Dalit Mazdoor Kisan Party. Quite mouthful for a “new” party which is launched on the eve of a general election for the purpose of attracting new voters. But apparently it could not be helped. The Lok Dal – a pretty attractive name which has the additional advantage of being fairly well known in the region where the “new” party would be making a bid for support – had to be rechristened in order to sell the proposition that other “leaders” had not just unilaterally disbanded whatever outfits they had commanded and joined the Lok Dal and that in fact the Lok Dal too had liquidated itself in the great cause of opposition unity whatever that might mean. But it is highly doubtful if this strategy will convince too many people. Indeed, it is likely to prove a handicap for the Lok Dal if its adherents come to believe (read suspect) that the party has changed its character. The Dal’s appeal is by and large limited to certain sections of society in the Hindi-speaking belt and anything that dilutes this appeal can only hurt it.
Chaudhuri Charan Singh takes it amiss and protests if he is described, as he often is, as a Jat leader. The description is also unjust. The Chaudhuri commands a wider constituency. He enjoys a considerable measure of support among what have come to be known as “other backward castes” in UP and Bihar. These are up-and-coming castes and they are “backward” only in the field of education and they do not rank high in the Hindu social hierarchy. Like other up-and-coming groups they tend to be rather aggressive. The Chaudhuri began nursing this constituency while he was still in the Congress and he has continued to do so ever since. That has been his strength and, if one may say so, his weakness. Any attempt to widen the base can, therefore, also erode it. Politics is not quite a game of aggregation, the political arithmetic can work in the reverse. Three plus one can produce two instead of four. Thus it is not quite clear why the Chaudhuri should have gone for this merger.
Principles and policies are not particularly pertinent in the kind of politics under discussion. Nor are past statements and attitudes. So it is not particularly relevant for us to recall that the Chaudhuri accused Mr. HN Bahuguna, who has now joined him in the crusade for democracy and social justice, of being a KGB agent and of being guilty of various other forms of moral turpitude and that Mr. Bahuguna and Mr. Devi Lal, another knight in shining armour in defence of the poor and the downtrodden, have had unpleasant things to say about the Chaudhuri. We recall all this in passing because it reinforces our amazement that being the reasonably shrewd tactician that he is, the Chaudhuri should have jettisoned the alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (the old Jana Sangh), the only other comparably important non-Congress political organisation in the Hindi-speaking region, for the sake of this kind of combination. We are genuinely at a loss to understand the logic behind this move. It would have made some sense, though not all that much, if he had paid this price of breaking with the BJP in order to absorb the whole of the Janata. But once Mr. Chandra Shekhar had outmanoeuvred his “OBC” stalwarts and thereby frustrated the Chaudhuri’s bid, it would, on the face of it, have made better political sense for him to stick to the BJP.
Three inferences suggest themselves. First, the Chaudhuri may not be as shrewd a tactician as many of us think. After all, Mr. Sanjay Gandhi (32 then) tripped him fairly easily in 1979. Mr. Gandhi had to do nothing more than dangle the carrot of prime ministership before him to persuade him to wreck the Janata government and party. Secondly, the Chaudhuri has a genuine aversion towards the BJP and is not able to overcome it. Again, after all, he broke the Janata on the issue of the dual loyalty of its Jana Sangh constituent – its ties with the RSS. It is not for us to say whether the objection was more to the RSS’s alleged anti-Muslim communalism or to its strong base among the trading communities. But that is not particularly pertinent. Finally, the Chaudhuri has a master card up his sleeve which he proposes to play at the appropriate time. Has he not said that the merger does not affect his alliance with the BJP? And in the face of such an authoritative statement does it really matter that Mr. Bahuguna should contradict him and declare that the issue will be decided de novo by the new leadership (we assume collective leadership) of the new party? Quite candidly, we do not know which one of these inferences, if any, is likely to turn out to be valid.