Sharad Yadav
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
A brief biography
Sheezan Nezami, January 13, 2023: The Times of India
Patna : Veteran socialist and former Union minister Sharad Yadav broke into politics in 1974 when he pulled off an upset in the byelection to the Jabalpur Lok Sabha seat as the joint opposition candidate. His victory in the election, held against the backdrop of spiralling protests against the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government, was as much an embarrassment for the then PM as it was a fillip for Jayaprakash’s effort to bring opposition parties together against Congress.
Yadav would go on to make his mark as a powerful orator and retain Jabalpur in 1977, only to lose it in the next election — a setback thatforced him to explore options outside his home state and brought him first to UP and, finally, to Bihar, which was to become his political home. He was a member of the Union cabinets of V P Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Although pushed to the margins in his twilight years, Yadav played an important role in shaping politics during the 1980s and the 90s.
He played an important role in the formation of Janata Dal in the 1980s to successfully take on Congress in the 1989 Lok Sabha polls and was among the key players who prevailed on the then PM V P Singh to implement the Mandal Commission report. He also organised the OBC resistance to the proposal to introduce 33% reservation for women, dismissing the demand as a conspiracy of the upper caste elite.
Although counted among the leading OBC lights who turned their version of quota-centric “social justice” and hardline secularism into one of the key themes of contemporary politics, Yadav had a chequered equation with socialists and Mandalites alike.
Mandal
January 14, 2022: The Times of India
The Mandal era in Indian politics consumed by Hindutva and obliterated from public consciousness has been awakened and is visible in small frames in Bihar, the crucible of backward caste empowerment in northern India. Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad’s state is the first to initiate a caste census from January 7 this year which worries the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because if the data on the population of Other Backward Classes (OBC) surpasses the Mandal Commission’s estimate, it could bolster the case for a greatly augmented representation in government educational institutes and jobs and reopen caste fissures uneasily plastered with the Sangh Parivar’s notion of a 'greater Hindu identity'.
Bihar’s education minister Chandrashekhar publicly trashed Tulsidas’ Ramcharitramanas for “spreading hatred” like the Manusmriti and MS Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts , works which were never completely accepted by the OBCs and Dalits.
Then came the news that Sharad Yadav, one of the most active champions of the Mandal Commission’s proposal to grant statutory reservation to the OBCs, passed away on January 12 at 75. Yadav’s death marked the end of a vibrant chapter in socialist politics populated by other protagonists such as Mulayam Singh Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, his peers. Lalu Prasad is ill while Nitish Kumar has all but extinguished his political career with his vacillations.
Friends and foes Yadav was a protégé of Chaudhary Devi Lal, the Jat leader of Haryana, who was the deputy prime minister in the VP Singh and Chandra Shekhar regimes. Lal and Yadav were so close that the 'kisan neta' arranged Yadav’s marriage to Rekha Yadav in 1989. However, with Mandal, the mentor and mentee parted ways forever. When Devi Lal threatened to destabilise the National Front-Left Front (NF-LF) government headed by VP Singh, Yadav claimed that he “advised” the then PM that the only salvation lay in announcing the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations and consolidating the support of the OBCs who formed a significant part of the Janata Dal. Singh was said to be initially reluctant to bite the bait, knowing the ramifications it would have on the delicately poised caste equations in the Hindi heartland and the BJP’s perceptible rise on the back of the Ram temple. However, Yadav reportedly framed the advice as “either you keep me on the Mandal issue or I remain with Devi Lal”.
Yadav stayed with Singh although his assertion that every OBC leader in the NF-LF coalition would stay put fell apart when Mulayam cast his lot with Chandra Shekhar and his Samajwadi Janata Party to keep his Uttar Pradesh government which was reduced to a minority and propped up by the Congress.
Yadav’s track illustrated two enduring political maxims: there are no permanent friends or foes and self-interest is supreme to a politician’s survival and durability.
Political journey
The guardians and friends he nurtured were chosen by the clout they exercised at a point in history. Madhya Pradesh was his family home. He was born in Babai, Hoshangabad and completed his engineering studies from Jabalpur University. He acquired the reputation of being a feisty student union leader and plunged himself in the anti-Emergency movement under Jayaprakash Narayan’s tutelage.
JP fielded Yadav in a Lok Sabha by-poll from Jabalpur in 1974 which he won against a Congress candidate. His victory was recorded as a high point in the Opposition’s fight against the Emergency. He won from Jabalpur again in 1977 but lost in 1980. Threatened by political oblivion—all through his political life, he never built his own base—he warmed up to Mulayam, another rising socialist leader, who was then in the Lok Dal, got a Rajya Sabha berth and was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1989 from UP’s Badaun with Mulayam’s help. It wasn’t before long that Yadav fell out with Mulayam, courted a more successful Lalu Prasad and with his backing, won the Yadav-dominated Madhepura seat in Bihar.
Indeed, Yadav’s benefactors spanned the socialist gamut from JP, Devi Lal and Mulayam to Lalu, George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar. Unlike these leaders, he lacked a mass following and an aura but always registered a powerful presence in national politics when the Third Front came into play.
Fall of the socialist
It is famously said of the socialists that they cannot cohabit for long but can’t stay from one another for eternity. The progenitors of the Socialists are a pale shadow of their legendary fathers. Tejashwi Yadav is perhaps the only one to display his father Lalu Prasad’s spark. Akhilesh Yadav is visibly lost in Hindutva-swamped UP while Chirag Paswan, Ram Vilas Paswan’s heir, doesn’t seem to belong anywhere in Bihar. The politics of Dushyant Chautala, Chaudhary Jayant Singh and HD Kumaraswamy exist in bits and pieces without adding up to a whole. Yadav’s death after an illness is a throwback to the Mandal chapter that irrevocably changed the character of heartland politics.
There were disconcerting aspects to Yadav’s politics. While his remark that the Women’s Reservation Bill would only help the bobbed hair and stylish (barkati-parkati) elite women if it was passed mirrored the concealed feelings of several male MPs, he exhibited a misogynistic streak too often to be dismissed as a freak. The fears over upper caste/class women populating Parliament through the women’s bill were shared by OBC and Dalit women across the board so maybe there was a point in what Yadav said.
But when he commented on the colour of a woman politician’s skin in 2015 and asked BJP leader Vasundhara Raje in 2018 to pull out of the Rajasthan elections because she had “put on weight”, he was justifiably slammed for being distasteful and gender hostile.
It was ironic that Yadav fought the Emergency but when he wanted to launch his daughter Subhashini Rao in politics, he used the Congress as the platform. She fought the 2020 Bihar elections on a Congress ticket with Lalu’s help but lost.
By then, Yadav had run out of steam. Lalu graciously agreed to the merger of the Loktantrik Janata Dal (which Yadav floated after falling out with Nitish and leaving the Janata Dal-United) with the Rashtriya Janata Dal but drew the line there. He did not oblige him with a Rajya Sabha seat, aware that he brought nothing to the table.
One of Yadav’s phrases which frequently figured in his conversations with journalists was, “Aur phir main ne uska poonch kaat diya” [And then I snipped his tail]. The derisive laugh that followed was meant to signify the alacrity with which he put down his more worthy socialist contemporaries. They indulged him for the better part of his career but Lalu, who he let down on more than one occasion, ensured Yadav did not die a lonely man.
