Leadership : Manda to India
Of course, things develop over time and have their own process of unravelling. The process of struggling for Indian independence was no exception. The historian Sumit Sarkar has described the period of V.P. Singh’s birth and early childhood as “full of complex and often contradictory developments”. Indeed they were.

If on the one hand colonial Britain unleashed a reign of terror, putting Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev to death after the shameful staging of a travesty of a trial, the people, on the other hand, hit back with devastating force. 1931 saw a spate of terrorist violence, with no less than recorded in that year. Nine people were killed, including two district magistrates. One of these was killed at Commilla by two schoolgirls in their teens.

In this state of affairs, the jamidaris were like boats adrift, and Daiya and Manda, the estates into which V.P. Singh was born and adopted as heir, were no exception.
V.P. Singh describes his adoption as heir to Manda in no uncertain terms: “I felt very insecure inside and my problem was how to be accepted? I felt I had to belong. I had to fake it or I had to do something and respond to the world of others.”

But it was not in his nature to do the done things and stop at that. Appropriation without his own labour being involved in the process did not appeal to him. Whatever he does, he does wholeheartedly. This goes for his art, social work and politics.
He first applied himself in becoming the real leader of the people of Manda by donating large tracts of land to the Bhoodan movement. He got a road to Manda built with volunteer labour in which he participated himself. He also built a school in Koraon, carrying the bricks on his head and got Vinoba Bhave to lay its foundation stone. He continued to teach in the school after the building was completed.

Winning over the confidence of the people by his actions and not merely relying on the accident of birth has made V. P. Singh the very different person that he is. Having earned the respect of his people, he entered politics. He became an MLA, then chief minister of UP, a cabinet minister at the Centre and then the Prime Minister of India. In politics too, he showed sensitivity and a sense of responsibility by resigning from the post of the chief ministership of UP, his cabinet post of defence minister on issues of conscience. And not to remain silent, or to vacillate when time and circumstance called for a change, is something we cannot avoid seeing in the series of refusals that characterize his life.

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