But Mulayam’s transition from akhara to politics was quite coincidental. It was 1962 and the UP council election campaign had just begun in earnest. Mulayam participated in a wrestling match at Nagla village in Etawah when Nathu Singh, Socialist Party Samyukta candidate from Jaswantnagar, came back to watch the duel. Young Mulayam took down the local pehelwan within minutes with his ‘charkha daav’.
Nathu Singh praises young people wrestler, and Mulayam went out to campaign for him. In the same year (1962), Mulayam won the polls of the KK Mahavidyalaya Student Union of Etawah by a record margin. In 1963, he completed his BTC (Basic Training Certificate – qualified him to teach) from AK College in Shikohabad and was appointed a teacher at Jain Inter College in Karhal – he was also a student in That is from 6th to 12th grade.
Meanwhile, Mulayam’s association with the Socialist Party of Samyukta became stronger. In 1967, Nathu Singh proposed his name as Samyukta candidate from Jaswantnagar council seat. Mulayam finds himself pitted against the politically well-established Lakhan Singh Yadav. But he won and never looked back after this victory. He has been elected to the UP board 10 times and sworn in as UP CM three times.
But his long political journey has been marked by many transitions. From Samyukta, he switched to Bharatiya Kisan Dal in 1974. Three years later, 1977, he won tickets from Charan Singh’s Lok Dal. Then, in 1989, he switched to VP Singh’s Janata Dal, only joining Chandra Shekhar’s Janata Party in 1991. But just a year later he floated his own outfit, the Samajwadi Party.
In 1989, Mulayam became a minister for the first time. He was with Janata Dal at the time. But VP Singh, then Prime Minister, promoted Ajit Singh as prime minister with Mulayam as deputy. Janata Dal won 208 seats and was 5 seats short of the majority in the 425th House of Representatives. Mulayam then announced the formation of a government with the support of the BJP. Voting took place between Janata Dal MLA, and Mulayam won with 5 votes, passing Ajit Singh’s chance.
A year later, in 1990, when the Janata Dal government led by VP Singh fell at the Center following the arrest of BJP chief LK Advani, Mulayam sought support from Congress Chief Rajiv Gandhi and Senior leader of Congress UP ND Tiwari to save his government in the state. However, when Parliament withdrew support from Chandra Shekhar’s government in March 1991, Mulayam also decided to dissolve the Council and face an election.
But he kept Congress secret about this. He drove down to Raj Bhawan at 4 a.m. and handed over a letter requesting the dissolution of the Council. In the election that followed, he sided with Chandra Shekhar to run under the banner of the Janata Party. But the BJP took office that year – they joined UP for the first time. Soon after, Mulayam parted ways with Chandra Shekhar and founded his Samajwadi Party shortly before the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992.
Elections were again held in 1993. This time he ran against Kanshi Ram’s BSP. The destruction of Babri gave him the opportunity to rise as a secular champion. And, after sticking with BSP, he added Dalits to his Islam-Yadav (MY) base. The slogan welcoming this union is: ‘Mile Mulayam, Kanshi Ram, Hawa Mein Ud Gaye Jai Shri Ram’.
Mulayam won against surrendered Chambal dacoit and candidate BJP Tehsildar Singh and became CM for the second time. Then, in 1994, he withdrew all lawsuits against the ‘bandit queen’ Phoolan Devi, who was accused in the Behmai massacre. She was released from the prison where she languished for 11 years without trial. Two years later, Phoolan Devi won the Lok Sabha election from Mirzapur seat as an SP candidate. This is considered to be Mulayam’s way of doing ‘social justice’.
The SP-BSP combination worked well for a while, but in 1995 after some SP workers attacked the state guesthouse in Lucknow where Mayawati was staying, BSP withdrew support. Mayawati then formed a government with the support of the BJP.
After three peaceful years, Mulayam happened again, this time in Delhi. In 1998, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government failed with one vote, Sonia Gandhi went to the President with a letter of support from 272 MPs, including 26 MPs from the SP. However, Mulayam suddenly turned the issue of Sonia’s foreign origin and said that his party did not support Sonia as a candidate for Prime Minister.
In 2003, after the BSP and BJP broke up again, Mulayam formed the UP government by technically splitting the BSP and gaining the support of a small group of Parliament.
His total unpredictability was re-emerged in 2012. He held a joint press conference with Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and said that he is ready to support Speaker Lok Sabha Somnath Chatterjee or former President APJ Abdul Kalam as a presidential candidate. But the very next day after his meeting with Sonia Gandhi (the fallout from 1998 is now a thing of the past), Mulayam quickly announced his support for Pranab Mukherjee as President.
Treachery? Move skewed? Or maybe he is incapable of leaving ‘charkha daav’. The last time the patriarch used it was in 2017. The conflict within the Yadav clan reached its peak. Who will inherit the party? Before anyone knew, Mulayam had dumped his brother Shivpal Yadav and his longtime aide Amar Singh and gave the cloak to his son, Akhilesh Yadav.
