act of suppressing aggressive insults to India’s first Sikh Prime Minister. He emphasised that it is a tradition to build memorials for the cremated former prime ministers at the same site.
As the conversation is still ongoing about Manmohan Singh’s burial site and his memorial setups, there are numerous implications to ponder over the way the prominent leaders in Indian politics are treated and the reflection of these decisions on the public memory and the respect people pay to them.