The demise of Mulayam Singh Yadav, on October 10, has led to a detailed chronicling of the life and times of a three-time Chief Minister of India's politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, who could have been even Prime Minister in the coalition era of 1996-98 (a honour eventually that went to HD Deve Gowda and later IK Gujral) if fellow socialists like Lalu Prasad had not opposed his name.
Politics Of Social Justice
As Yadav's life is chronicled in detail about his beginning as a follower of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia in 1963, and winning as a candidate of the Samyukta Socialist Party in the UP assembly polls in 1967, a question has risen whether socialism as a political plank and trademark has served its time.
After all, Yadav’s career took off just when the politics of social justice had arrived in India. The same could be said for Prasad and Nitish Kumar in neighbouring Bihar. These leaders blossomed under the shadow of veterans such as Lohia, Jaya Prakash Narayan, and Acharya Narendra Deva as the warriors of social justice, and as an anti-Congress pole.
Of course, their baptism in anti-Congressism took even finer shape under the ‘JP movement’ against Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s, and culminated in the aftermath of the Emergency post-1977.
Since then, the socialist brand of politics held centrestage for almost 25 years through an era that also saw the decline of the Congress as it got mired in its omissions and commissions in governance methods.
Mandal-Kamandal
The demolition of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 was a turning point for the socialists of all hues. A newer threat emerged for their politics in the shape of a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even as they were boosted by the adoption of the Mandal quota for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the 1990s.
They had to position themselves against a Vajpayee-led BJP because they realised the party was actually charioted by his associate Lal Krishna Advani who had used the ‘Kamandal’ card against a caste-based regrouping under the ‘Mandal’ banner with his rath yatra for the shrine at Ayodhya.
So some of the socialists did not mind abandoning their professed antipathy towards the Congress, and joined hands with it even though they remained critical of what they said was its penchant for ‘corruption’ for the sake of power. However, they succeeded in creating a fulcrum of anti-BJP forces as the Ram temple movement saw its rise and ebb through the 1990s.
By 2002, 20 years after the demolition of the Babri masjid and outbreak of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a fire inside a train near Godhra, Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister was a new challenger for them.
Thirteen year later and after winning three consecutive assembly elections, Modi was now the harbinger of a new model of faster development. As Modi’s ascent to the national political scene seemed unstoppable, the socialist leaders remained divided on their tactics as some such as Kumar who became Bihar Chief Minister with the support of the BJP, realised they risked losing the support of minorities.
Together-Apart
The joke goes that 'true socialists cannot stay together for six months and cannot stay apart for more than six months'. Kumar’s political oscillations are a good example of this. In 2015, he joined hands with Prasad to fight the BJP’s communalism. In 2017, Kumar left Prasad to join hands with the BJP to fight corruption, and finally, earlier this year, left the BJP and is now in an alliance with Prasad’s RJD to fight communalism. All this while he has remained Chief Minister!
As India gets ready for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and many assembly polls before that, the ‘socialist’ model of politics is hardly a talking point. Yes, there are debates about the ‘freebies and welfarism versus empowerment and targeted delivery model’, but the fact still remains that Modi (and the BJP) pose a serious challenge to the opposition parties.
SUV Socialist
What caused the decline of Yadav or Prasad was that many followers of Lohia could not resist the lure of political office, they got mired in acts of corruption and nepotism, and thus abandoned the basic tenets of socialism. Their powerful aides rode on SUVs, abandoning the bicycle that was once a symbol of a dedicated socialist. Dynastic politics became their instruments of power.
Where Is The Socialist?
That brings us to the question whether a ‘samajwadi’ can survive when there is a generational shift in politics, and in the concept of ‘social justice’.
Two years ago when Ram Vilas Paswan, another Lohia follower and a minister in the Modi government, passed away, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and former governor and civil servant, raised the question: “Are any socialists left in Indian politics?”
Gandhi, who is known for his pro-Left views, wrote, "But by the question I refer to socialists in party politics, offering electoral options, political alternatives in policy-making, seeking and getting — or failing to get — voter-support for what the Constitution of India calls justice — social, economic and political. And the resounding answer is — no, not any longer. Samajwadi — socialist — as a name and style lives in the nomenclature of political parties as, indeed, it does in the preamble to our Constitution. But the old-school socialist of the mould of, Jayaprakash Narayan, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Rammanohar Lohia, Asoka Mehta, Madhu Dandavate, Mrinal Gore, S M Joshi, George Fernandes, Madhu Limaye, has become a kitab-ka-phool.”
Inconsistency has been the hallmark of the Indian socialists. Why should anybody blame only George Fernandes or Nitish Kumar for their inconsistency? Their mentor, Ram Manohar Lohia, had also displayed similar inconsistencies. Once close to Jawaharlal Nehru, Lohia turned against the Congress and even joined hands with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the precursor of the BJP) to checkmate the Congress. So did JP. That is why the Congress lost political ground to the regional forces across India.
Mulayam Singh Yadav leaves behind a party which is on the back foot, and to defeat the BJP in UP, it will have to go the extra mile — even reinvent itself. It puts out the question of whether Akilesh Yadav can do it; but more importantly it has to be seen whether or not the socialist politics followed by Mulayam Singh Yadav can cut electoral ice in the current political reality of India.