When Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party fought the 2010 Bihar Assembly election, it forfeited the deposit in each of the 146 constituencies it contested and bagged just 0.55% of the total vote in the state. This was even worse than its performance in 2005 – it had then won two of the 158 seats it fought, forfeited its deposit in 150 of them, and polled 2.52% of the votes cast.
Considering his party has consistently performed poorly in Bihar, it is indeed astonishing that Mulayam didn’t accept the five seats the Grand Alliance of Janata Dal(United), Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress offered to him. His decision to walk out of the Grand Alliance mocks those who entrusted him with the task of merging the six offshoots of the Janata Parivar into a united party, in the hope that their acceptance of his leadership would leave him with no one to betray but himself.
But Mulayam, as his past testifies, always finds a reason to ditch those around him. The reasons range from his overweening ambition to his bloated ego to an instinct to fish in troubled waters, regardless of the catch he hopes to ultimately haul over. Of the betrayal in Bihar, Mulayam’s men have justified it by saying that the five seats offered to the SP was an affront to their dignity.
The Congress factor
Underlying this talk of dignity, however, is Mulayam’s deep nervousness about the Congress, which has been assigned 41 seats, a little too many for a party largely moribund in the Hindi heartland. However, the alliance has allocated these seats to the Congress to ensure that the Muslim votes don’t get fragmented. And therein lies Mulayam’s problem.
Should the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance fail to win Bihar, the Congress will have something to crow about. After all, it did put its weight behind Nitish Kumar to ensure that he became the chief ministerial candidate of the Grand Alliance. It would also create the illusion of a Congress revival, an illusion because victory in Bihar won’t be of Congress’ making.
A defeat for the BJP in Bihar, after the drubbing in Delhi, would imply the party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have lost steam. A perceived slowing of momentum for the BJP is bound to ebb the fears and worries of Muslims about the saffron brigade. This could open the possibility of Muslim votes becoming fragmented in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls in 2017. Then again, the prospect of a Congress revival, however illusory, could make the party the third option for Muslims and other anti-BJP voters, after the SP and Bahujan Samaj Party.
In other words, an ascendant BJP suits Mulayam. It will seem to have regained ascendancy should it take away Bihar, which shares with the neighbouring UP several social features. For Mulayam, it matters little whether the BJP prospers as long as the Congress is denied even negligible gains.
The CBI factor
It isn’t that Mulayam hasn’t supped with the Congress in the past. But it has been mostly when India’s grand old party was in power at the Centre. It is said he feared that the Congress could deploy the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the corruption charges against him, whether fabricated or real.
It is this fear of his that the BJP, too, is said to be playing on. All this may or may not be true, but the Indian Express recently established links between NOIDA Chief Engineer Yadav Singh, under investigation for amassing wealth disproportionate to his income, and a member of Mulayam’s family. From this perspective, Mulayam is seen to have undercut the alliance’s attempt to prevent the splintering of its potential votes at the BJP’s behest.
Mulayam’s fear of the CBI is said to have prompted his 2008 betrayal of the Left, whom he ditched to support the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008. Perhaps the CBI angle has been mooted (rather unfairly, some might say) because his decision in these two instances – Bihar and 2008 – otherwise appears irrational. In 2008, he cited national interest to swing behind the United Progressive Alliance, much in the manner of his men having invoked the idea of affront to walk out of the grand alliance in Bihar now.
Long list of betrayals
But 2008 wasn’t the only instance of Mulayam betraying the Left, which has been consistently on his side, believing he is the most durable bulwark against the BJP in UP. In 2002, the non-BJP, non-Congress outfits led by the Left announced the Indian National Army veteran, Capt Lakshmi Sahgal, as their candidate in the presidential election. The Left counted on Mulayam’s support as Sahgal had made Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, her home after India’s Independence.
But then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee invited Mulayam over and asked him to recommend a candidate for the post of President. Mulayam suggested the name of APJ Abdul Kalam. It is debatable whether Mulayam thought of Kalam on his own, or whether Vajpayee suggested his name to Mulayam and merely gave him the honour of floating it in public domain.
Through this ploy Vajpayee not only played to Mulayam’s sense of grandeur, but also offered him the opportunity to pose to the Muslim community that he had been instrumental in paving the path for one among them to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He rallied behind the NDA – and Kalam – despite accusing the BJP of being communal and having fought many battles against it in UP.
In Mulayam’s calculation, the Left was dispensable. It could neither augment his votes in UP nor sever all links with him because of its propensity to gratuitously play the role of the shepherd of secular forces. They need him, not he them.
Such hard-headed calculation prompted Mulayam to abort Sonia Gandhi’s attempt to cobble an alliance after the Vajpayee government lost the no-confidence motion in 1999. From the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, she claimed to have the support of 272 MPs. But she hadn’t factored in Mulayam, who made it known that Sonia was unacceptable to him because of her foreign origin.
His real reason, however, was his fear of Sonia portraying herself as one who scripted the downfall of the Vajpayee government, in the process becoming a possible magnet to rally the anti-BJP voters. As Prime Minister, she was unacceptable to him because she, as it was rightly assumed, would choose to contest from UP, the electorate of which might have then become favourably inclined to her party. Every state is partial to the party whose prime ministerial hopeful is a resident.
Mulayam was simply unwilling to risk the diminishing of his party. His decision not to support Sonia triggered the midterm poll. The BJP rode the Kargil war to bag yet another term in office.
Helping Hindutva
You could say every politician is protective of his turf. But what distinguishes Mulayam from others is that he believes his interests should be paramount for the alliance or formation to which he belongs or joins. For him, there is no room for accommodation; it is ‘my way or the highway’.
Thus, in 1990, when the Prime Minister VP Singh introduced reservations in the Central Government jobs, you’d have expected Mulayam to have remained steadfast behind the Janata Dal. But Singh was from UP and Mulayam wasn’t willing to play second fiddle to anyone there. He deserted Singh as soon as the BJP withdrew its support to his government and rallied behind Chandra Shekhar, whose government the Congress propped up.
But Chandra Shekhar resigned in a few months because he found the pinpricks of the Congress unbearable. In the ensuing mid-term poll of 1991, the Janata Dal-led alliance won 49 out of the 54 seats in the undivided Bihar. Had Mulayam not broken away from the Janata Dal, it could have trounced the BJP in the undivided UP as well. A weak index of Opposition unity enabled the BJP to bag 51 out of the 85 seats. You could say the Hindutva forces would have been put on the backfoot years ago had it not been for Mulayam’s betrayal.
Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, Mulayam and Kanshi Ram-Mayawati cobbled an alliance between the SP and the BSP. It won the Assembly election in 1993 and Mulayam became UP’s chief minister. Aghast at the impunity with which dominant Other Backward Classes or OBCs were attacking Dalits, Mayawati and Kanshi Ram turned the heat on Mulayam. This provoked him to work on a plan to split the BSP.
However, Kanshi Ram stitched a deal with the BJP in secrecy and the BSP withdrew its support to the SP government. Enraged SP activists launched a vicious assault on Lucknow’s State Guest House, where BSP MLAs were herded together. Though some of them were forcibly whisked away, Mayawati managed to evade her assailants.
The desire to protect the SP’s base runs so deep in Mulayam that his party’s government pursues policies which seem to provide tacit encouragement to the BJP. For instance, the UP administration of Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam’s son, has on several occasions over the last one year denied permission to All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi from holding public meetings. The reason cited is that he could pose a threat to communal harmony. Owaisi has mostly chosen not to defy these orders.
Yet, by contrast, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi held a public ceremony to felicitate Hindus who have four children. Quite publicly again, she said, “These people who give birth to 35-40.... are spreading love jihad..... I said I have only advocated four children for Hindus not 40....” You also have Mahant Adityanath, among many others, making vitriolic speeches in UP. Last September, he was denied permission to hold a rally in Lucknow. Adityanath defied the order.
Shouldn’t the UP administration have prevented his rally from being held at all? Well, Mulayam needs a menacing BJP in UP for his own political survival, believing an apprehensive Muslim community is bound to vote him in return for his protection. It can, therefore, be said he betrays not only allies and ideas of secularism and social justice, but even those who vote for him. The parties seemingly representing these causes can never succeed unless they make Mulayam pay a price for his betrayals.
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Considering his party has consistently performed poorly in Bihar, it is indeed astonishing that Mulayam didn’t accept the five seats the Grand Alliance of Janata Dal(United), Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress offered to him. His decision to walk out of the Grand Alliance mocks those who entrusted him with the task of merging the six offshoots of the Janata Parivar into a united party, in the hope that their acceptance of his leadership would leave him with no one to betray but himself.
But Mulayam, as his past testifies, always finds a reason to ditch those around him. The reasons range from his overweening ambition to his bloated ego to an instinct to fish in troubled waters, regardless of the catch he hopes to ultimately haul over. Of the betrayal in Bihar, Mulayam’s men have justified it by saying that the five seats offered to the SP was an affront to their dignity.
The Congress factor
Underlying this talk of dignity, however, is Mulayam’s deep nervousness about the Congress, which has been assigned 41 seats, a little too many for a party largely moribund in the Hindi heartland. However, the alliance has allocated these seats to the Congress to ensure that the Muslim votes don’t get fragmented. And therein lies Mulayam’s problem.
Should the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance fail to win Bihar, the Congress will have something to crow about. After all, it did put its weight behind Nitish Kumar to ensure that he became the chief ministerial candidate of the Grand Alliance. It would also create the illusion of a Congress revival, an illusion because victory in Bihar won’t be of Congress’ making.
A defeat for the BJP in Bihar, after the drubbing in Delhi, would imply the party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have lost steam. A perceived slowing of momentum for the BJP is bound to ebb the fears and worries of Muslims about the saffron brigade. This could open the possibility of Muslim votes becoming fragmented in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls in 2017. Then again, the prospect of a Congress revival, however illusory, could make the party the third option for Muslims and other anti-BJP voters, after the SP and Bahujan Samaj Party.
In other words, an ascendant BJP suits Mulayam. It will seem to have regained ascendancy should it take away Bihar, which shares with the neighbouring UP several social features. For Mulayam, it matters little whether the BJP prospers as long as the Congress is denied even negligible gains.
The CBI factor
It isn’t that Mulayam hasn’t supped with the Congress in the past. But it has been mostly when India’s grand old party was in power at the Centre. It is said he feared that the Congress could deploy the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the corruption charges against him, whether fabricated or real.
It is this fear of his that the BJP, too, is said to be playing on. All this may or may not be true, but the Indian Express recently established links between NOIDA Chief Engineer Yadav Singh, under investigation for amassing wealth disproportionate to his income, and a member of Mulayam’s family. From this perspective, Mulayam is seen to have undercut the alliance’s attempt to prevent the splintering of its potential votes at the BJP’s behest.
Mulayam’s fear of the CBI is said to have prompted his 2008 betrayal of the Left, whom he ditched to support the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008. Perhaps the CBI angle has been mooted (rather unfairly, some might say) because his decision in these two instances – Bihar and 2008 – otherwise appears irrational. In 2008, he cited national interest to swing behind the United Progressive Alliance, much in the manner of his men having invoked the idea of affront to walk out of the grand alliance in Bihar now.
Long list of betrayals
But 2008 wasn’t the only instance of Mulayam betraying the Left, which has been consistently on his side, believing he is the most durable bulwark against the BJP in UP. In 2002, the non-BJP, non-Congress outfits led by the Left announced the Indian National Army veteran, Capt Lakshmi Sahgal, as their candidate in the presidential election. The Left counted on Mulayam’s support as Sahgal had made Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, her home after India’s Independence.
But then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee invited Mulayam over and asked him to recommend a candidate for the post of President. Mulayam suggested the name of APJ Abdul Kalam. It is debatable whether Mulayam thought of Kalam on his own, or whether Vajpayee suggested his name to Mulayam and merely gave him the honour of floating it in public domain.
Through this ploy Vajpayee not only played to Mulayam’s sense of grandeur, but also offered him the opportunity to pose to the Muslim community that he had been instrumental in paving the path for one among them to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He rallied behind the NDA – and Kalam – despite accusing the BJP of being communal and having fought many battles against it in UP.
In Mulayam’s calculation, the Left was dispensable. It could neither augment his votes in UP nor sever all links with him because of its propensity to gratuitously play the role of the shepherd of secular forces. They need him, not he them.
Such hard-headed calculation prompted Mulayam to abort Sonia Gandhi’s attempt to cobble an alliance after the Vajpayee government lost the no-confidence motion in 1999. From the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, she claimed to have the support of 272 MPs. But she hadn’t factored in Mulayam, who made it known that Sonia was unacceptable to him because of her foreign origin.
His real reason, however, was his fear of Sonia portraying herself as one who scripted the downfall of the Vajpayee government, in the process becoming a possible magnet to rally the anti-BJP voters. As Prime Minister, she was unacceptable to him because she, as it was rightly assumed, would choose to contest from UP, the electorate of which might have then become favourably inclined to her party. Every state is partial to the party whose prime ministerial hopeful is a resident.
Mulayam was simply unwilling to risk the diminishing of his party. His decision not to support Sonia triggered the midterm poll. The BJP rode the Kargil war to bag yet another term in office.
Helping Hindutva
You could say every politician is protective of his turf. But what distinguishes Mulayam from others is that he believes his interests should be paramount for the alliance or formation to which he belongs or joins. For him, there is no room for accommodation; it is ‘my way or the highway’.
Thus, in 1990, when the Prime Minister VP Singh introduced reservations in the Central Government jobs, you’d have expected Mulayam to have remained steadfast behind the Janata Dal. But Singh was from UP and Mulayam wasn’t willing to play second fiddle to anyone there. He deserted Singh as soon as the BJP withdrew its support to his government and rallied behind Chandra Shekhar, whose government the Congress propped up.
But Chandra Shekhar resigned in a few months because he found the pinpricks of the Congress unbearable. In the ensuing mid-term poll of 1991, the Janata Dal-led alliance won 49 out of the 54 seats in the undivided Bihar. Had Mulayam not broken away from the Janata Dal, it could have trounced the BJP in the undivided UP as well. A weak index of Opposition unity enabled the BJP to bag 51 out of the 85 seats. You could say the Hindutva forces would have been put on the backfoot years ago had it not been for Mulayam’s betrayal.
Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, Mulayam and Kanshi Ram-Mayawati cobbled an alliance between the SP and the BSP. It won the Assembly election in 1993 and Mulayam became UP’s chief minister. Aghast at the impunity with which dominant Other Backward Classes or OBCs were attacking Dalits, Mayawati and Kanshi Ram turned the heat on Mulayam. This provoked him to work on a plan to split the BSP.
However, Kanshi Ram stitched a deal with the BJP in secrecy and the BSP withdrew its support to the SP government. Enraged SP activists launched a vicious assault on Lucknow’s State Guest House, where BSP MLAs were herded together. Though some of them were forcibly whisked away, Mayawati managed to evade her assailants.
The desire to protect the SP’s base runs so deep in Mulayam that his party’s government pursues policies which seem to provide tacit encouragement to the BJP. For instance, the UP administration of Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam’s son, has on several occasions over the last one year denied permission to All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi from holding public meetings. The reason cited is that he could pose a threat to communal harmony. Owaisi has mostly chosen not to defy these orders.
Yet, by contrast, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi held a public ceremony to felicitate Hindus who have four children. Quite publicly again, she said, “These people who give birth to 35-40.... are spreading love jihad..... I said I have only advocated four children for Hindus not 40....” You also have Mahant Adityanath, among many others, making vitriolic speeches in UP. Last September, he was denied permission to hold a rally in Lucknow. Adityanath defied the order.
Shouldn’t the UP administration have prevented his rally from being held at all? Well, Mulayam needs a menacing BJP in UP for his own political survival, believing an apprehensive Muslim community is bound to vote him in return for his protection. It can, therefore, be said he betrays not only allies and ideas of secularism and social justice, but even those who vote for him. The parties seemingly representing these causes can never succeed unless they make Mulayam pay a price for his betrayals.