As issues of farmers and social justice dominate our nation’s politics, it is worth remembering the enduring legacy of the late former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh (1902–1987) on his birth anniversary. During his lifetime, Charan Singh championed the cause of peasants, small producers, and backward castes, empowering their voices and institutionalising their presence in politics and public services long before the Mandal Commission put things on paper. Remembered for his unwavering support for farmers and land reforms, Charan Singh also shaped the politics of social justice in post-colonial India. The present-day demand for a caste census has renewed the debate on reservation, and the charge by the opposition parties that the current BJP-led government might alter the Constitution to weaken reservation has acquired a political heat. Charan Singh’s life and views might offer a way out of this political quagmire. Farmers’ rights as a path to social justice Born in a peasant family in UP in 1902, Charan Singh grew up witnessing the exploitative effects of the zamindari system. As he grew up, he …