𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫!

A man born in undivided Punjab before partition, displaced as a child in 1947, who went on to study at Cambridge and Oxford, served the United Nations, became Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, then Finance Minister, then Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy. Twice. That man was 𝐃𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐦𝐨𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐡. In 1991, India was days away from defaulting on its international debt. Foreign exchange reserves could barely cover two weeks of imports. Dr Singh, as Finance Minister, dismantled the 𝐋𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐑𝐚𝐣 (a suffocating system where government permission was needed for almost every business activity), devalued the rupee, opened India to foreign investment, and pulled the nation back from the edge of collapse. He quoted Victor Hugo in Parliament: "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come." India's entire modern economic story begins with that moment. As Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014, he gave India the Right to Information Act (giving ordinary citizens the legal power to demand government transparency), the National Rural Employment Guarantee (ensuring 100 days of paid work for the poorest families), the Right to Education Act, the National Food Security Act, and the historic civil nuclear deal with the United States that ended decades of nuclear isolation. India's GDP growth regularly touched 8 to 9 percent under his leadership. He was the first Sikh to become Prime Minister in a country where Sikhs make up barely 2 percent of the population. Then came the moment that defined what sovereign leadership actually looks like. In 2011, the United States and the European Union imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran, cutting Iranian banks from the global dollar system. The message to every nation on earth was simple: fall in line, or face consequences. Washington turned to New Delhi and demanded that India stop buying Iranian oil. Dr Singh did not whisper his response behind closed doors. He walked into a press conference and declared, publicly and on the record, that 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐢𝐥 despite the sanctions. Then he announced a trade delegation to Tehran. But he did not stop at words. When the West disconnected Iranian banks from SWIFT (the global financial messaging network that processes almost every international bank transaction on earth) in March 2012, Dr Singh did something that stunned the world's financial establishment. He devised the 𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐞, 𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦 through UCO Bank, routing India's entire oil settlement with Iran outside the dollar system and completely beyond Washington's reach. The surplus was then used to clear billions in arrears owed to Indian exporters. When Hillary Clinton flew to India in May 2012 specifically to pressure him to cut Iranian imports, Dr Singh told the Secretary of State "no." India's Commerce Minister went further, publicly calling the sanctions a "business opportunity." At the peak of Western pressure, Dr Singh sent Vice President Hamid Ansari, a former ambassador to Tehran, to attend President Rouhani's inauguration. The message that India had not abandoned Iran needed no words. That was not defiance for the sake of headlines. That was a sitting Prime Minister building an entirely new financial architecture to protect his country's energy security, agricultural supply chains, and economic sovereignty, all without firing a single shot, raising a single slogan, or thumping a single chest. 55 to 60 percent of India's population depends on agriculture, directly or indirectly. Fertiliser production, transportation, irrigation pumps, all of it runs on energy. Cutting off Iranian oil was never just a foreign policy question. It was a food security question. A livelihood question. A survival question for hundreds of millions of families. That same financial architecture Dr Singh built was later adapted when India needed to trade with Russia after 2022. A quiet man's blueprint, still protecting India over a decade after he left office. Now here is what the 𝐁𝐉𝐏/𝐑𝐒𝐒 propaganda factory did to this man. They called him a "puppet." They called him a "night watchman" (a cricket term for someone just holding the crease until the real player arrives). BJP leader after BJP leader labelled him "Maunmohan" (a Hindi wordplay meaning "Silent Mohan"), turning his dignified restraint into a punchline. They invented the phrase "policy paralysis" to describe his government, even as landmark legislation was being passed year after year. In 2013, Narendra Modi himself called him a "night watchman" and a "puppet of the Gandhi family." Then came the 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬. In 2014, a book titled "The Accidental Prime Minister" was released right before the general elections. In 2019, a Bollywood film based on the same book was released, again right before the general elections. The BJP's official Twitter handle promoted the trailer, calling it a "riveting tale of how a family held the country to ransom for 10 long years." A sitting ruling party officially promoting a film designed to ridicule a former head of state, timed precisely for electoral advantage. The actor who played Dr Singh, Anupam Kher, is married to a BJP Member of Parliament. The film caricatured a world class economist, a man whom Barack Obama described in his memoir as someone of remarkable intellect and integrity, as a bumbling figurehead. Former Delhi Akali Dal (a Sikh political organisation) president Paramjit Singh Sarna said it plainly: the RSS and BJP could never accept that a Sikh rose to the highest office in the land. Now here is the contrast that should keep every citizen of every democracy awake at night. 𝐃𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐦𝐨𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐡 held 117 press interactions during his 10 years as Prime Minister. His final press conference on 3 January 2014 saw over 100 journalists asking 62 unscripted questions. He said, on camera: "I am not a Prime Minister who is afraid of the media." He faced every question. He answered for every decision. 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐢, in over eleven years as Prime Minister, has not held a single genuine press conference. The one time he appeared at a press event in 2019, he spoke briefly and then let Amit Shah answer every question. When journalists tried to direct questions at him, Shah intervened and shut them down. Instead, Modi gives carefully selected interviews to journalists known for sympathetic coverage. No follow up questions. No probing. No accountability. The man who spoke less was ridiculed for his silence. The man who refuses to speak at all is celebrated for his "strength." Consider what has happened to democratic norms under this government. The Right to Information Act, one of Dr Singh's signature achievements, has been systematically weakened. Independent media outlets face raids and shutdowns. The electoral bonds scheme allowed anonymous corporate donations to political parties, overwhelmingly benefiting the BJP, until the Supreme Court struck it down. Dissent is labelled anti-national. Institutions meant to hold power accountable have been captured or sidelined. In 2019, bowing to Donald Trump's pressure, India halted all crude imports from Iran, which had been India's second largest oil supplier. Iranian oil came with freight discounts, favourable payment terms, and non-dollar settlement. Abandoning it cost India billions. Everything that Dr Singh had built to protect India's energy independence was surrendered without a fight. When Dr Singh passed away on 26 December 2024 at the age of 92, something remarkable happened. Tributes poured in from across the political spectrum and from world leaders. Not a single credible voice, not even his harshest critics, repeated the "Maunmohan" slur. Every tribute acknowledged his honesty, his intellect, his humility, his integrity. The very media that had spent a decade parroting the BJP's narrative was forced to confront the record: landmark reforms, historic legislation, economic transformation, and personal character beyond reproach. The propaganda collapsed under the weight of truth, but only after the man was gone. Here are the questions that 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 be asked, and still should be. Why does the world accept that one country gets to decide who another country trades with? When America sanctions a nation's oil, who actually pays the price: the sanctioned government, or the farmer in Bihar (a state in eastern India with one of the highest rates of agricultural dependence) who cannot afford fertiliser? When a leader says "no" to the most powerful country on earth to protect his people's energy supply, why is that reported as 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 rather than 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲? If you mock the leader who answers questions and worship the leader who refuses to face them, what exactly are you defending? And the biggest question of all: why are citizens everywhere trained to debate the 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 to geopolitical events, but never the 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬 behind them? Empires rise and fall. But the pattern that kills them is always the same: the assumption that power means you never have to explain yourself, and that compliance from others is the natural order of things. Dr Manmohan Singh once said, "History will be kinder to me." It already is. He did not need noise. He needed a plan. And he built one that outlasted his own tenure, his own government, and every slogan ever hurled against him. 𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐡 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐡𝐮 Director, CAQA | Editor-in-Chief | ISO Auditor | Poet and Writer Forbes Business Council Member | United Nations Speaker Top 100 Global Educator | RTO/AI/HE/ISO Expert Global Advisory Board Member, Forttuna Education Council