The death of socialist leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, a leading light of alternate politics in India, brings the curtain down on this fast-diminishing breed of politicians who rose to the pinnacle from the grassroots with a spirit of accommodation.
Yadav, known by the sobriquet ‘Netaji’, remained a quintessential old-school politician who remained committed to the socialist stream as opposed to the dominant course set by the Congress and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh/Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Influenced by the work of Ram Manohar Lohia, after his death Yadav gravitated towards Chaudhary Charan Singh and his Bharatiya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, the crucible of national politics.
It was Singh who launched the political career of this self-acclaimed mud-pit wrestler who converted his penchant for ‘Daav’ (wrestler’s gambit) into a successful political career first on the regional, and then on the national stage.
In a career spanning over half-a-century, Yadav was clear about his priorities to work towards empowerment of the backward classes and minorities through the route of political power.
In the process, at times his proclivity to align at different times with the Left and the Congress contributed in creating an image of a leader who tread his own path.
Through association in early days with the likes of Lohia and Singh, ingrained in him an anti-Congress stance. Towards the end of the 1990s, it transformed into creating the Rashtirya Kranti Morcha that laid the foundation for his Samajwadi Party in 1992.
Yadav realised the Congress was losing grip in Uttar Pradesh, and decided to occupy the space being vacated. He vowed to work and make the Congress a politically less relevant force. It is no surprise the last Congress government in the state ended its tenure in December 1989.
It is another matter that some 28 years later, in 2017, his son and party chief Akhilesh Yadav revised the position to join hands with the Congress under Rahul Gandhi.
It is ironic that during his lifetime, the SP did two political U-turns in UP. After the 2017 experiment, the party buried the hatchet to smoke the peace pipe with another arch-rival, the Bahujan Samaj Party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The famed coming together of ‘Bua-Bhatija’ (aunt-nephew) duo of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav could not prevent the BJP winning three-fourths of the 80 seats in UP.
The seeds of distrust between the BSP and the SP were sown in the mid-1990s. Having created a strong base for the party, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s first shot at power in the state came in 1993 forming a government with the BSP then under the leadership of party founder Kanshi Ram. Relations turned bitter after Mayawati levelled a serious charge of a dastardly and life-threatening attack against her by SP workers.
For the next two decades, the SP-BSP remained strident opponents, and in 1996 when the BSP had an opportunity to form a coalition government in UP, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav played a pivotal role in preventing it. By then he had acquired a national role as Defence Minister in the HD Deve Gowda-led United Front government.
The indifferent nature of relations with the Congress continued, and was pronounced. The SP was forced to sit out of any arrangement in 2004 when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance formed the government. The SP went into a sulk since it won 39 Lok Sabha seats, but counted little.
With Left too, the SP founder had his share of differences that were pronounced twice in the same decade. In 2002, Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out of the ‘Lok Morcha’ (Peoples’ Front) alliance of the Left parties, and the SP. The disagreement was over the choice of Captain Lakshmi Seghal in the election for the President of India with Yadav favouring APJ Abdul Kalam.
Then in 2008, Mulayam Singh Yadav heeded to the scientific reasoning of Kalam and decided to support the Manmohan Singh government on the India-US nuclear deal, an agreement that led the Left withdraw its outside support to the coalition government at the Centre.
These decisions left political watchers confused over the trajectory of SP politics just as his praise in Parliament for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s work and predicting a second term for him, confounded his supporters.
This in a way, reflected the old-school politician who accorded respect to opponents despite ideological differences. The spirit of accommodation and realising there was space for the other view in politics guided his policy, which otherwise remained committed to socialist ideals.
This author recalls an incident during 2002; while waiting at an airport I was having a conversation with the SP chief. Suddenly, Netaji raised his voice to scold a party leader asking, “What are you doing?” The party leader, who had just brought a cold beverage, mumbled, “Netaji, I was feeling thirsty…” only to be told “drink water”! Mulayam Singh Yadav returned to the conversation we were having, prefacing “We Samajwadis, do not consume such beverages".
Yet, towards the later part of the decade, while the SP came back to power on its own, it attracted adverse comments for the glitzy festivals at his native village Safai, with the Clintons as his guests on one occasion.
Through his nearly six-decade political journey, Netaji straddled regional and national politics on his own terms. He carried the flag of socialist ideals with Lohia as the guiding light, and took positions that could be at times be termed pragmatic. He ended the journey with the satisfaction of a seamless transfer of leadership to son Akhilesh Yadav, and empowerment of the larger Yadav clan.