<b>Aditi Phadnis:</b> More than just a leadership change

Now that Mulayam has been reduced to being SP's chief mentor, is the era of agile politics over?

Is it the end of Mulayam Singh Yadav as we knew him? And the end of an era of the lithe and the supple in politics?

Take a look at his lineage. He was first elected to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in 1967 on the ticket of the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP), led by Ram Manohar Lohia, one of India’s best known Socialists. In 1968, following Lohia’s death, he joined the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) headed by Charan Singh. In 1974, the SSP and the BKD merged to become the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) and gave him a ticket, so no prizes for guessing why Mulayam Singh Yadav joined it in the first place. The BLD joined the Janata Party in 1977 and Mulayam Singh Yadav became a minister in the UP Cabinet for the first time.

Charan Singh pulled out of the Janata Party in 1979. Charan Singh’s new party was called the Lok Dal (LD). After Charan Singh’s death, the party split again into two: Charan Singh’s US-educated son Ajit Singh took over his father’s legacy but Mulayam Singh Yadav thought he was the true inheritor. The Ajit Singh-led faction was called LD A, the Yadav faction LD B.

A strategic merger followed in 1989: The LD B merged with the Janata Dal. This was the real movement forward for Mulayam Singh Yadav. He became chief minister of UP for the first time as a result of the merger. The Janata Dal didn’t last for long — it split into two and Mulayam Singh Yadav elected to desert it to throw in his lot with Chandra Shekhar’s Samajwadi Janata Party (SJP). That partnership lasted two years. In 1992, he split from the SJP and formed his own outfit, the Samajwadi Party, which endured until his son Akhilesh Yadav revolted and kicked him upstairs in 2017.

Not for nothing, then, is he called Netaji — because of his agility.

More than a bald recollection of dates and factions, it is necessary to put in political perspective, the various moves he’s made.

In 1967, the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) government led by Charan Singh was in power in UP. The Lohia Socialists were bitterly critical of the SVD’s policies although they were part of the government. In fact, speaking on the Budget presented by Charan Singh, the chief minister of the coalition that had Mulayam Singh Yadav’s party as a constituent in 1967, the young Mulayam Singh Yadav pronounced his verdict thus: “The government has failed to meet the expectations of the farmers... it should have waived land revenue but it backed out from its commitment… Our government promises it will do away with the capitalism of the Congress but it has shown no indication of liberating itself from the Congress traditions and its unsound policies”.

In 1968, he lost the election as an SSP candidate and later, joined the very party against which he had expressed such strong feelings. He got a party nomination for his exertions and contested the 1974 elections as a BLD candidate.

The Indira Gandhi government declared Emergency in 1975 and Mulayam Singh Yadav was in the Etawah jail for 19 months. Like everyone else, when he came out of jail and contested Assembly elections as a BLD candidate he won. He was appointed minister for cooperatives.

Politics in UP was at the heart of the collapse of the Janata Party government at the Centre. Because of the imperfect integration of the BLD, the SSP and other constituents of the Janata Party, the fulcrum of power in the coalition kept shifting. When Charan Singh walked out of the Morarji Desai-led Janata Party with the tacit support of Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out with him. In 1980, Charan Singh appointed Mulayam Singh Yadav the state unit president of the Lok Dal as the party was then known. The Congress was in power in UP, led by a man called VP Singh.

By 1982, Mulayam Singh Yadav had risen to become member of the Legislative Council where he was elected leader of the Opposition. Anti-Congressism defined his politics, uniting the Opposition became his aim. The chance came sooner than expected. When V P Singh left the Congress, Mulayam Singh Yadav lost no time in forging a grand alliance of smaller groups in UP — the Janata Party, the two Left parties, even the Sanjay Vichar Manch. At the Centre it was V P Singh, Devi Lal and Chandra Shekhar.

But this did not mean the Congress was an untouchable. The SP guided by Mulayam Singh Yadav voted for the Congress-led government on July 23, 2008, in a confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, after going through rather hurried motions of consulting top Indian scientists, including former president of India A P J Abdul Kalam, that the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement was not, after all, going to turn India into a vassal of the United States — and the capital of India would continue to be New Delhi.

Now that Mulayam Singh Yadav has been reduced to being chief mentor of the SP, and has been advised to restrain himself to that role by friends (including Nitish Kumar) and family (Lalu Prasad), is the era of agile politics over?