The insecurity of Mulayam Singh

Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, a central political player in UP who has on occasion played a part at the Centre on account of the respectable numbers of Lok Sabha seats his party frequently picks up from the state, increasingly appears an insecure politician. In recent years, he has gained the reputation of keeping on the right side of those who are ensconced in New Delhi. If earlier it was the Congress-led UPA government, which was strongly supported by the SP out of the blue when a controversy raged on the signing of the India-US civil nuclear agreement, these days Mr Yadav seems to be going out of his way to be solicitous of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP.

Analysts think the Centre finds it easy enough to browbeat SP leaders with the threat of unleashing the CBI against them. Mr Yadav’s one-time reputation as “Maulana Mulayam” — gained in the course of the Babri Masjid demolition — is evidently now firmly in the past as new political equations look to be taking shape. Not long after it appeared that the SP would be in Bihar’s so-called grand alliance that would take on the BJP-led NDA in the state Assembly election, now under way, Mr Yadav’s Lohia-descended party found a less-than-artful way to back out at the last minute, giving the BJP campaign a boost.

Last Monday, Mr Yadav was at it again. On the death anniversary of Ram Manohar Lohia, he held forth on how the stalwart socialist leader and Deendayal Upadhyay, the ideological guru of the RSS-Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJP’s forerunner), were united in their opposition to the Congress. While the history Mr Yadav cites is dead right, the context of that history is entirely inappropriate to what is happening today when Congress has long ceased to be a strong all-India force.

In short, Mr Yadav is cosying up to the BJP when the saffron party is in power at the Centre and many states while the Congress has hit an all-time low. Going a step further, the SP leader has said that he has no differences with the BJP on the question of “patriotism”, “the defence of our borders”, and “on language”. This is craven for a “socialist” of any stripe. Can any Indian or Indian political party be deemed to be not patriotic, or against the idea of defence of our territories? Evidently the SP wants to please the BJP at any cost. The SP and its leaders will do well to bear in mind that such full-throated endorsement has come in the wake of the recent communal event at Dadri which has set off a furore of protests by the country’s writers and creative community.