The Game Of Signals

For a few weeks now, Mulayam Singh Yadav has been expressing great regard for Lal Krishna Advani, despite the communal outlook of the latter’s BJP being anathema to the secular, socialist ideals of Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party. There has been some reciprocation too. On April 3, after a Samajwadi Party meeting in Lucknow, Mulayam ended up praising Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Mahasabha leader and ideologue. The same day, addressing a meeting of his party in Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, Advani found reasons to praise Ram Manohar Lohia, the socialist ideologue by whom Mulayam swears. And more importantly, the two seemed in agreement on pragmatic, tactical matters: both of them took the view that Lok Sabha elections, scheduled for 2014, might well happen early, even in 2013.

Of course, the BJP and the SP—if not Advani and Mulayam themselves­—are being duly circumspect and not speaking of an alliance. But the political dynamics of Mulayam’s new, overflowing fondness for Advani and his party is curious enough to merit attention. For Mulayam’s cousin Ram Gopal Yadav, the party’s think-tank, spokesman and national general secretary, had recently showered praise on the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA government. And Mulayam has sought a report card on his son Akhilesh’s chief ministership from none other than Advani, whom he certified as “honest” and “incorruptible”. To top it, all this comes with an overdose of Congress-bashing, even as the Samajwadi Party continues to ext­end support to the UPA regime.

Those familiar with Mulayam’s acuity see the game thus: it’s his way of sending a message to the Congress that he is capable of considering other options. Also, it’s a way of pressurising the UPA to get off his back the CBI, which is investigating the Yadavs, on Supreme Court orders, to see if there is a prima facie case of corruption and amassing of disproportionate assets. Not unfamiliar with how the CBI functions under the government of the day, he could not have found a better timing.

Photograph by Nirala Tripathi

In the midst of all this, Mulayam’s pal-turned-foe Beni Prasad Verma, a former Samajwadi and at present steel minister in the Manmohan Singh government, has been enjoying a post-divorce baiting spree. “Mulayam has always had underhand connections with the rss”, was one of his charges. And of the lead-up to the Babri demolition and Mulayam’s pro-Muslim, secular stance, Verma says, “Around 1990, Muslims were rallying around V.P. Singh, therefore, Mulayam conspired with the BJP to draw Muslims away from Singh by taking a proactive role in the Babri issue. We saved Babri Masjid then...all Mulayam did was make VP fall.” He also says that, after all, Mulayam had no qualms about joining hands with Kalyan Singh—on whose watch as chief minister the Babri Masjid fell—and his chela, Sakshi Maharaj.

Beni Prasad has also charged Mulayam with conspiring with the BJP, after its government fell for just one vote, to refuse support to Sonia Gandhi. The deal for this, he has alleged, was struck at Jaya Jaitly’s house. In an attempt to call the bluff on Mulayam’s secularism, Beni says the Samajwadi Party had fielded candidates in Gujarat only to draw some votes away and facilitate Narendra Modi’s victory over the Congress.

Beni’s unerring training of guns at Mulayam is not without a long-term political objective—at stake is the crucial Muslim vote in Uttar Pra­desh and across the country. Which is obviously why the Congress leadership has preferred studied silence over what was seen by other political leaders as the “wildest of allegations” against the top leader of an ally on whose support the government has been banking after the DMK withdrew support over the issue of Sri Lankan Tamils.

What might have intensified Beni’s diatribe may be the sudden, visible bonhomie between the top BJP leadership and Mulayam on the floor of Parliament. Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj had gone out of her way to respond to Mulayam’s blatant appeal for support in the face of Beni’s attack. Sushma, in an unusual gesture, had condemned Beni’s statements—to the extent that the Congress was at last forced to dissociate itself, to a degree, from the statements of its senior minister. But it chose not to express regret for Beni’s anti-Mulayam statements: as an influential insider put it, “What Beni did could not have been without a nod from those who matter—after all, it could serve the larger objective of weaning away Muslims from Mulayam. Surely a turn of the Muslim vote in favour of the Congress could transform the party’s crumbling political fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Every­thing is fair in love, war and politics: after all, Mulayam too discredited VP to win the support of Muslims.”

What seems extremely strange is that such an opportunity was extended to his opponents on a platter by none other than Mulayam himself when he first praised Advani. How could a seasoned politician like Mulayam build and set a trap that could end up dev­ouring his crucial Muslim votebank? Apparently, Mulayam is confident that, notwithstanding all the parallel wooing by Congress, the Samajwadi Party’s Muslim support is for keeps.

After all, who does not know that Congress is in a shambles and stands a very poor chance of springing back to power. In any case, the 2014 electoral battle—at least in Uttar Pradesh—will most likely be fought between the ruling Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). And Mulayam must have seen no reason to believe that the Muslims wouldn’t have opted for his party over the BSP. In Uttar Pradesh, political analysts, however, are inclined to take the view that the Muslim vote is unlikely to change its behaviour: tilting in favour of the potential winner in the same manner as the upper-caste Hindu vote. They also feel that, keeping in mind the possibility of a ‘third front’, which Mulayam has been visualising in the post-2014 election scenario, praising Advani today could mean an investment, should a non-Congress, non-BJP order emerge as the winner in the elections.

It may sound hypothetical, but Mulayam aims to keep his doors open for support from any quarter if the stars turn in his favour and fulfil his wishful thinking of grabbing at least 40 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats and emerge as the ‘third front’ hero. With all the Congress-bashing he has been doing over the past fortnight, he may lose out on Congress support, but his words of praise for Advani could help him fulfil a long-cherished dream. As for his Muslim supporters, he definitely knows how to keep them. After all, he did manage to get them back after his open handshake with Kalyan Singh, who perhaps tops the list of leaders Muslims love to hate. Even if it was thanks to Azam Khan.

By Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow