Secularists at war

Laloo Prasad Yadav has something new to flaunt each time he lands in Delhi. Last time, he had a stick with which he threatened to tackle communal forces. This time it’s a weird headgear to signify his reincarnation as the self-appointed leader of a new secular front. He already had Congress President Sitaram Kesri with him and is now wooing BSP chief Kanshi Ram, Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar and Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party leader Ajit Singh. Whether these new friends can compensate Laloo Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal for the loss of old friends like Ramvilas Paswan and the Communists is indeed doubtful. However, it is clear that his secular front will be fighting for the same political space with whatever remains of the United Front. Little does he realise that the only beneficiary of the new political churning would be the Bharatiya Janata Party. The upper castes in Bihar have already bade goodbye to the Congress and desertions by the likes of Jagannath Mishra and Krishna Sahi show that the process is irreversible. The contours of electoral contest in adjoining Uttar Pradesh are equally unclear with BSP leader Mayawati insisting that her party would contest all the 85 seats in the State and BKKP chief Ajit Singh issuing contradictory statements. The BSP and the BKKP leaders have made it clear that any pact with the RJD will be confined to Bihar, where these parties have virtually no presence.

Ironically, Laloo Yadav’s dilemma in Bihar is somewhat similar to that of Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP, whose Samajwadi Party is at loggerheads with the BSP giving a clear edge to the BJP. In the name of fighting communalism, both these leaders are more interested in running each other down because each of them sees himself as a Prime Ministerial candidate. It was the Bihar chieftain’s antipathy towards Mulayam which made him turn to his political adversaries in UP like Ajit Singh and Mayawati. Similarly, Mulayam Singh is bent upon marginalising the RJD in Bihar with the help of his friends in the Janata Dal and the Left. None of the two Yadav leaders can win seats in his rival’s domain, but each of them is capable of inflicting enough damage on the other. If the BJP leaders are smugly watching this Yadav war, no one can blame them.

The game of one-upmanship between these regional satraps claiming to lead the forces of social justice in their states also underlines the limits of caste as a weapon of political mobilisation. The Mandal era which they heralded in Indian politics, no doubt, had great democratising potential but neither Laloo Yadav nor Mulayam Singh tried to pursue seriously the social and economic agenda inherent in the plank. Instead, they became the leaders of the newly emergent rural elite of the upper-middle classes who resorted to anti-communal rhetoric primarily to win the Muslim votes. This has not only alienated sections of non-Yadav backwards from their group but has also given rise to militant Dalitism in the two states. There is little chance that a tie-up with the Congress can arrest this process, specially when the Dalits have already found a vehicle of expression in the BSP in Uttar Pradesh and, to a limited extent, in the Naxalite groups in Bihar.