Can Janata chieftains stop Modi's rath?
The Janata Dal is back. And the men behind this resurrection are Mulayam Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad, HD Deve Gowda, Sharad Yadav and Om Prakash Chautala. Each one of them (except for Sharad Yadav) is a former chief minister of a major state, each one of them reeling under a defeat at the hands of the BJP juggernaut under Narendra Modi.
In what could have been a scene out of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, or more likely Rajkumar Santoshi's China Gate, the dramatis personae of this Janata Parivar 2.0 met at the residence of Mulayam Singh Yadav in New Delhi today. The incarcerated Chautala was represented by his son Abhay, but all the other chieftains were present.
Perhaps the timing of the meeting was also of some symbolic value, falling as it did on the 95th birth anniversary of the late Janata Dal leader Inder Kumar Gujral, the last non-Congress, non-BJP Prime Minister of India.
The leaders are exploring the possibility of merging their respective parties to form one national entity, on the lines of the Janata Party of the 1970s and 1980s and the Janata Dal of the 1990s. Samajwadi Janata Dal is one of the names doing the rounds.
"We have authorised Mulayam-ji to carry out discussions so that all non-Congress and non-BJP parties can be merged together to form a single party," said Nitish.
For now, the parties have decided to work together inside and outside Parliament. They will meet again on December 22 and organise a protest against the Modi government on the black money issue.
Is this formation just a rag-tag bunch of old fogies and has-beens? Or could they emerge as the real opposition to the BJP, especially in the Hindi Heartland.
Strength in Parliament
In the Lok Sabha, the combined strength of these parties is a measly 15. But led by stalwarts like Mulayam and Deve Gowda, they could emerge as the fulcrum of the Opposition to the BJP. In the months to come, Mulayam will have to coordinate Opposition attacks on the Modi government by making common cause with the Congress on one hand, and numerically powerful regional parties like the AIADMK, Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal on the other. He already shares a good rapport with the Left.
The Trinamool Congress will agree to any anti-BJP exercise. The BJD is facing the heat in the chit fund scam so it might also want to counter the BJP. The Left, which just wants to stay relevant, will also play ball.
Contrary to their old fogy image, the Janata formation will have a substantial youth contingent in the form of Dushyant Chautala, Dharmendra Yadav, Dimple Yadav, Akshay Yadav and the new entrant Tej Pratap Yadav. The UK-educated Tej Pratap is Mulayam's grand nephew and his marriage to Lalu's daughter Rajlakshmi last month, paved the way for the coming together of the Janata Parivar.
In the Rajya Sabha, they have a much more substantial presence of 30, largely due to the 15-strong SP brigade from UP and the 12 JD(U) MPs from Bihar. The prominent faces will be Sharad Yadav and Ramgopal Yadav.
Caste calculus
The Modi brand of politics has taken politics out of Parliament and placed it on the streets and in TV studios. Mulayam and Nitish and the other Janata players have understood this. They realise that coordinating Opposition attacks in Parliament is meaningless unless it is backed by protests on the ground and buzz in the media. It is for this reason that the Janata formation has decided that its next step would be an agitation against the Modi's government's failure in bringing back black money. A massive rally, beefed up by busloads from UP and Haryana, is a possibility.
But these parties owe their existence to social engineering and this is something they must never lost sight of if they hope to post a challenge to the BJP. A consolidation of OBCs and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar behind the Janata formation can foil Amit Shah's elaborate plans of unleashing a saffron wave in the Gangetic plains.
Cut back to August this year, Nitish and Lalu fought the by-elections together with the Congress tagging along as well, and the grand alliance managed to win six out of ten seats, wresting two seats from the BJP. Less than a month later, the Samajwadi Party inflicted a major defeat on the BJP by wresting eight seats from the saffron party in the by-elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Central to the BJP's plans in UP and Bihar is grabbing the support of middle castes such as Yadavs, Kurmis and other OBCs under a broader Hindu consolidation. In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and its allies succeeded in weaning away the non-Yadav OBCs in UP and the non-Yadav, non-Kurmi OBCs in Bihar. It was ably assisted by its allies, OBC based parties Apna Dal in UP and Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Samata Party in Bihar. The main challenge for the Janata formation would be to win back this base and prevent a broad Hindu consolidation behind the BJP.
Battle of Parivars: Janata versus Sangh
BJP leaders and Sangh ideologues would both admit that the Congress lost its dominance as the primary national party, the main threat to such a Hindu consolidation in North India has come from the Janata Parivar. The BJP themselves say that their party was formed because of the perfidy of the socialist leaders of the Janata Party. In 1977, the Jana Sangh joined hands with socialist parties like the Bharatiya Lok Dal, Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Socialist Party, Praja Socialist Party Samyukta Socialist Party besides the Swantantra Party and Congress breakaways to form the Janata Party to put up a united fight against Indira Gandhi's Congress. In 1980, socialist leaders like Raj Narain and Madhu Limaye insisted that the Jana Sangh members of the Janata Party give up membership of the RSS or be removed from the Janata Party. With their identity at stake, the RSS members quit the Janata Party to form the BJP.
The BJP again joined hands with the same socialist leaders against Rajiv Gandhi's Congress to support the Vishwanath Pratap Singh's Janata Dal government in 1988. But when VP Singh's government decided to implement the Mandal Commission report, providing reservation for OBCs, the BJP's dreams of a Hindu consolidation. Advani is known to have remarked that he "realised what a dangerous man VP Singh was". To prevent a fragmentation of Hindu society under VP Singh's social engineering, the BJP decided to go full steam on the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation. The biggest enemies of the agitation were again the same Janata figures: Lalu Prasad whose government arrested Advani and Mulayam whose government fired on the karsewaks in Ayodhya.
Why Modi hates the Janata Dal
Rising up the ranks in the Sangh and BJP, Narendra Modi witnessed these "betrayals" by the Janata. In his biography Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, the author Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay refers to Modi's deep dislike for the Janata Dal. In Gujarat, the Janata Dal under Chimanbhai Patel formed a coalition government with the BJP on March 4, 1990.
The coalition broke in October the same year but Patel managed to survive with the help of the Congress. Modi believed that the Janata Dal was an inherently untrustworthy as a party. This in turn shaped his hostile equation with the Janata Dal (United), in particular Nitish Kumar. In 2013 when Kumar said that the JD(U) will walk out of the NDA if Modi is declared as the BJP's PM candidate, Arun Jaitley remarked that it was a repeat of the 1980 dual membership row.
The hatred is mutual. Mulayam and Lalu are old adversaries of the BJP, Nitish and Chautala comparatively newer ones. But given the beleaguered state the Congress is in, the Janata formation might just emerge as the main opposition to the BJP.
The real test for this will come in a year from now: when the BJP and the Janata formation will face-off in the Bihar Assembly elections.