With a crucial election around the corner, the BJP will issue a ‘‘vision document’’ promising the temple alongside the more sanitised NDA manifesto, and a week after ‘‘ghar wapasi’’ Kalyan Singh is handed charge of the BJP campaign in Uttar Pradesh. It does seem like the old days are here again in the BJP. In a time when public memory is short and political memory shorter still and when it seems so exhausting to keep track of the games politicians will play, pause, just a moment, to look at the hectic, and fascinating, career of Kalyan Singh.He was the chief minister with the mostest when he was ousted by the BJP high command and replaced by Ram Prakash Gupta (who?). Kalyan Singh lorded over a mammoth 90-member ministry brimming with defectors and alleged criminals. He was the Lodh leader with mass appeal, whose USP lay in a unique brand of subaltern Hindutva, the man who presided over the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Many suspected he was the BJP in UP — he, certainly, seemed convinced of it. That was until things started to go wrong. The BJP’s lucky talisman was suspended for ‘‘anti-party activities’’, a euphemism for his bitter falling out with Atal Bihari Vajpayee. After his ouster, Kalyan Singh went to Ayodhya and dramatically declared that while the PM had sacrificed Ram for office, he had done the reverse. This was taken to mean the Hindu Mahanayak was still in business. But that impression was not to last. Kalyan did a U-turn. I was betrayed, he said, by VHP and RSS leaders over the demolition. I am prepared, he said, to testify against them. He never did, but the writing was on the wall: pan-Hindu leader had ducked out of sight, Singh was now backward caste chieftain, all the better to attract non-BJP political friends and allies. Like Mulayam Singh Yadav. A beautiful relationship was forged: the hero of Ayodhya danced with the Muslim messiah. Till the excitement began to pale and Kalyan did not want to play second fiddle to the SP supremo anymore.Nearly four years later, Kalyan is back ‘‘home’’, after being briefly courted by the Congress and after vehemently dubbing the ‘‘foreign origins’’ issue as a non-issue. Today, the BJP hopes he will adroitly straddle the Mandal and Kamandal planks once again and work the same electoral magic that delivered the party its highest ever tally in UP. Memory is a burden, truly, and politicians must travel light.
