Three-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and former Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav passed away at a Gurugram hospital on October 10 morning after a prolonged illness. He was 82.
Popularly known as Netaji, Yadav was one of the tallest socialist leaders of the country with unquestionable secular credentials.
A wrestler in his youth, Yadav would often surprise his opponents with unexpected moves in the ring. The ability to stun his friends and foes equally with sudden somersaults continued in the political arena as well.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi is among those who had a taste of Yadav’s medicine right at the beginning of her political career.
After the fall of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on April 17, 1999 by just one vote, Gandhi met the then President KR Narayanan to stake claim to form the next government with the support of Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP).
But Yadav backed off at the last minute raking up Gandhi’s foreign origin. This left Gandhi shell-shocked for she was overconfident of forming the government. Her famous quote “We have 272 and more are coming” at the Rashtrapati Bhavan after meeting the President is remembered even today.
Gandhi and her party never trusted Yadav since then though he did bail out the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the 2008 trust vote that the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had sought after the Left parties withdrew their support to his government over the India-US nuclear deal.
For Yadav, there were no permanent friends or enemies in politics. He tied up with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Kanshi Ram in the 1993 assembly elections to keep a resurgent BJP out of power in the country’s politically important state of Uttar Pradesh. However, the coalition government collapsed within two years after BSP leader Mayawati withdrew support to it. This angered the SP workers who attacked Mayawati when she was holding a party meeting at a guest house in Lucknow on June 2, 1995.
However, the bitter memories of the infamous guest house incident were temporarily buried when the SP and the BSP came together against the BJP in the 2018 by-polls, and then carried it forward in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections before eventually parting ways a few months later.
But Yadav maintained strong secular testimonials. He was derisively called ‘Mulla Mulayam’ for ordering firing on kar sevaks in Ayodhya on October 30, 1990, resulting in the deaths of 28 people. Though he described it as painful, Yadav justified the action, saying it was taken for the unity and integrity of India.
But by his action, Yadav had infused a sense of security among the Muslims under his rule, and they have since remained loyal to his party despite some abrasion due to the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar, where about 60 people were killed and thousands displaced.
It was also Yadav who persuaded then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and BJP leader LK Advani to field APJ Abdul Kalam and not PC Alexander as the NDA’s presidential candidate in 2002. The move flummoxed the Congress.
Yadav came with another shocker just before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Participating in the valedictory speeches in the lower house of Parliament to mark the end of the 16th Lok Sabha, Yadav heaped praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and wished that he returned as the Prime Minister after the elections. The entire Opposition, especially Gandhi who was seated next to Yadav, visibly looked rattled.
Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee too has been the recipient of his ‘charkha daav’, an unexpected move by a wrestler to pin down an opponent.
In 2012, she and Yadav joined hands to project Kalam as their presidential candidate, but the SP chief did a volte face at the last minute to support Congress candidate Pranab Mukherjee.
It is said that Yadav, one of the key players of the Mandal politics in India, was the frontrunner to become the Prime Minister in 1996 after the United Front won the elections, but lost the race to HD Deve Gowda due to the opposition by other OBC (Other Backward Classes) leaders such as Lalu Prasad and Sharad Yadav. He had to be content with the defence ministry portfolio, a post he continued to hold under Inder Kumar Gujral’s regime.
Mulayam Singh Yadav didn’t surprise only his political opponents but his own too. After the SP came back to power in the 2012 elections, he readily agreed to anoint Akhilesh Yadav as the UP Chief Minister. However, four years later in 2016, he shocked everyone by expelling Akhilesh Yadav from the party following a deep rift within his family. The father-son duo later patched up, but poor health kept him out of active politics for the past few years now.
Amidst all his unanticipated moves, Mulayam Singh Yadav remained consistent on one issue throughout his life — that China is a bigger threat to India than Pakistan. Irrespective of the topic being discussed in the Lok Sabha, he would stand up and speak on the threat from China, and call it the biggest enemy of India.
Well, even his staunch political rivals wouldn’t disregard his farsightedness.
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