Jayant Choudhary: The RLD leader emerges from the shadows

Yeh Sarkar nikammi hai Yeh Sarkar badalni hai Chunav ke baad Sarkar hilnee hai

As the leader exhorted his audience to shout slogans promising that it was just a matter of time before the incompetent government was toppled, one could sense there was something electrifying in the air. It was the last day of campaigning for the Kairana byelection for the Lok Sabha; and the Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Jayant Choudhary, grandson of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh and son of Jat leader and former union minister Ajit Singh, was addressing one of the last election rallies at Shamli.

Many of the Dalits present in the gathering confessed that this was the first time they had heard a Jat leader articulate the anguish of Dalits.

“What kind of a government allows a fight between two individuals to snowball into a fight between two communities,” the leader wondered aloud.

“Which Government allows its District Magistrate to tell the court that he cannot ensure safety and security to a groom if he rode a mare to his wedding,” he asked. Simple, straightforward questions that agitated people were being repeated by a political leader and that was enough to floor his audience. Somewhere in that speech was a lesson for all political leaders. Barely 39 years old and educated abroad (London School of Economics), people expected him to contest the by-election as the RLD candidate. But rather than fight for a one-year term in the Lok Sabha, he opted to field a candidate from the Muslim community, Tabassum Hasan.

“Elections will no longer be contested on the basis of Hindus and Muslims,” asserted the young leader. The glass on his SUV’s window would remain rolled down. He would not use the car AC, sometimes deciding to jump on a motorcycle, open jeep or a tractor to reach the villages. The byelection was also witness to the RLD leader’s growing political maturity. He reached out to the RLD candidate’s brother-in-law who had filed his nomination as a rebel, and persuaded him to withdraw. Influential political families of Masoods and Yashpal in Saharanpur were also placated by him. Above all, he single-handedly took on the combined might of 16 Jat MLAs, eight MLAs and four MPs including Union Minister Satyapal Singh, who were fielded by the BJP to campaign.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath also campaigned for the BJP and mocked Chaudhary for begging for support from door to door. Increasingly familiar BJP strategies at communalising the discourse also boomeranged. There would be celebrations in Pakistan if Tabassum Hasan won, a BJP leader declared. A portrait of M.A. Jinnah adorning the Students’ Union hall since 1938 at the Aligarh Muslim University was dragged into the electoral discourse. In the end, however, it was Chaudhary’s strategy of harping on the sugarcane (Ganna) farmers and their plight which trumped the Jinnah controversy.