Know Your Tomorrow

Know Your Tomorrow

1990 5 May 14-15 Know Your Tomorrow (546) “1live for today, I do not care for tomorrow.”

Veer Bahadur Singh was born at Harnahi, Gorakhpur in 1935. After passing his post-graduate examination in Geography from Gorakhpur University he joined the Congress party. From then on he continued to rise up the political ladder until he became a minister.

He assumed the office of Chief Minister of U. P. on September 25, 1985, a position which he held for three years. Then he was assigned the portfolio of the Communications Ministry at the Centre. As central minister for communications he went to Paris to attend an international conference. During this conference, he suffered a massive heart attack and died on May 30, 1989, in a hospital in Paris.

The worst communal riots in Meerut on the issue of the Babari Masjid occurred during his chief ministership. For this he became infamous among Muslims. Here is a paragraph of an article published in the Lucknow edition of the Times of India (May 31, 1989) written by V.M. Badola.

“He displayed an utter lack of political farsightedness. He never cared to look back, as he often boasted, but then, he was also incapable of looking ahead. A case in point was his handling of the Babari Masjid issue and he is said to have masterminded the opening of the locks of the disputed property at the instance of Mr. Arun Nehru, then Union Minister for internal security, only to appease the Hindus. The mishandling of the Muslim problem in general and the Meerut riots in particular did not particularly endear him to the people.” (p. 13)

While reading these words I began thinking that even a Muslim writer could not perhaps have commented so openly. This is undoubtedly a very just and bold comment, and the writer deserves to be congratulated for this.

What is most lamentable is that the greater majority of our Muslim writers and speakers recount little other than tales of oppression and prejudice. They know all about the Veer Bahadur Singhs of this life but are totally ignorant of the V.M. Badolas.

God has declared in His Book that ‘usr (difficulty) always accompanies yusr (ease) in this world. But our present Muslim leaders are yusr-blind. They can see only ‘usr, the scenes of yusr are just not visible to them.

Here is another point which relates to Mr. Veer Bahadur Singh. Just a few months before his death he had said in an interview that “I live for today, I do not care for tomorrow.” Whatever he did in connection with Meerut and the Babari Masjid was traceable to this. He could see only today; tomorrow did not matter to him. But the truth was that his today was going to end within a few days on May 30. The tomorrow that awaited him was his being summoned before God as a common man in order to account for himself. Had Veer Bahadur Singh known this truth he would have been worried more about his tomorrow than about his today. While the knowledge of today makes one defiant and unjust, the knowledge of tomorrow does the very reverse: it makes one responsible and just. People know only their today. That is why they have become defiant and rebellious. If they knew what tomorrow would bring, their lives would undergo a complete transformation.