Like father, unlike son

Ajit Singh inherited from his father the ability to defect at the opportune moment. But he could not emulate him as an ideologically rooted person, promoting the cause of an important class. He only became the leader of his clan with a limited cognitive world

Even though Left politics did not have strong roots in UP, the state had at least two outstanding ideological icons — Charan Singh and Ram Manohar Lohia. Admittedly, Charan Singh could not be fitted into the classical Left framework. But he did make an outstanding contribution in terms of highlighting and bridging the adverse terms of trade between agriculture and industry. He was one of that rare breed of organic intellectuals who advocated the interests of agriculture not only through his pen but also through the instruments of state power. Much of the economic muscle that the ‘bullock cart capitalists’ or the ‘vernacular elites’ acquired in the post-Independence period, specially in UP, was scripted by Charan Singh.

Along with this economic consolidation resulting in the formation of a new class of those who benefited from the ‘green revolution’, the social empowerment of this constituency, comprising largely of the backward castes, was charted out by Ram Manohar Lohia. While Charan Singh was concerned with the nuts and bolts of policy and governance, Lohia was a compulsive critic of the existing social order and an iconoclast. History had beckoned both of them independently but simultaneously, to complement each other in ushering in a new economic and social dynamic. They would both set the stage for a fundamental paradigm shift in the politics of UP, the largest state of the Hindi heartland.

But history repeats itself, as tragedy and as farce. In UP, the legatees of Charan Singh and Ram Manohar Lohia — Ajit Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav — have formally split. They were part of the ruling coalition in the state. The exit of Ajit Singh’s RLD is ostensibly for the cause of ‘sugarcane farmers’. In reality, it is tantamount to abandoning the sinking ship in view of Mulayam’s plummeting stock just months before the assembly election.

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Even though Charan Singh was known for the politics of strategic defections, splits and mergers, he always promoted his brand of politics and expanded his social base through such opportunistic alliances. Charan Singh’s undiluted ambition was to be the authentic voice of the agricultural-interest, and indirectly of the backward classes of India, through a common ideological strand. Ajit Singh inherited from his father the ability to defect at the opportune moment. But he could not emulate him as an ideologically rooted person, promoting the cause of an important class. At best, he only became the leader of his clan with a limited cognitive world. In the process, he marginalised and confined himself over the years to only a few Jat-dominated districts of western UP. Even his slogan for ‘Harit Pradesh’ could not create a sub-national ripple cutting across caste and class in western UP.

Though he was cast in the Lohiaite mould, Mulayam Singh Yadav could not make his politics inclusive or large enough to accommodate the lowest social strata. In this sense, Ajit and Mulayam are both products of the same class configuration.

Their hostility towards agricultural labour is indeed rooted in this class background. This divide between the two strata of the subalterns — one comprising the upper backwards like Jats and Yadavs and the other comprising sections of the lower backwards and dalits — is revealed in various social arena. It also gets reflected in electoral and political terms in the animus between SP and BSP.

What, however, makes UP politics extremely complex is the presence of two parties to represent the traditional elites of the state — Congress and BJP. Thus, UP is a special Hindi heartland state. Here, bi-polar politics operates simultaneously at two levels — at the bottom (SP versus BSP) and at the top (Congress versus BJP).

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When the anti-Brahmin movement and subaltern-based renaissance was unfolding in south and western India in the pre-independence period, it did not have to compete with electoral populism. So, over the years, it not only acquired a distinct identity, its also developed alternative models of governance and development. While UP showed how economic and social empowerment can lead to electoral hegemony, it has also revealed simultaneously a process of extreme political degeneration.

In those states where the subaltern has achieved a preeminent political position, splits or co-options are generally within the same social strata. In UP, however, one is witnessing the reverse cooption of brahmins and banias by the largest dalit political formation. This has followed attempts by Mulayam, so-called symbol of socialism, to co-opt the rabidly feudal Raja Bhaiyya. What the Congress earlier did in a subtle and ‘sophisticated’ idiom, is being replicated by formations that speak a crude vernacular language. Both are variations of the same opportunistic politics of cooption.

The writer is member secretary, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna