Lohia’s Ghost

ON 4 DECEMBER, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, HD Deve Gowda, Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav announced that they were joining forces to form a new party, the Samajwadi Janata Dal. Ravi Shankar Prasad of the Bharatiya Janata Party was quick to take a swipe at this reunion of the “Janata Parivar”—parties that claim to have their origins in the beliefs of Ram Manohar Lohia. Pointing to the long history of splits and mergers between these “disciples of Lohia’s ideology,” Prasad said, “they cannot remain together for two-three years and also cannot remain separated for more than a year.” He added, “I have great personal regard for Ram Manohar Lohia for his integrity and commitment to India ... But now naked family ambitions have come to represent his views.”

The barb had more than a little truth to it. Prasad was giving voice to a common perception in which the term “Lohiaite” has become shorthand for the combination of caste politics and personal ambition—an affront to the memory of a man who subscribed to neither.

Yet someone like Prasad, who comes from a political family with roots in the Jana Sangh, would be aware of the threat the new formation could present. The re-emergence of the Janata Parivar is a corollary of Narendra Modi’s unexpectedly large mandate—a sign that as the Congress and the BJP have exchanged roles at the national level, the original Lohiaite motive of opposing the concentration of power in a single party has not disappeared. But though the Janata Parivar parties can act as a unified political force when opposing the dominance of a larger party, their history suggests that they do not stay together long when themselves in power.

Lohia took the lead in opposing the Congress, at both the central and state levels, in 1967—a year which, if we renounce our emphasis on personalities, remains one of the most significant in Indian politics. Indira Gandhi won her first election as leader of the Congress that year, though the party saw its parliamentary majority reduced. The Congress won 283 seats that year—its lowest tally since Independence, but remarkably similar to the number of seats the BJP currently has in parliament.

The real story, though, unfolded in the states. Opposition parties formed state governments in Punjab, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Kerala. As internal dissent arose in the Congress, the party’s governments in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh also fell. By mid year, Lohia’s initiative had resulted in a majority of Indian states being ruled by non-Congress governments.

But the fall of these coalitions was as spectacular as their ascension. In Bihar, the Jana Kranti Dal came to power in March 1967, but fell in less than a year. Charan Singh became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in April 1967, as the head of the Bhartiya Kranti Dal, but his government lasted only until February 1968. In Haryana, Rao Birender Singh headed a coalition that came to power in March 1967 but fell in May. In Madhya Pradesh, the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal, headed by Govind Narayan Singh, was dislodged in March 1969.

By October 1967, Lohia had already become disillusioned with the result of his efforts. Writing what would be among his last pieces before his death at the age of fifty-seven, he observed, “For 20 long years Congress ministers had specialized at this skill of acquiring positions and bettering their fortunes without doing anything at all or at least not much. This evil inheritance fell to the lot of non-Congress ministers. On the whole, they have maintained that tradition. They have sometimes had to carry out measures, which departed somewhat from old established routines. But they did not stretch out their necks too long or too often. To continue in the position that they have come to occupy became their main occupation.”

He continued, “What would be the best form of attack on the present ugliness? We do not think the time has come for a new and effective party to be born. We also do not think the existing parties can singly achieve national re-construction.” Lohia’s utopian suggestion was to focus not on political parties but single-aim organisations that would tackle specific issues, such as irrigation or caste. “Such organisations should be open to everybody,” he wrote. “No particular party should be able to command them.”

This suggestion went nowhere after Lohia’s death, but the minimal aim of displacing the Congress at the centre did survive. In 1977, the Janata Party emerged out of Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement against the Emergency. Much like the state governments formed in 1967, the party lacked ideological cohesion or a policy framework. “Born of the need to keep the Congress out, it was composed largely of socialist parties that traced their beliefs to Lohia, but also included the Bhartiya Jana Sangh, which would become the Bharatiya Janata Party after the breakup of the Janata Party following the latter’s electoral defeat in 1980. The BJP’s choice of name, unaccompanied by any shift in ideology, made it clear that the new organisation’s leaders believed the Janata Party’s legacy mattered electorally.

The pattern was repeated with the VP Singh-led Janata Dal, formed in 1988, which, again hoping to keep the Congress out, fought the 1989 election under an electoral understanding with the BJP, with both parties agreeing not to contest against each other. The years that followed saw the BJP gain enough ground, on the strength of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, to become a significant contender for power at the centre. The Congress’s power, meanwhile, was sufficiently eroded that, in the years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the Janata Dal had no qualms about forming a government at the centre with its support—though Congress machinations saw HD Deve Gowda replaced as prime minister by IK Gujral in less than a year. By 1999, the Janata Dal was pulled in different directions by the antipathy of its various constituents to either the Congress or the BJP, and splintered. Some factions, such as the JD(U), supported the BJP, and others, such as Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party, struck out on their own in an uneasy but cooperative relationship with the Congress.

Through the late 1960s and the 1970s, the strategy and aim of the Janata parties had been clear: the Congress was the enemy and had to be defeated, even if it meant working with ideologically disparate entities such as the Jana Sangh. But this singular focus gave way to a bipolarity in the 1990s and the first thirteen years of the new century, when the BJP’s intrusion upon the Congress’s earlier monopoly on national power complicated choices.

In some ways, this ambiguity was a product of the clear, if limited, success of Lohia’s initial vision of ousting the Congress. Much of the hard work of combating the Congress apparatus state by state was begun by the various constituents of the Janata Dal, and the national rise of the BJP would not have been possible without them. This is not just the case in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the successors of the Janata Party remain key political players. Even in Gujarat, which seems like a single-party state today, the path for the BJP was cleared by the Janata Dal tenure of Chimanbhai Patel in the early 1990s.

The recent coming together of the Janata Dal constituents points to an end to this era of ambiguity. The Congress no longer matters, and the Lohiaite prescription against it doesn’t apply because it has achieved its end. In many ways, tackling the BJP is easier for this Janata Parivar than taking on the Congress was in the last century: ideologically, aligning with the Congress today is far less problematic than cooperating with the BJP was in the past. Moreover, the Congress is so weakened that it will have to come to the Parivar as a supplicant, as it already has in Bihar.

In this environment, Ravi Shankar Prasad may have been right to point out the ideological vacuity of those who make up the current Parivar when measured against Lohia. But as far as the BJP is concerned, the real threat is political rather than ideological. No one can discount the political resilience of leaders such as Lalu Prasad Yadav or Mulayam Singh Yadav. The Janata Parivar is no replacement for the BJP, but it has the ability to significantly harm the BJP in some states. This strength will be tested in the assembly elections this year in Bihar, and in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh. Even in the short term, the BJP needs to win both these contests to obtain the numbers it needs in the Rajya Sabha to pursue its legislative agenda. In the long term, the BJP should fear the fate that the Janata formations eventually inflicted on the Congress.

In 1967, Lohia bemoaned the fact that as far as challenging the Congress at the centre was concerned, “Even a crippled combination is not in sight, for although such a combination may not be able to achieve anything enduring or spectacular, it will have at least inspired the people with the new faith and hope that the Congress Party is out also at the centre.” If the Congress is replaced by the BJP in that assertion, it very aptly sums up the current predicament for anyone looking to displace the BJP from the centre. But it took only ten years to go from Lohia’s lament to the reality of 1977.

The question then remains: can we even begin to discern a formation that parallels what the Jana Sangh was in 1967, and that will stand to extract long-term benefit from the Janata Parivar’s challenge? It is a difficult one to answer—just as, in 1967, one wouldn’t have been able to foretell the subsequent trajectory of the Jana Sangh. But it seems reasonable to assert that the Congress is not in a comparable position today. Unlike the Jana Sangh, which was sustained by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at its weakest moments, the longer the Congress stays out of power the weaker it will become. The politics of patronage that keep it glued to the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty have no potency in the absence of power.

Perhaps even to ask this question is to indulge in wishful thinking. The only thing that can be said, in the absence of a clear answer, is that in the coming years the Janata Parivar is likely to be the most important factor in the country’s opposition politics. It may not have much to offer in terms of a coherent ideology, and it may hold little appeal for those who base their political judgements on the performance of the financial markets, but it does have the political strength to damage the BJP. To echo Lohia, such a combination may not be able to “achieve anything enduring or spectacular,” but it will have at least inspired people with the “faith and hope” that the BJP can be out of power at the centre.