Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, known as “Netaji” and a quintessential dhartiputra (son of the soil), passed away on October 10. He was 82. Mulayam Singh had been battling illness for over two years. He had been undergoing treatment at Medanta hospital in Gurugram since August and was in a critical condition since October 2.
The SP founder was born in a poor farmer family on November 22, 1939, at Saifai in Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah district. A strict administrator who went the extra mile to maintain law and order, he even ordered police firing at kar sevaks in Ayodhya in 1990 but paid a huge political price for his bold decision, although he never regretted it. But for his bold decision, the Babri Masjid might have been demolished in October-November 1990 itself.
After the Babri Masjid demolition, his entire political focus was on preventing the BJP from coming to power in Uttar Pradesh. To ensure this he tried the most unconventional and unimaginable path at that time: joining hands with the BSP, his social and political opponent, after deserting the V.P. Singh-led Janata Dal. Defying all political analysts, he defeated the BJP which looked set to regain power in the 1993 Assembly election in the wake of the demolition. Once ousted, the BJP could not capture power in UP for a decade, even after trying various arrangements with the BSP at various stages. It was only in 2017, when the nation was riding the Narendra Modi wave, that BJP came back to power in UP.
Mulayam Singh will always be remembered for standing up for the rights of Muslims, even at the cost of being called “maulana Mulayam”. He cut his teeth in politics as a follower of Ram Manohar Lohia’s socialist ideology. He won his first election from Jaswant Nagar in 1967 when he was barely 28. From then on, he never looked back. He bloomed under the guidance of Charan Singh but he fell out with him after Charan Singh passed on the Lok Dal leadership to his US-returned son, Ajit Singh.
He then joined hands with V.P. Singh and became the State Janata Dal president, before going on to become UP Chief Minister in 1989 with BJP support. When the kar sevaks were fired upon in 1990, the BJP withdrew support but Mulayam’s government survived, with the support of the Congress, a party against which he had campaigned aggressively in 1989.
Mulayam Singh never compromised on his opposition to right-wing communal politics. But he was known to be friendly even with political rivals. Who can forget his last speech in the Lok Sabha before the 2019 general election, when he wished Prime Minister Modi the best and said he wanted to see him back in the top seat.
If there was one thing he regretted, it was his lack of acceptance by the national media as a national leader. He often told this writer that the media in Delhi lampooned him just because he was not proficient in English.
He came within kissing distance of being Prime Minister during the United Front government but was denied this chance by opposition from Lalu Prasad. He regretted this but did not let it come in the way when Lalu Prasad came seeking a matrimonial alliance with Mulayam’s grand-nephew for his youngest daughter. He belonged to the rare breed that believed in keeping the political and personal apart.
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