NEW DELHI: Sharad Yadav’s convention last week, ‘Sanjhi Virasat’, to preserve the ‘composite culture of India’, was better attended than expected. Interestingly, many opposition leaders who attended the meeting referred to Yadav as the new ‘sutradhar’ (the one who holds the threads) of opposition unity.
Looking at his long-standing experience in public life, understanding of caste politics and of Machiavellian back-room manoeuvres, he is probably best-suited to play that role.
It was Yadav who had nudged V P Singh in 1990 to suggest the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s report, giving 27% reservation to OBCs in government jobs, thereby bringing about a paradigm shift in north Indian politics.
Today, the Opposition is looking at Yadav once again to catalyse a new front to take on Narendra Modi in 2019. It is going to be a long haul.
The BJP has already rubbished Yadav’s convention as an effort by scared men. While there were 16 parties present, none came from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Lalu Yadav, who has otherwise championed Opposition unity, sent a spokesperson. Surprisingly, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was not invited. But the meeting saw new terminologies come to the fore.
For starters, speakers at the convention avoided words such as ‘secularism’ that created a backlash in the past from among a section of Hindus, which had otherwise brought Opposition parties together before.
Second, speakers made a distinction between ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Manuvad’. Grandson of B R Ambedkar and Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar emphasised that their battle was against the imposition of ‘Manuvad’, which the BJP wants to impose, ultimately giving primacy to the upper castes.
Third, and taking this theme forward, Yadav said it was not a question about ‘minorities, but about the majority’, which was made up of Dalits, tribals, the backward classes, all the ‘vanchit’ (deprived classes) “who add up to 80% of the country’s population”. It was about their share in the power set-up. Interestingly, the only picture at the entrance of the convention and inside the hall was that of B R Ambedkar.
Yadav especially lauded Chhotubhai Vasava, the six times JD(U) tribal MLA from Gujarat, who despite allurements, voted for Ahmed Patel in the recent Rajya Sabha elections, his vote ensuring the Congress leader’s victory.
Yadav also applauded the ‘moral fibre’ of the tribals who were taking care of “our jal, jungal, zameen”. Vasava has recently launched his own party with aview to fighting the Gujarat elections in December.
There was also a subtle change in the language used by opposition leaders at the meeting. Ali Anwar, JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP, who has been suspended by Nitish Kumar and was anchoring the meeting, repeatedly referred to CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury as ‘Sita and Ram rolled into one’, and Bihar leader Ramai Ram as a fusion of ‘two Rams’.
Sharad Yadav’s eyes are now set on moving towards Mandal 2.0 to bring together tribals, Dalits, OBCs and minorities, even though he did not mention anything about Muslims. But this is not going to be easy going.
The BJP under Modi and Amit Shah has assiduouslywooed — and won over — large sections of Dalits, tribals, OBCs, extremely backward castes and a section of the poor. The attempt has been to marry caste identity with Hindutva.
The ‘Kamandal versus Mandal’ conundrum of the 1990s, which spawned backward-class leaders like Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Mulayam Singh Yadav — and also led to the rise of the BJP — is now giving way to a ‘Mandal plus Kamandal’ politics pursued by the ‘new BJP’ under Modi-Shah.
Even as many a leader, including the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi, spoke of the need to forge an opposition unity, the real challenge for Sharad Yadav will not just be to get the opposition parties on a common platform but to create one-on-one contests between the NDA and the Opposition in constituency after constituency in states where the Opposition parties have a presence.
The wheel has come full circle for Sharad Yadav personally. He started off as being the United Janata candidate from Jabalpur in 1974, the first test of Opposition unity, which prefaced the popular movements in Bihar and Gujarat, leading to an upsurge led by Jayaprakash Narayan, which had dethroned Indira Gandhi in 1977.
Will he choose to be 2017’s Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the late CPI(M) leader who brought the opposition together time and again? Like Surjeet, it is Yadav’s strength that he has the potential of being the sutradhar without becoming the Opposition’s face, leaving it to popular sentiment — or events — to determine the choice of the leader.
