Why the socialists will just not go away

In the early 1960s, firebrand socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia called for the unity of all anti-Congress forces to take on the dominant political party of its time. He had posited that a single candidate backed by all Opposition parties would be able to defeat the Congress and show the masses that the party of independence was vulnerable.

Last week, many of his chelas, still swearing by him and his views, brought their respective parties across one table and declared they were ready to merge to form a new entity that would take on the Bharatiya Janata Party, which looks unassailable. That is the only way the BJP can be defeated, according to them.

In this 50-year period lies the history of the Indian socialist, who, despite all the ups and downs of contemporary history, have still survived and even thrived in a few pockets. Just when it looks like Indian politics is now neatly divided between two national parties and a host of small, regional outfits, the socialists pop-up to give notice of their presence and relevance. Put simply, the Indian socialist will just not go away.

After Lohia came up with anti-Congressism-as-a-binding-ideology, sundry small socialistic parties came together to form the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD). They were joined by the Jan Sangh, which was a minor player in national politics. Their experiment paid off handsomely and the party won enough seats in Uttar Pradesh to form a government under Chaudhary Charan Singh. The SVD government lasted only nine months or so. The same formation, with some Congress defectors, was created under the auspices of Rajmata Scindia. The message went home that the Congress had its weak spots that could be exploited if only the Opposition parties joined hands and pooled their votes.

After that, the socialists, though not in power, remained a noisy if peripheral political force. People like George Fernandes went into trade unionism in Bombay as did Karpoori Thakur in Bihar. Their mentor then was Jayaprakash Narayan, a one-time Congressman now an implacable foe of the Nehru family and the party.
It was in the 1970s that the socialists really came into their own.

Mr Fernandes led a big railway strike in 1974 just around the time JP was giving a call for Armymen to lay down their arms and not serve the state. Students in different parts of the country were protesting against corrupt governments and it was the socialists leading the charge, with much help from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which provided the cadre and the muscle. The Right-Left combination was also seen in the Janata Party which defeated Indira Gandhi’s Congress in 1977 and came to power, only to collapse within less than two years. This marriage of the ultra-nationalist Right and the socialists has been a durable one and only now, after the BJP has emerged as a potent force, have the two parted.

The socialists got a major boost in 1989 when V.P. Singh, under pressure from his deputy Devi Lal, announced that the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, giving reservations to OBCs would be implemented. Only now, these very ideologues had morphed into casteist parties, committed to fight only for their respective castes and communities under the rubric of “social justice”. OBC was an omnibus term to describe those who were not upper caste, or dalit, or Muslim or any other minority religion; a bureaucratic construct without any basis in a scientific enumeration or census.

Since then, these casteist-socialists have formed, reformed, broken up, come together, cosied up to the BJP, fought the BJP and even, on rare occasions, joined a Congress-led coalition. They have held on to their pockets of influence — Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh. Some from the Congress have also leaned towards this brand of socialism, V.P. Singh and Deve Gowda being two of them. Barring Singh, all the others are sectarian, regional leaders with their support base chiefly confined to their respective castes. They also provide an alternative for Muslims who don’t want to support the Congress but do not know where to go.

Over the years, a whole rash of parties, all with Janata, or Dal or Samajwadi in their names, has cropped up, many of them splinters from a bigger group. Ego battles rather than ideological differences have resulted in splits. Like all other parties, the socialists have not remained immune from corruption scandals, but they have left their old Lohiate moorings far behind, except for the anti-English plank, most loudly articulated by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav. And every now and then they wake up to the idea of creating a force that is equidistance from the Congress and the BJP.

We are seeing one more manifestation of that urge. Declaring their intention to bury their differences and, presumably, also submerging their egos, they have decided to form a new party, possibly to be called the Samajwadi Janata Party. If this comes about, it may not become a national force so soon, but, as was seen in Bihar in the last byelections, it can certainly stand up to the BJP.

History shows that previous attempts to forge such friendships and alliances among socialists do not last — it is in their very nature to be fractious and disruptive. Political compulsions, however, may force them to be more pragmatic and realistic. If they remain apart, they could be bulldozed by the BJP juggernaut. If they get into a tactical alliance with the Congress, they will become even more formidable. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah will be eyeing this new formation warily.