Election in Pincodes: In cradle of Yadav politics, battle for legacy and future

Yadav lingers for a while, looking around at everything that has changed immeasurably through his lifetime; Saifai is like no other town in the Uttar Pradesh hinterland. From the corner of one eye, he can see the air traffic control tower of the Saifai airstrip; in the distance is an international cricket stadium; in another corner is an international hockey stadium, a medical college and an 800-bed multi-speciality hospital, even two international sized swimming pools.

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Elections are approaching quickly — the hamlet of 168,000 people goes to the polls in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 7 – and Yadav, a final-year law student at the Chaudhary Charan Singh Law College in Saifai, is clear that there is only one man to thank for this largesse. “Mainpuri is not about issues. Yahan chunav Netaji ka hai. (This election is for Netaji) He always wins here, he will win again,” Yadav said.

Except, Yadav is speaking notionally. For the “Netaji” that the young man is referring to is Mulayam Singh Yadav; the man who built a political party that became a political behemoth in India’s most populous and politically crucial state; a man who rose to be chief minister of Uttar Pradesh five times and one who left a legacy so strong that his son became chief minister before he turned 40.

But Mulayam Singh Yadav died in October 2022, making May 7 the first time that his pocket borough is going to a general election without his towering presence (except in the WIP memorial). Implicit in the battle for his legacy are two deeper contests – one that regional parties, which once ruled the heartland on the power of their own caste groups, are facing in holding on to their social coalitions in the face of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) onslaught; and two, a more emotional tussle that is playing out among the dominant Yadav community that is caught between its traditional home, the Samajwadi Party, and the national hegemon that is bent on cleaving that vote bloc.

THE MULAYAM BASTION

In Mainpuri, there is a Mulayam Singh Yadav story everywhere.

Eight kilometres away from the memorial in Saifai, at the Jain Inter College in Karhal, chemistry teacher Pawan Singh Yadav’s life has revolved around the same institution. It is here that he studied, here that he found work.

But one of his most memorable days was in 1994, when he was in Class 9. “We were in class, and a faint hum was in the air. In no time, that noise grew into a violent whir. We realised it must be a helicopter and rushed out. It descended on the school grounds, and out came Netaji on a visit to the school. This was the school that he taught in,” Pawan said.

Born in 1939 into a family of farmers, Mulayam Singh Yadav studied at the Saifai primary school first, and then at the Jain Inter College in Karhal from class 6 to 12. “Five years later, he joined the school as a teacher, going on to educate students of class 11 and 12 in civics,” Pawan said, flanked by the school’s vice-principal Hariom Yadav and economics lecturer Rajiv Kumar Jain.

But teaching soon outgrew “Netaji”, and in 1967, even as he continued in his post at the school, Mulayam contested his first assembly election as a Samyukt Socialist Party candidate from Jaswantnagar, one of the five seats that make up the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency.

He won, and never really looked back. He won Jaswantnagar seven times from different socialist outfits — the Bharatiya Lok Dal, Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Janata Dal, Janata Party and Samajwadi Party – and was its lawmaker when he became chief minister. In 1996, he contested the Lok Sabha polls from Mainpuri, and established that as an SP bastion, his party winning every election since then.

In the December 2022 bypoll that was necessitated by his death, Dimple Yadav, Mulayam’s daughter-in-law and Akhilesh’s wife, contested the seat and won. In 2024, she is contesting again.

At the Jain Inter College, the group of three teachers agree. They point to Saifai and Mainpuri’s “prestige”; the 302 kilometre Agra-Lucknow Expressway that looms in the distance; the 1997 and 2015 Saifai Mahotsavs that brought to the erstwhile dusty village a galaxy of Bollywood stars; February 2015, when Mulayam’s camaraderie across the political spectrum was in full evidence, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an attendee at the wedding of Yadav’s grandnephew Tej Pratap Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter Rajlaxmi Yadav.

“Even when Netaji vacated the seat twice, in 2004 and 2014, his nephew Dharmendra Yadav and grand-nephew Tej Pratap Yadav won the seat. The election is always about Netaji, irrespective of who from his family contests. Even when he is no longer here,” said Pawan.

THE CRADLE OF YADAV POLITICS

In many ways, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s ascent, which took him to the pinnacle of Uttar Pradesh and even made him India’s defence minister, was built out of the laboratory of Mainpuri. Political parties estimate that a quarter of the local population are Yadavs, a little less than that are Dalits, Rajputs and Brahmins make up close to another one-fourth, and Muslims are less than 10%.

In the 60s and 70s, the Congress built a fearsome political steamroller that consolidated the Brahmin-Muslim-Dalit groups, but left other backward groups such as the Yadavs out , causing rancour.

Ever an astute politician, Mulayam leveraged this anger, combining it with socialist politics, first inspired by Ram Manohar Lohia and then Chaudhary Charan Singh. He took over the mantle of both the Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Lok Dal, and at a time in the late eighties and early nineties when two great waves of North Indian politics — Mandal and Mandir — collided, cemented an electoral alliance between the Muslims, backward communities and Yadavs.

Yadav was many things at once; a socialist who was not always averse to capital; a rustic leader able to build lasting relationships in the power corridors in Delhi; not necessarily the most powerful speaker, but a man with a sharp memory, famously picking people out of fawning crowds to greet them by name.

But over time, there emerged limits to Yadav politics, particularly over the last decade dominated by a resurgent BJP.

His caste calculus had a ceiling and the SP soon found itself unable to bring in fresh voters, with the BJP eating away at the former’s electoral base.

Importantly, in the building of his political legacy, he relied primarily on family. When Yadav left Jaswantnagar assembly seat, his brother Shivpal Singh Yadav took over. Ram Gopal Yadav, his cousin, rose to prominence. Akhilesh Yadav first fought from Kannauj Lok Sabha in 2000, and repeated his victory twice, before becoming CM in 2012. Nephews Dharmendra Yadav and Akshaya Yadav became MPs, as did daughter-in-law Dimple and grandnephew Tej Pratap Yadav. Even in 2024, five Yadavs are in the fray — Dimple, Akhilesh, Dharmendra, Akshaya and Aditya (Shivpal’s son).

Family intrigue seemed to dominate large parts of the conversation around the SP, even in the decade preceding Mulayam’s death. In 2016, after a rather public battle for control of the party, Shivpal broke away and formed the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia. After many twists and turns, he returned uneasily to the SP fold in 2022 after Mulayam’s death when Dimple was named the candidate for the Mainpuri bypoll.

It is this family intrigue that has lent itself to one of the most common criticisms of the SP on the ground. “Even if not now, the BJP will defeat the monopoly of the Yadav family and the BJP is working hard for that. Imagine, the party that calls itself the party of Yadavs fielded five Yadavs in this polls. And all those five Yadavs are from that single family. They could not find any other Yadav anywhere,” said Raju Shakya, a kirana shop owner in Mainpuri town.

THE BJP CHALLENGE

Yet, Mainpuri is a challenge for the BJP, even when it is the dominant force in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP may have swept the Lok Sabha elections in both 2014 and 2019 but it never won Mainpuri. There have been four Lok Sabha elections in the last decade, including two bypolls, but each time the SP has won over 50% of the vote, crossing 60% of all votes polled on two occasions.

There were however some green shoots in the 2022 assembly campaign. Of the five assembly segments, the BJP won two — Mainpuri and Bhongaon — with the SP winning the other three.

BJP leaders on the ground say that there are two central tenets to their challenge to the SP in 2024. The first, a common refrain throughout the country, is built on the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Our candidate is kamal ka phool(the BJP election symbol). This is Modiji’s election for the third term as PM and his guarantees are what people are supporting. The BJP will win the seat this time,” said Rahul Chaturvedi, the BJP district president.

The second is their candidate, Jaiveer Singh, the man who won the Mainpuri assembly seat, and was rewarded with the position of Uttar Pradesh tourism minister.

Singh has built a political identity of his own in Mainpuri, rising from being block chief to legislator. And his pitch, ironically, is that the Yadavs only show up during elections, while he is a “local.”

“There is always a first time and you’ll witness history this time. I’m confident I will win because unlike the Yadav family, who only show up during the elections, I am a local and am known by the people there. I have the development work and the schemes of the centre, which will translate into votes. Previously most block chief or MLAs hailed from the Yadav clan. But I pierced the stronghold, won the block elections, won the MLA elections, and will now win this too,” Singh said.

But the battle for the prestigious seat also holds cues for another critical dynamic that will shape the elections in the heartland, the political allegiances of the Yadav community. The BJP has tasted considerable success in UP by co-opting a bouquet of smaller non-dominant groups and pitting them against the dominance of groups such as the Yadavs. Now, it is also targeting the Yadavs themselves.

To underline this push, the party has highlighted the fact that a Yadav is now chief minister of BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, and chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Union home minister Amit Shah are addressing multiple rallies in an area where once every Lok Sabha election was considered a virtual walkover for the SP.

“We have been campaigning in Mainpuri and we know that there are no opposition citadels left anywhere. In 2022, we won two of the five assembly segments. In 2019, SP’s vote share dropped significantly even when respected Mulayam ji contested. This time the SP will know where it stands,” deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said.

But making inroads is not easy. Ram Mukesh Yadav, a 53-year-old teacher at Dr Ram Manohar Inter College in Etawah is unmoved.

“This is the first time the battle for Mainpuri is turning interesting as the BJP is not in any mood to give a walkover to the SP. But I will still vote for the SP because my loyalties are with the Saifai family. Had I been a voter in any other constituency, I could have thought about other choices , but not here,” he said.

For the SP, easily the most strident opposition to the BJP in the state, it is an existential battle – to not only hold on to its core voter but also woo other communities back into its fold. And it’s a battle that it must wage without its master grappler.

As the sun fades over the fields in Mainpuri, four young farmers have finished work for the day, and are playing Ludo on their phones. In 28-year-old Vipin Kumar’s mind, there is a clear demarcation about voting issues that prevail in India, and in Mainpuri. There is some doubt about the first. He says the BJP government has failed on government jobs, but says in close to the same breadth that there has been a reduction in gunda-gardi (hooliganism). For his home seat, however, the choice is clear. “In Mainpuri, there are no issues. The politics here is all about the family, and their caste,” Kumar said.

“And Netaji.”