In the Lok Sabha elections of 2004, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party gave an outstanding performance by winning 35 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. The poll outcome played a crucial role in replacing the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government of the BJP’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with the Manmohan Singh-led government of the Congress’s United Progressive Alliance.
Ironically, however, the newly elected Congress government did not give Mulayam credit for the victory that he naturally owed. He kept mum over it for some time and did not utter a word of protest. But in an outburst one day he fumed at a Congress leader, “Don’t you have shame at all? Don’t you realise that you scorn at Mulayam who is the one that contributed the most in helping you form a government at the Centre? That was possible only because the SP thwarted the BJP by defeating it in the largest state of the country. Doesn’t he deserve even a little credit for it?”
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The political developments in the country post this episode bear witness to the fact that the Congress party understood Mulayam Singh’s point of view to some extent at least. For instance, when the Left bloc withdrew support from the Manmohan Singh-led government in 2008 over the issue of the controversial nuclear deal with the United States, the SP played a decisive role in saving it from collapsing. Even though it resulted in a decline in the SP’s Lok Sabha seats which fell down to 23 in the 2009 elections, the BJP’s plans did not come to pass and Manmohan Singh’s government made a successful comeback. But in 2014, as soon as SP’s seats came down to five, the entire national scenario changed. Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, the BJP formed the government by getting a full majority on its own at the Centre. Later, in 2019, this government triumphed again with a much stronger majority, but a major reason behind it was that despite an alliance with the BSP, the SP’s seat share remained stuck at five and no one else could stop the BJP in the country’s largest state.
After many failed alliances one after the other, this time the SP has made a severe dent in BJP’s so-called impenetrable fort by winning a record 37 Lok Sabha seats (almost half) under the banner of INDIA. As a result, not only has the BJP lost its majority but ‘non-biological’ Narendra Modi has lost his ten-year-long monopoly over the country. SP’s position as the third largest party in the Lok Sabha is just a by-product of this feat that made not only the political equations of the BJP go haywire but their chemistry too. Isn’t it surprising that Modi, who made fun of INDIA (rather, the entire concept of coalition governments) throughout the election campaign, is now forced to negotiate with his unreliable and ambitious allies with feigned humility to form a new government? This unnatural humility of his underlines a deep regret – had the party restricted SP at 10-12 seats (as his well-wishers from the exit polls claimed) he neither would have lost his blooming majority nor would he be compelled to make such pretentious statements like “numbers game goes on in politics”.
Also read: Akhilesh Yadav’s ‘PDA’ Trumps Modi-Adityanath’s Hindutva in Uttar Pradesh
It seemed necessary to remind the readers of all this now because while the BJP is still trying to come to terms with the severe blow dealt to it by the SP (and Congress) in Uttar Pradesh, its well-wishers – intellectuals and analysts – are leaving no stone unturned and giving one argument after another to paint it as an ordinary event. Many of them claim that the BJP has lost in the state either due to local reasons or due to the ‘fear psychosis’ spread by INDIA or perhaps because of the huge anti-incumbency towards its MPs elected in 2019.
The helplessness of these gentlemen is pitiable as they are forced to blame the mandate in UP on local reasons in the same breath in which they are declaring the mandate of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh – or even the gains of BJP in Kerala and Tamil Nadu – a result of the arrogance of the respective state governments. They do not even seem to comprehend the contradiction in it.
Not only this, they talk about anti-incumbency against BJP MPs and claim that had their tickets been cut, the poll outcome would be different. But they do not blame Modi and his government the slightest bit. Recently, a well-known poll expert artfully defended Modi by saying that the voters may be a little dissatisfied with him, but they are not angry.
If these gentlemen are to be believed, the biggest fault of INDIA is that it had spread fear about Modi and the BJP that they will change the constitution of the country and abolish reservation, if they get 400 seats. As a result, a fear psychosis was created in the voters which made them shift from their dominant (Hindutva) identity to a limited identity – from religion to caste – and out of fear of losing their rights, they voted against the BJP.
Also read: In UP, Defeat Wasn’t Just BJP’s But Also Its Allies’
Who spread the fear psychosis?
Someone should ask these gentlemen what kind of psychosis was Modi spreading with his incendiary remarks about Hindus and Muslims stirring a fear that reservations for Dalits and backward classes will be handed to Muslims, women’s mangalsutra and buffaloes will be taken away and ‘Babri lock’ will be put on Ram temple if INDIA comes to power. Weren’t his own people the first to claim that their party could form the government with 272 seats but 400 plus seats were needed to change the constitution? If it weren’t so, how else could INDIA have fulfilled its duty of being the opposition by countering these claims?
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and SP leader Akhilesh Yadav. Photo: X/@yadavakhilesh
The question is – why are they unable to tolerate the fact that the voters of Uttar Pradesh, considered it as the last opportunity to save the constitution, refused to serve as bhakts or subjects any longer and took a step towards being responsible citizens? Should they be praised or criticised that they snatched power from undeserving hands? Should SP and Congress also be criticised for considering this as the final chance to survive, grabbing the opportunity to reshape old images and reinvent themselves in such a way that their alliance did not seem unnatural or limited only to party leaders like previous attempts but also brought the hearts of workers of both the parties closer to each other? They did not limit themselves to trying to defeat the BJP with the help of their traditional vote bank but also attacked its vote bank and that of the BSP.
They also did away with the inhibitions due to which many sections avoided getting close to them despite being dissatisfied with BJP. Resultantly, Union minister Smriti Irani lost to a ‘party worker’ Kishorilal Sharma by three times the number of votes with which she had defeated Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in 2019.
I have already mentioned the defeat of the BJP in Ayodhya in a previous article. But it is necessary to mention it here to ask these gentlemen whether that defeat was also based on local issues. Was the BJP fighting the elections there on local issues? Then why are the people of Ayodhya being blamed for the defeat and insulted in such a language that cannot even be replicated here? Why is it being claimed that they neither belong to Lord Ram, nor to those who were here to end a 500-year-long wait for his return? Why are they being compared to the subjects of Lord Ram? Is the intention to keep them as subjects and not to let them become citizens? This is not all, the rivalry between Modi and Yogi, which the BJP often wastes its energy on covering up, has flared up to such an extent that both sides are engaged in a slugfest at least on social media.
The wound is deep and hurts a lot too, but it will only fester if concealed.
Naushin Rehman translated this piece from Hindi to English.
