The unseemly controversy around the spot where former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to be cremated and a memorial for him was to be built must end at the earliest, lest it be seen as a great affront to the memory of a man who always kept the interest of the nation above all else and never engaged in self-promotion.
The Congress had demanded that the government earmark a space for the cremation of the former Prime Minister so that a memorial can be built for him at the same spot. This had been the practice in the case of the father of the nation and some of the former Prime Ministers. However, it must also be recalled that the UPA government headed by Dr Singh had in 2013 decided to scrap the practice of building separate memorials for national leaders and build a common one for all instead. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was cremated at the Rashtriya Smriti Sthal in 2018.
Despite the 2013 decision and the events that followed, the Congress Party to which Dr Singh belonged presented a demand before the Union government for allotting a separate place for his cremation where a memorial can be built later. The government in fact accepted it, too, even though it contradicted the 2013 decision.
As per the government’s account, it then decided upon Nigambodh Ghat as the place for cremation in consultation with Dr Singh’s family while making it known to the public and the Congress leadership that it will allot a site in the capital for the construction of an appropriate memorial for the former Prime Minister.
Why the choice of Nigambodh Ghat, instead of the Rashtriya Smriti Sthal where Vajpayee had been laid to rest, is a question that then begs an answer from the government.
Unwilling to accept the government’s decision, the Opposition party now sees in this an attempt by the BJP to deliberately insult the memory of the country’s “first Sikh Prime Minister”. The party found fault with the way the last rites of Dr Singh were conducted which served as another excuse for it to raise the volume of its protests.
Nevertheless, whipping up passions based on imagined slights and invented stories of insult to the name of a man who himself was dignity personified in his private, professional and public lives is really the worst form of tribute that can be paid to his legacy. The Congress must immediately desist from further muddying waters. The party must also remember the treatment it itself had meted out to P.V. Narasimha Rao, its own leader and another Prime Minister. After his death, Rao’s body was not even allowed inside the AICC headquarters, never mind that he was an elected president of the top decision-making body of the Congress.
In the case of Dr Singh, he should be remembered for the creative contribution he has made to advance the collective intelligence of this country, and his specific contributions as an economist and an expert in public finance. The government and the Congress Party should now bury the hatchet, and try and celebrate the memory of one of India’s tallest sons instead in a fitting manner together.
