Behind Jai Ram Thakur's appointment as Himachal CM is a story of betrayals and loyalties
Such is the power of betrayal in politics that one man aspires and another achieves. As the chants of Jai Shri Ram reverberated in the air of Mandi town, a rather long-drawn saga of the politics of this small hill state, came to an end.
It started long back in 1967, when Jai Ram Thakur, youngest of the five children of a mason, Jethu Ram, and his wife Briku Devi, was barely a two-year-old infant. Karam Singh from Mandi, a giant of Himachal politics then, was challenging the first chief minister of the hill state, Yashwant Singh Parmar, for the top position.
Parmar, in order to cut to size Karam Singh, propped up a young Sukh Ram from Mandi. Slowly, Karam Singh went into obscurity. Since then, Himachal has been divided into two political zones - lower Himachal, bordering Punjab and topographically plain upper Himachal, the highland, which is a mountainous region. The politics in lower Himachal was centred around the Kangra district, while the upper Himachal politics centred around the state capital, Shimla. Mandi, though, was the equator of the state's geography, its leaders had to side with one zone of the political schism. Mostly, they sided with upper Himachal.
By 1993, the Parmar-propped-up Mandi man - Sukh Ram - had become a force to reckon with. With proximity to then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, he was calling the shots and wanted to become the chief minister.
However, his own political friends from Mandi, deserted him just when he needed them the most. The first to ditch him were Kaul Singh and then Rangila Ram Rao. Interestingly, that very year 28-year-old Jai Ram Thakur made his political debut. He lost his first Assembly election from Chachiot by a margin of 800 votes.
Jai Ram's younger sister, Anu Thakur, an anganwadi worker, recalls, "Our father sat him down after his defeat and requested that he took up farming instead. Politics was a loaded term then. Our father didn't know where bhaiya was headed." However, Jai Ram saw in this defeat an imminent win five years later. Subsequently, he won five consecutive elections. On the other hand, the ageing Sukh Ram could never match Virbhadra Singh and remained on the sidelines till 2000. After his exit, another Congressman from Drang constituency in Mandi, Kaul Singh, lobbied to become the chief minister in 2002 and 2012 but proved to be no match to Virbhadra Singh. All this while, Jai Ram was silently climbing the political ladder. He became the state BJP president in 2009 and held that position till 2013.
The bigger story is, if three giants of Mandi could not make it, how could a shy, honest and utterly straightforward Jai Ram survive this quagmire and come out on top? The answer defies logic and can only be understood if seen through the prism of the age-old saying, "Such is the betrayal of politics, that one man aspires and another achieves."
The Himachal BJP saw the same kind of betrayal that the Congress was used to. And it can be traced back to 1998 when BJP saw Prem Kumar Dhumal sizing up to veteran Shanta Kumar. Dhumal became the chief minister for the first time and Shanta was almost relegated to "a-nobody" in Himachal politics till the afternoon of December 18, 2017. Dhumal lost to a certain Rajinder Rana and Shanta wholeheartedly backed a comparatively younger, 52-year-old Jai Ram for the coveted seat, giving wings to the dreams of Jai Ram, who never thought he would come this far. In fact, Jai Ram's name was proposed by Dhumal and seconded by JP Nadda, as the veteran Shanta smiled at the turn of events.
On Sunday, when the slogans Jai Shri Ram filled the air near Ardhnarishwar temple, which shares its boundary wall with Sukh Ram's house, the grand old man of Himachal politics, seemingly came out of his siesta and looked at the procession with eyes carrying the weight of an unfulfilled dream.
The dream which was first seen 55 years ago by Karam Singh, later by him and Kaul Singh culminated with a whole lot of permutation and combination in politics, out of which emerged Jai Ram Thakur.
Thakur is known to be an utterly honest and straightforward man and comes from a very humble background. He started his dream run by winning a class representative's election in Government College, Mandi.
People recall how during his student days, as an ABVP activist, he used to run the Mamu tea stall near the college. He was respected in the party but was always a shy backbencher, an old photograph is a testimony to it, with CM Dhumal surrounded by his men but Jai Ram standing unconcerned in the background, seemingly a deliberate withdrawal.
So when his name came up, people thought he had no chance in front of old wily men of politics - JP Nadda was a front runner even before the elections were announced and Dhumal joined the race midway. After the results started coming in, more contenders emerged. Two from district Mandi were a deliberate prop-up, Ajay Jamwal and Mohinder Singh, to cut Jai Ram to size. But it was Jai Ram who prevailed in the end.
Jai Ram's becoming chief minister means that this small hill state has a third epicentre of politics called Mandi, a district which was more or less a Congress stronghold and used to mostly align with Shimla, which indirectly meant Virbhadra or Congress. Jai Ram's becoming a chief minister means that now Mandi is not just the geographical but also the political equator of state politics - a third force, right in the middle of the two seismic zones of Pahari politics.