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Fall from grace

In 279 BC, the famous Roman legions were beaten back by a Greek general for the second time in two years. But the victory hadn't come cheap. Surveying the field of Heraclea after the fighting was over, the victor grimly quipped, "Another such victory and we are undone!"

The man was Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and his joke was destined to enter the English language. A 'Pyrrhic victory' is one that comes at so great a cost that it is almost indistinguishable from utter defeat. There are some Indian politicians who will understand precisely how the long-gone king felt. And at the head of the list is that pillar of secularism, Mulayam Singh Yadav.

I remember a meeting during the campaign for the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha in 1996. All the leading lights of the United Front were there. In a moment of utter hyperbole, they described the then defence minister as "the darling of Uttar Pradesh". Today, the darling's chosen candidates have begun to lose their deposits in the same Uttar Pradesh!

In the by-election to the Agra East assembly constituency, the Samajwadi Party candidate came fourth. The BJP won the seat, but the Congress came second by a narrow margin. In fact, the combined votes of the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (which came third) outnumbered those of the BJP. Interestingly, in three previous polls it was the Congress that stood fourth. How did the turnaround in the fortunes of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party take place?

The simple answer is that the minority vote deserted the Samajwadi Party and returned to the Congress. But that simply raises another question: what led the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh to believe that it was Mulayam Singh Yadav and not the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that was the BJP's true opponent?

Ironically, you can blame the late Rajiv Gandhi for that. Up to November 1990, Mulayam Singh Yadav was just another, not particularly well-known, regional chieftain. It was V P Singh who had led the Janata Dal to power; Mulayam Singh Yadav was best known as the man who had boasted that "not even a bird can approach the Babri Masjid" and was then publicly proved wrong. (This was just after L K Advani's famous rath yatra). But then the Janata Dal split and the Uttar Pradesh chief minister prudently aligned with Chandra Shekhar's faction.

The Congress's policy of treating the Samajwadi Party boss with kid gloves continued after Rajiv Gandhi, under P V Narasimha Rao. The last Congress prime minister opted for a Tamil Nadu solution in Uttar Pradesh, allowing a regional party to rule the state in exchange for implicit support at the Centre, all of course in the holy name of "secularism". This policy reached its apogee when the Congress backed the United Front to keep the BJP out of power.

All this went to Mulayam SinghYadav's head. When Sitaram Kesri knocked H D Deve Gowda out of the prime minister's chair, the Samajwadi Party chief entertained thoughts of replacing him with the support of the Left. That didn't work out, but nine months later Yadav did succeed in getting Congress support in another sphere when his party became part of an anti-BJP coalition forged by Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra. (It didn't win anything in the state.)

But the Congress has taken away with one hand what it had given with the other. Blind anti-BJPism led the Samajwadi Party to certify that the Congress was "secular". If that was so, the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh reasoned, there was no reason why they shouldn't back the older party. And the Agra East by-election happened to be the first opportunity to do so.

Where does this leave Mulayam Singh Yadav? His friends in the Congress -- Narasimha Rao, Sitaram Kesri, Sharad Pawar -- are either out of power or out of favour. The Bahujan Samaj Party will prefer the Congress as an ally after that party's recent showing. And Sonia Gandhi has taken back the voters that her husband rashly lent Yadav.

The recent assembly poll proved that BJP voters wouldn't shift allegiance to the Congress; if they couldn't bring themselves to vote for the BJP, then they wouldn't vote at all. But the Samajwadi Party lacks any such firm base. Is this the end of the road for Mulayam Singh Yadav?

"Secularism," meaning anti-BJPism, may have won the day in the assembly polls. (If not in Agra.) But any more such victories will totally destroy the "darling of Uttar Pradesh"!

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T V R Shenoy