SP Dalit leader who won Ayodhya targets BJP: ‘They did business in Ram’s name’

Since his victory, his supporters have been thronging his home near the Sahadatganj overbridge in Ayodhya. Seemingly overwhelmed by the wishes, the 79-year-old SP leader sat down for an interview with The Indian Express in a room where a framed picture of former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh — whom Prasad considers his “political father” — hung on the wall.

Prasad’s win has received a lot of attention from across India because Ayodhya, where the Ram Temple is located, is part of the Faizabad LS seat and was a prestige battle for the BJP. “The BJP was spreading lies in the country, saying, ‘Hum Ram ko laaye hain (We brought back Ram)’. The reality is they cheated the country in the name of Ram, did business in the name of Ram, allowed inflation to rise in the name of Ram, created unemployment in the name of Ram, and uprooted the poor and farmers in the name of Ram. The BJP has worked to destroy the dignity of Ram. People have understood this,” said the SP MP.

Asked what played the biggest role in his win, Prasad said, “This was an election where the public took matters into its own hands. Everyone had faith in me… Caste did not come to the fore. Lallu Singh said the BJP needed 400 seats to change the Constitution. He should not have said this. People did not like it.”

Prasad, a law graduate, joined active politics when he was 21 years old. He joined Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Kranti Dal and unsuccessfully contested his first Assembly polls from Sohawal in Ayodhya district in 1974. During Emergency, he served as Faizabad district co-convener of the anti-Emergency Sangharsh Samiti and was arrested. While in jail, his mother passed away and he failed to get parole to attend her last rites.

Recollecting the episode, Prasad got emotional, calling it one of the regrets of his life. “My only regret is that I could not see my mother (in her last moments). It was during Emergency and I was in jail at the time. Her body was kept for five days but I could not have the last darshan of Amma. When I was in jail, my mother came to meet me. She was very happy at the time. She was so happy that when she returned to the village, people asked if I had been released and she replied, ‘He is in jail for the country.’”

After Emergency, Prasad quit law to become a full-time politician. In 1981, then a general secretary of both the Lok Dal and the Janata Party, could not attend the last rites of his father as well as he was in Amethi as the counting agent of Lok Dal candidate Sharad Yadav during the Lok Sabha bypolls in which the Congress candidate was Rajiv Gandhi.

“Chaudhary Charan Singh made me sit in his car and said, ‘Awadhesh ji, we can go back only after the elections are over.’ I was the counting agent. When the news of my father’s death came, I was in a dilemma whether to go see him for the last time or listen to my political father Chaudhary Charan Singh. I chose to follow Charan Singh’s orders and went home after 14 days,” he said.

As the party splintered, Prasad found himself by Mulayam’s side as he launched the SP in 1992. Prasad was appointed the party’s national secretary and member of its central parliamentary board.

Now the biggest Dalit leader in SP, Prasad said, “This is not my victory, this is the victory of the great people of Ayodhya… Awadhesh Prasad will consider it his victory when he lives up to what he promised,” he said.