What is it about die-hard socialists and botchy misogyny? For the first time in judicial history, a parliamentary motion for the impeachment of a judge for sexual harassment will be moved in the Rajya Sabha. Guess who the first signatory on the Rajya Sabha MP list is? The irrepressible Sharad Yadav who, last week, gained notoriety for his repugnant comments about dark-skinned South Indian women.
A band of lawyers, led by eminent advocate Indira Jaising, has moved a notice for the removal of a judge in the Madhya Pradesh High Court for misuse of position, victimisation and sexual harassment of a female Sessions judge from Gwalior. Jaising is the senior legal counsel for the judge, and has led the charge against Justice SK Gangele, who is the accused in the case.
Last week, the doughty Jaising mustered 58 signatures in the Rajya Sabha (eight more than the mandatory 50 signatures required to move a motion for the impeachment of a judge in the upper house). Support has come from members across party lines. The list, topped by Sharad Yadav, includes such luminaries as Ram Gopal Yadav, D Raja, Anu Agha, HK Dua, Digvijay Singh, Ambika Soni, Haji Abdul Salam and Husain Dalwai.
A chauvinistic bumpkin?
So is Sharad Yadav the classic pamphleteering socialist, a progressive on paper but a chauvinistic bumpkin in person? The Janata Dal (United) leader remains unapologetic despite the uproar over his comments about dark skin during a discussion on, strangely, the government’s bill for insurance reforms.
In his attempt to illustrate the country’s obsession with fair skin, Yadav likened the proposal to raise foreign investment from 26% to 49% as a symptom of this mania. The 67-year-old socialist warhorse (who received the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award, 2012) rhapsodised about “dark-skinned men, and women of south, their beauty, bodies, skin… and how dance made them lovely… (whereas) here people are awed by fair skin”.
He would have carried on if he was not asked to pipe down and talk of the Bill instead. He defiantly insisted that he had not said anything wrong: "I said that there is a big tradition of music and dance in South India, which is why women there have a good figure."
Losing the plot
But it is not just a case of ill-chosen words or phrases that ails heartland socialists and iron-clad Lohiaites. After blazing the political landscape 25 years ago, overturning feudal hierarchies and crashing in with robust OBC confidence and electoral victories, they – from Sharad Yadav to Lalu Yadav to Mulayam Singh Yadav to Ajit Singh to Akhilesh Yadav – are now left clutching at straws.
Here are five reasons that explain where the Lohiaites have gone wrong.
Guiltless guile
In 1997, Sharad Yadav may have had a point when he made a reference to parkati auratein (short-haired women) to argue against the Women's Quota Bill. He contended that the demand for women’s quota in Parliament was a perfidious way of allowing the upper caste numbers to grow, as the urbane, forward caste women would have an advantage over OBC and SC/ST women candidates in the selection process. The term parkati auratein was only a cultural idiomatic expression, he had argued. However, after the glorious reign of eminent socialist visionary women leaders like Mrinal Gore, Pramila Dandavate, Ahilya Rangnekar and others, today the various socialist Dals are mini dynasties cluttered with wives, daughters, and daughters-in-laws. It’s about survival, self-aggrandisement , nepotism.
Imitation politics
If imitation is a form of flattery, then the evil Congress Party the Yadavs swore to oust must be gloating at the Yadavs’ fawning resemblance to it. In the fodder scam, for instance, Lalu Yadav has always said the corruption dated back to at least a decade before he took over as Bihar chief minister. But instead of dismantling the gigantic, corrupt apparatus, Lalu Yadav lorded over the loot, keeping up with the tradition of patronage politics. Instead of tackling caste inequalities, education, economic restructuring and development, the Yadav chieftains became the new warlords, running their own tyrannies. Soon, they got their own set of brokers and wheeler-dealers, from Amar Singh to Premchand Gupta.
Mandal politics
If reservation was a new idea that was unleashed in the Cowbelt in the late 1980s, more so after the success in the Deccan several decades before, where education spawned a whole knowledge generation that now occupies technology centres from Bangalore to Hyderabad, why did it not reach historic centres of learning like Benares or Allahabad? It is because the success of Mandal only exacerbated personal rivalries among the Yadavs and heartland socialists. If Ajit Singh allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party to pursue his personal ambitions, the fiercely secular Yadavs split up to run their own caste fiefs in states. Socialist ideology and social empowerment was given up for instant political gain and leadership, and they pursued power not as an instrument for change but simply power for the sake of power. Not surprisingly, the Yadavs have now been reduced to attempting to cash in on their personal charisma, which cannot last forever.
Out of date
It’s now obvious the tables have turned for the socialist Yadavs, who now need their clans and associates more than they needed around, and in their desperation to ensure caste loyalties, the Yadavs have become sectarian, bigoted and provincial. The trade-off is naturally detestable and offensive to all non-Yadavs, in government schemes and assistance for education, employment, health and such like. The more their vote base shrinks, the more clannish their outlook is, thus throwing away the breakthrough politics they once ushered in.
Ideological limbo
The heartland socialists who were once fiercely secular, radical and firebrand leaders, have now been reduced to being caricatures of themselves. While Lalu Yadav has stood firmly secular, Mulayam Yadav has flirted outrageously with the Hindutva BJP, and only cynical votebank politics has kept him in the leash. If they once forged the triumphant OBC-Dalit alliance, whether with Mayawati in UP, or Ramvilas Paswan in Bihar, it all went to dust when the Yadavs fulminated at the audacity of the Dalit leaders going on their own. Development politics was soon reduced to family enterprises, and the Yadavs have not even been remotely capable of pitting themselves against the onslaught of Hindutva, or protect their rural communities against land grab, displacement, sectarian violence or poverty. In fact, they are the new, grabbing, privileged chieftains.
However, Yadavs were traditionally the vanguard of Left politics in Eastern UP and Bihar, so being secular, liberal and pro-women is genuine. But when it comes to humour, they need a savvy stand-up comedian.
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A band of lawyers, led by eminent advocate Indira Jaising, has moved a notice for the removal of a judge in the Madhya Pradesh High Court for misuse of position, victimisation and sexual harassment of a female Sessions judge from Gwalior. Jaising is the senior legal counsel for the judge, and has led the charge against Justice SK Gangele, who is the accused in the case.
Last week, the doughty Jaising mustered 58 signatures in the Rajya Sabha (eight more than the mandatory 50 signatures required to move a motion for the impeachment of a judge in the upper house). Support has come from members across party lines. The list, topped by Sharad Yadav, includes such luminaries as Ram Gopal Yadav, D Raja, Anu Agha, HK Dua, Digvijay Singh, Ambika Soni, Haji Abdul Salam and Husain Dalwai.
A chauvinistic bumpkin?
So is Sharad Yadav the classic pamphleteering socialist, a progressive on paper but a chauvinistic bumpkin in person? The Janata Dal (United) leader remains unapologetic despite the uproar over his comments about dark skin during a discussion on, strangely, the government’s bill for insurance reforms.
In his attempt to illustrate the country’s obsession with fair skin, Yadav likened the proposal to raise foreign investment from 26% to 49% as a symptom of this mania. The 67-year-old socialist warhorse (who received the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award, 2012) rhapsodised about “dark-skinned men, and women of south, their beauty, bodies, skin… and how dance made them lovely… (whereas) here people are awed by fair skin”.
He would have carried on if he was not asked to pipe down and talk of the Bill instead. He defiantly insisted that he had not said anything wrong: "I said that there is a big tradition of music and dance in South India, which is why women there have a good figure."
Losing the plot
But it is not just a case of ill-chosen words or phrases that ails heartland socialists and iron-clad Lohiaites. After blazing the political landscape 25 years ago, overturning feudal hierarchies and crashing in with robust OBC confidence and electoral victories, they – from Sharad Yadav to Lalu Yadav to Mulayam Singh Yadav to Ajit Singh to Akhilesh Yadav – are now left clutching at straws.
Here are five reasons that explain where the Lohiaites have gone wrong.
Guiltless guile
In 1997, Sharad Yadav may have had a point when he made a reference to parkati auratein (short-haired women) to argue against the Women's Quota Bill. He contended that the demand for women’s quota in Parliament was a perfidious way of allowing the upper caste numbers to grow, as the urbane, forward caste women would have an advantage over OBC and SC/ST women candidates in the selection process. The term parkati auratein was only a cultural idiomatic expression, he had argued. However, after the glorious reign of eminent socialist visionary women leaders like Mrinal Gore, Pramila Dandavate, Ahilya Rangnekar and others, today the various socialist Dals are mini dynasties cluttered with wives, daughters, and daughters-in-laws. It’s about survival, self-aggrandisement , nepotism.
Imitation politics
If imitation is a form of flattery, then the evil Congress Party the Yadavs swore to oust must be gloating at the Yadavs’ fawning resemblance to it. In the fodder scam, for instance, Lalu Yadav has always said the corruption dated back to at least a decade before he took over as Bihar chief minister. But instead of dismantling the gigantic, corrupt apparatus, Lalu Yadav lorded over the loot, keeping up with the tradition of patronage politics. Instead of tackling caste inequalities, education, economic restructuring and development, the Yadav chieftains became the new warlords, running their own tyrannies. Soon, they got their own set of brokers and wheeler-dealers, from Amar Singh to Premchand Gupta.
Mandal politics
If reservation was a new idea that was unleashed in the Cowbelt in the late 1980s, more so after the success in the Deccan several decades before, where education spawned a whole knowledge generation that now occupies technology centres from Bangalore to Hyderabad, why did it not reach historic centres of learning like Benares or Allahabad? It is because the success of Mandal only exacerbated personal rivalries among the Yadavs and heartland socialists. If Ajit Singh allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party to pursue his personal ambitions, the fiercely secular Yadavs split up to run their own caste fiefs in states. Socialist ideology and social empowerment was given up for instant political gain and leadership, and they pursued power not as an instrument for change but simply power for the sake of power. Not surprisingly, the Yadavs have now been reduced to attempting to cash in on their personal charisma, which cannot last forever.
Out of date
It’s now obvious the tables have turned for the socialist Yadavs, who now need their clans and associates more than they needed around, and in their desperation to ensure caste loyalties, the Yadavs have become sectarian, bigoted and provincial. The trade-off is naturally detestable and offensive to all non-Yadavs, in government schemes and assistance for education, employment, health and such like. The more their vote base shrinks, the more clannish their outlook is, thus throwing away the breakthrough politics they once ushered in.
Ideological limbo
The heartland socialists who were once fiercely secular, radical and firebrand leaders, have now been reduced to being caricatures of themselves. While Lalu Yadav has stood firmly secular, Mulayam Yadav has flirted outrageously with the Hindutva BJP, and only cynical votebank politics has kept him in the leash. If they once forged the triumphant OBC-Dalit alliance, whether with Mayawati in UP, or Ramvilas Paswan in Bihar, it all went to dust when the Yadavs fulminated at the audacity of the Dalit leaders going on their own. Development politics was soon reduced to family enterprises, and the Yadavs have not even been remotely capable of pitting themselves against the onslaught of Hindutva, or protect their rural communities against land grab, displacement, sectarian violence or poverty. In fact, they are the new, grabbing, privileged chieftains.
However, Yadavs were traditionally the vanguard of Left politics in Eastern UP and Bihar, so being secular, liberal and pro-women is genuine. But when it comes to humour, they need a savvy stand-up comedian.