Yashwantrao Balwantrao Chavan

Yashwantrao Balwantrao Chavan (born March 12, 1913, Devrashtre, India—died November 25, 1984, New Delhi) was an Indian politician and government official who was prominent in the independence movement against British rule and became a senior leader of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). He served as the third chief minister (head of government) of Bombay state in independent India (1956–60) and as the first chief minister of Maharashtra state (1960–62) after it had been formed from the larger entity.

Early years and role in the independence movement

Chavan was born and spent his early childhood in a village near Satara, in what was then the Bombay Presidency (now in southwestern Maharashtra), the son of farmers. Despite his humble background, he strove to receive an education and entered Rajaram College in Kolhapur in 1934. He completed a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at the University of Bombay (now the University of Mumbai, Mumbai) in 1938 and earned a law degree in 1941 from the Law College (now ILS Law College) at Pune.

While he was still in his teens, Chavan was drawn to India’s growing Indian independence movement, influenced by the actions and teachings of Mohandas K, Gandhi. In 1930 he was fined for his participation in the civil disobedience (satyagraha) campaigns of Gandhi, and in 1932 he received a jail term of 18 months after being arrested for flying an Indian national flag in Satara. He also participated in the Quit India campaign against the British that was launched in 1942, functioning as an underground operative until he was arrested and imprisoned. He thus was an integral part of the Congress Party’s pre-independence activities and, after the country’s independence in 1947, emerged as one of the top leaders in Bombay state and its successor, Maharashtra.

Political career

In 1946 Chavan was elected as a member of the legislative assembly of Bombay province (state from 1950) and subsequently was appointed parliamentary secretary to Morarji Desai, then the home minister. In 1952 he was reelected to the state assembly and was appointed minister of civil supplies, social welfare, and forests by Desai, who by then was the chief minister. Chavan succeeded Desai in 1956 after Desai became a cabinet minister in the national government. The following year Chavan was reelected to the state assembly and was again named chief minister after having been designated the Congress Party’s parliamentary leader.

In 1953 Chavan was one of two officials who signed an agreement at Nagpur that was intended to ensure that all regions of what was then the bilingual Bombay state would be developed equally. That event, however, instead marked the beginning of a process by which the state eventually became divided along linguistic lines—the Marathi-speakers in Maharashtra and Gujarati-speakers in Gujarat to the northwest. Chavan was one of the principal forces behind the formation of the two new states, which were inaugurated on May 1, 1960.

He continued on as the chief minister of Maharashtra until 1962. During his six years in office, Chavan worked toward the equal development of the industrial (focusing on sugar refining) and agricultural sectors across all the regions of the state, notably by emphasizing the cooperative approach to production and distribution. Legislation passed during his tenure included acts that decentralized local government bodies and that placed limits on the amount of agricultural land an individual could own.

In 1962, in the aftermath of India’s military loss in its brief border conflict with China, Chavan was taken into the national government as the defense minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He continued in that post in the administration of Lal Bahadur Shastri after Nehru’s death in 1964 and oversaw the war with Pakistan in the Kashmir region the following year. In late 1966 Chavan was appointed home minister in the cabinet of Indira Gandhi, then in her first year as prime minister. The following spring he was elected unopposed to a seat in the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament). He subsequently became the finance minister (1970) and then the foreign minister (1974). Chavan sided with Gandhi during her declaration of a national emergency in 1975–77, during which time most of the country’s opposition leaders were arrested and jailed.

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Chavan retained his seat in what was otherwise a disastrous defeat for Congress candidates (including Gandhi) in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections and became the leader of the opposition in that chamber to a Janata Party coalition government headed by Morarji Desai. The Congress Party underwent upheaval and splintering in the aftermath of the elections, and in 1978 Chavan decided not to join Gandhi’s newly formed Congress (I) grouping but to stay with the faction that initially was known as the Congress (Urs), or Congress (U). In mid-1979, after attempting and failing to form a coalition government in the wake of Desai’s resignation, he accepted the appointment as deputy prime minister in a coalition government headed by Charan Singh. That government, however, lasted only into early 1980.

Chavan’s decision to distance himself from Indira Gandhi and the Congress (I) faction turned out to be bad political judgment. The Congress (U) faction soon began disintegrating after key leaders deserted it. In the 1980 Lok Sabha polls, Chavan was only one of 13 Congress (U) candidates to win and the only one to be elected from Maharashtra. He rejoined the Congress (I) group in 1982, but by then his influence had diminished. Gandhi, back in power, appointed him to the modest post of chairman of the Eighth Finance Commission, and he served there and in the parliament until his death two years later.

Legacy

Chavan became lionized as the architect of modern Maharashtra for the range of the economic and social policies initiated during his tenure as chief minister, and the respectful suffix saheb was often attached to his name. He was known as a lover of learning and of literature, and several educational institutions were named for him in the state, including the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University in Nashik (founded 1989). In addition, the Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan (Yashwantrao Chavan Foundation) was established in Mumbai in 1985 to serve a variety of social, educational, and cultural roles in that city and at satellite locations in the state. Among his publications are Winds of Change (1973), discussing India’s social and educational policies, and India’s Foreign Policy (1979). Chavan was working on a planned three-part autobiography at the time of his death, but only the first volume, Krishnakath (in Marathi), was completed and published; an English translation of it appeared in 2012.