Those familiar with the political discourse of the 1980s in India will know Ram Vilas Paswan as one of the leaders who excelled at the art of surviving the rough and tumble of the democratic experience and also preserved himself to enjoy the trappings of comfort in Lutyens’ Delhi for most part of his political life.
If his landing in the world of parliamentary politics in 1969 as member of the Bihar legislative assembly was by sheer force of circumstance and chance, he did manage to anchor himself in ministerial comforts; and this he achieved making several ‘U’ turns unabashedly and with ease.
Sobhana K. Nair mentions, right at the outset of her book, titled Ram Vilas Paswan: The Weathervane of Indian Politics, the circumstance of the meeting she had with Paswan some day in August 2018, from where she thought of this book; a biography is not the easiest task to undertake, especially when the biographer is not one of those who are in love with the personality.
Sobhana K. Nair
Ram Vilas Paswan
Roli Books (2024)
And New Delhi is indeed home for a number of them. And the subject matter – Paswan – was certainly known for his penchant to cultivate journalists through means fair and foul.
Nair, however, is not among them and she has certainly managed to do justice to the task and to unravel Paswan’s life; and she has brought out his personality with her racy style and without holding back any punches.
The mention, in the text, of the largesse Paswan had distributed as Minister for Railways and then as Minister for Telecommunications, benefitting journalists across the country, is noteworthy; and especially when it comes from a journalist.
The author, however, need not have gone through the experience of her meeting with Paswan in August 2018 to learn of his lack of conviction; she seemed lost when Paswan, as she recalls, did suggest his unease over the arrest and detention of some activists and academicians for their alleged involvement in the Elgar Parishad; and yet did not want to come out with his views on the event, the arrests and the larger politics surrounding them.
Paswan’s attitude on these was consistent, and a specific case in point was the massacre at Laxmanpur-Bathe in the intervening night of November 30 and December 1, 1997. As many as 58 lives (most of whom were Dalits) were snatched away by the Ranvir Sena that night, and Paswan did not show any pain; he did not even squeak.
The fact is the dead, even while belonging to the Dussadh caste among the Dalits, had aligned with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation (CPI(ML)L), whose fight was for socio-economic reforms and not sheer identity politics, which remained the mainstay for Paswan and many such others as Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh.
Also read: The Contradictions between Ram Vilas Paswan’s Personal Beliefs and Professional Compulsions
That Paswan, until his end in October 2020, failed to achieve what Mayawati could in Uttar Pradesh – end up as chief minister in 1996 first and thrice later on – is because the discourse in the two states are distinct.
The critical distinction is the class-caste overlap in Bihar and its centrality in the domain of Dalit assertion, while in Uttar Pradesh, such an overlap is not so pronounced. Hence, what was good for UP and Mayawati was not so with regard to Bihar and Paswan.
In other words, Paswan hardly ventured into any movement seeking a socio-economic transformation (which the CPI-ML had founded and consolidated since the late 1960s) and restricted himself to maneuvering with identity politics; his claims to having been a socialist (and Nair too describes him that way) do not match with evidence.
Well. The author brings out his election as MLA in 1969, which happened by chance; and the fact that he was innocent of anything to do with all that the Socialist Party stood for at that time. The fact is the party was desperately looking for candidates and Paswan happened to land as one in that election in 1969.
The 1977 general elections too were one such instance when anyone who managed to swing a candidature from the Janata umbrella won a landslide win: it so happened that Paswan happened to be one of those and the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat would have gone to Ram Sundar Das but for what the author points out was a crucial intervention from Jayaprakash Narayan in Paswan’s favour.
The book catches all the events in Paswan’s life in politics since then and that he managed to make sure he was in the right place each time when elections were held.
Barring a dark patch between 1984 and 1989, when Paswan was homeless in New Delhi after his defeat from Hajipur in the 1984 general election, he lived in the comforts of Lutyens Delhi; and since 1989, he pulled all stops to ensure that he and his family profited pretty much with a paraphernalia of servants and officers.
Nair does tell this story pretty much well and her racy style does convey all things of this kind to the reader.
And in the end, the author leaves none in doubt as to the extent to which Paswan, notwithstanding his claims to belong to the socialist stable, ended up acting in a manner that was best to take care of his son, Chirag Paswan, even if it meant putting principles, conviction and consistency as barter on the altar.
Also read: Is He Really a ‘Chirag’ of Hope For the NDA in Bihar?
And his brothers, whom he promoted apart from himself, too were expendable in order to hoist his son Chirag on the political stage.
The book tells us the story that Ram Vilas Paswan rose from nowhere into a prominent player in the political theatre in New Delhi, or should we say Lutyen’s Delhi; that he was a survivor and ended up a man for all seasons – the weathervane as Nair rightly puts it.
However, she seems to have pulled her punches insofar as one another aspect of his life: and that is the story of his rise from lower middle-class moorings in Bihar into a life of riches and wealth in New Delhi, a story that may fit the lives and times of a host of political leaders who rose in the 1970s and survived in the world of politics about the same time as Paswan did.
Krishna Ananth is an observer of politics and is the author of India Since Independence: Making Sense of Politics, Pearson Longman, New Delhi, 2009.
