By getting rid of Amar Singh, Mulayam hopes to get the Muslims back to the SP

All those who believe that Indian politics is not about ideology or any kind of genuine belief will find

their views confirmed by the drama that is currently taking place in the Samajwadi Party. Ram Gopal Yadav, the member of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family who is

most often blamed for the sacking of Amar Singh, has declared that the former General Secretary is `garbage’.

 

   A hurt Amar Singh has responded that, if this is so, then why was Mulayam Singh Yadav spending his time hanging around with garbage for 14 years?

 

   He has a point but Amar Singh himself has been no slouch when it comes to making expedient remarks that repudiate the experience of the last decade. Now that he has been booted out of the party, Amar Singh has suddenly discovered that it is casteist, undemocratic and opposed to progress.

 

   So why is Amar Singh calling the SP names? Why does Mulayam’s family regard him as a pile of old rubbish?

 

   It’s a complicated story but, in essence, it has to do with the relationship between Mulayam and Amar Singh and its breakdown.

 

    Anyone who knew Mulayam in the old days will tell you that he was a quiet, comparatively primitive caste leader with a hatred of English, modern civilization and anybody who was smarter than him. And Amar Singh, in that era, was the sort of chap who looked for famous or powerful people to whom he could offer loyalty. His list of mentors is a long one and it includes Subrata Mukherjee, Madhav Rao Scindia, H.D. Deve Gowda, the Birlas, the Sahara group etc.

 

   The success of the Mulayam-Amar Singh relationship depended on how much Mulayam wanted to play Ram and whether Amar Singh was content to remain Hanuman. In the early days, Mulayam enjoyed having a right-hand man who would appear on English language news channels and defend the SP. Plus, Amar Singh forged a useful connection between the SP and many business houses that benefited the party financially. Further, he also gave the SP – a party which once regarded Bhojpuri cinema as the acme of glamour – access to the biggest names in Bollywood who were content to sing Mulayam’s praises.

 

   At that stage, both men were getting something out of the relationship. For most of his career, Amar Singh has bridled at suggestions that he is a chamcha, a factotum or a liaison man. Those of us who knew him in the old days have lost count of the number of battles he got into with people who suggested that he was no more than a lackey of the rich and powerful. Mulayam gave Amar Singh so much respect that nobody dared call him a chamcha of the SP supremo. For the first time in his life – especially after he had been kicked around by the Congress – Amar Singh had position and stature.

 

   The problems began once the relationship had lasted for over a decade.

 

   It is an unkind thing to say but one problem with Amar Singh is that he bitterly resents being out of the limelight or without any power at all. And yet, over the last few years, that is exactly the situation he found himself in. When the BJP was in power in Delhi, Amar Singh was well-entrenched with its leaders and in a position to get nearly everything he wanted. He miscalculated, like many others, that the BJP would rule for another term and was openly dismissive, and occasionally abusive, of the Congress. When the Congress did, in fact, win, he found himself on the wrong side with few friends in office and the unremitting active hostility of 10 Janpath.

 

"Now that the battle is out in the open, neither side is telling the truth. Lies and abuse have replaced truth as explanations for the split. Ideology does not even enter into it."

   In UP, things also went badly. Amar Singh miscalculated once again. He had believed that the last Assembly election would throw up a hung Assembly and that somehow, the SP would form the government. When Mayawati won an overall majority, that hope was dashed.

 

   Faced with these miscalculations and eager for any kind of stab at power, Amar Singh had become desperate. When Manmohan Singh asked the SP to bail out his government over the nuclear deal, Amar Singh eagerly promised the party’s support and overturned the SP’s anti-nuclear deal stance. He had hoped that Mulayam and he would get ministerships at the center but Sonia Gandhi prevented Manmohan Singh from including the SP leaders in the government.

 

    Mulayam has become as frustrated. His family believes that many of the SP’s miscalculations over the last few years – and especially, the pointless personal abuse of the Gandhis – are a result of Amar Singh’s foolishness. Accordingly, Mulayam’ family members have been telling him that nearly everything that has gone wrong for the SP flows directly from Amar Singh’s actions.

 

   Even so, the relationship could have survived. Except that by now it was less Ram-Hanuman and more Ram-Lakshman and it was not clear which of the two men was Ram. Mulayam’s family says that Amar Singh acted as though he was the supreme leader in the SP and humiliated Mulayam’s relatives. In all the defensive things that Amar Singh has said over the last week, he has not tried too hard to placate Mulayam’s family so it is a fair assumption that he hates them as much as they hate him.

 

    Faced with all this, Mulayam reacted as any politician would: he did a cost-benefit analysis. He recognized that the loss of Amar Singh would be a personal blow to him. The two men have had a close relationship and Mulayam has changed considerably under Amar Singh’s influence.

 

   But he also calculated that asked to choose between Amar Singh and his entire family, he could not possibly choose Amar Singh over his own relatives. Further, Amar Singh’s efforts in the last few years had achieved nothing for the SP. The Muslims, who have long been Mulayam’s support base, deserted the SP in droves because they believed that it was Amar Singh who brought Kalyan Singh to the SP as an ally and because they held Amar Singh responsible for the passage of the nuclear deal. By getting rid of Amar Singh, Mulayam could suggest to the Muslims that he had repented for those misjudgements.

 

   In the circumstances, Amar Singh could not have survived. But he refused to see this, maintaining that Mulayam could not do without him and began believing his own publicity.

 

   Now that the battle is out in the open, neither side is telling the truth. Lies and abuse have replaced truth as explanations for the split. Ideology does not even enter into it.

 

   In the long run, Mulayam will survive. Equally, nobody should make the mistake of writing off Amar Singh. But it is hard to see how he remains a figure of any consequence in the immediate future.

 

(Pic courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)