Buta Singh was Cong's man for all seasons

NEW DELHI: When Buta Singh last hit the headlines for his controversial 2005 decision to dismiss the shaky Bihar assembly, there was a familiar ring to his action. In the twilight of his long and eventful political career, Congress's man for all seasons was still doing what he did best.
Over his six-decade long political innings, Singh, a Dalit sikh, rose from humble beginnings in an impoverished family to occupy the vaunted Union home ministry and also the position of a feared Congress insider under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
He did break from Congress in the late nineties to become an independent MP and briefly served as minister under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but Congress's doors were always open to him and he returned to later serve as Bihar governor and then as chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes. That was practically the last chapter of his politics.
Singh is best remembered for featuring in two watershed moments in modern Indian history - Ayodhya Shilanyas and Operation Bluestar.
As a Sikh, Singh rather boldly stood up against separatist terror in Punjab and also backed Operation Bluestar which became a big provocation for many of the tragic events that followed. For his role, Singh was excommunicated by the Akal Takht and the pictures of him cleaning shoes as punishment in the Golden Temple are etched in public memory. Singh was a villain for the hard-liners and a rather unlikely hero for the Indian mainstream.