By Sushil Kutty
People living outside Uttar Pradesh did not know that Jayaprakash Narayan, who countered Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian streak with mass appeal, has a place in Lucknow to remember him by – the Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC). But it remains an incomplete monument and certain shades of politicians are not welcome to the compound. Among them Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav, who is adept at scaling iron gates!
Like the saying goes “ek mian mei doh talwar nahi…”, Lucknow is also not big enough for both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Especially, when the BJP and the Samajwadi Party are fighting each other for the 10 bypolls in the state, dates for which could be announced any day.
Believe it or not, Jayaprakash Narayan too has a role to play in the 10 bypolls because he was socialist through and through, the same like what Akhilesh Yadav claims to be, except that ‘JP’ would have been the last socialist to start a political dynasty of his own.
But ‘JP’ didn’t fight Indira Gandhi because she was a symbol of dynastic rule, ‘JP’ took on Indira because of the authoritarian streak in ‘Mrs Gandhi’. The epic confrontation between the two is a piece of history nobody of the time will ever forget. Nearly 50 years later, socialists are once again up against a new breed of alleged tin-pot dictators.
The Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav brand of socialism is about “dynasty parmo-dharma’. UP’s Yadav dynasty lacks only a Prime Minister in their ranks to stand tall with the Gandhi family dynasty. ‘JP’ would have fought both dynasties tooth and nail if he had lived longer. But he passed away and in 2016 socialist Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav started building the Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC).
Work at the JPNIC, however, came to a standstill in 2017 when the Samajwadi Party lost the assembly elections and Yogi Adityanath replaced Akhilesh Yadav. Then, CM Adityanath put a hold on the JPNIC and Jayaprakash Narayan once again became a victim of authoritarianism.
To Akhilesh Yadav JPNIC remained unfinished business. Thursday was JP’s birth anniversary and the Yogi knew ‘Tipu’ would make it a point to call on ‘JP’ at JPNIC. This, because in 2023, too, Akhilesh Yadav had climbed the iron gate of JPNIC to gain access to the compound to garland ‘JP’.
It was impossible that Akhilesh would forget JP’s birthday in 2024. The only glitch, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had also not forgotten Akhilesh Yadav’s daredevilry of the previous year! So, the alleged tin-pot dictator erected a wall of tin-sheets around the JPNIC compound to stop Akhilesh Yadav from making a political statement.
A video of Akhilesh Yadav confronted by a high wall of tin-sheets has been doing the rounds since Thursday midnight. There were also classic signs of a “massive showdown” on Friday — pictures of Samajwadi Party workers being dragged and detained. Anything for the 10 UP bypolls, right?
Akhilesh Yadav is no novice in the game of politics. To achieve the target he will scale not only iron gates but also tin-sheet walls. But these are higher than the steel barricades on the southern borders of the United States with Mexico. The Yogi government called the SP leader’s peak performance “childish” and labelled him a “fused transformer.”
Stopped at the JPNIC gate, Akhilesh Yadav and Samajwadi Party workers climbed barricades set up outside Akhilesh’s home to protest against the tin-sheets. Samajwadi Party flags and hand-held posters of Jayaprakash Narayan made up the rest of the protest. Akhilesh Yadav also garlanded a ‘JP’ statue installed outside his home.
But it wasn’t JP’s birth anniversary that made Akhilesh climb barricades. His goal remains removing the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, which requires the withdrawal of support to the Modi government, which in turn requires Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to change sides.
Akhilesh Yadav believes Nitish Kumar can be convinced because the Bihar Chief Minister is a product of the JP movement, a socialist! So, one socialist to another, Akhilesh Yadav reached out to Nitish Kumar: “Many of the socialists are in the government and helping the government to continue. Nitish Kumar emerged from Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement. This is a chance for Nitish Kumar to withdraw support from the government, which is not allowing the socialists to pay tribute to Jayaprakash Narayan on his birth anniversary.”
Akhilesh Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath government of hiding “something” behind the tin-sheets. “This JPNIC is the museum of socialists and has the statue of Jayaprakash Narayan. There are things inside on how we can understand socialism,” he said. “What is the government hiding by erecting these tin sheets? Is it possible that they are getting ready to sell it, or want to give it to someone?”
Will socialist Nitish Kumar join hands with socialist Akhilesh Yadav to bring down Modi and his capitalist cronies? Akhilesh Yadav asked a painter to paint ‘Samajwadi Party Zindabad’ on the tin-sheets. Now, it is up to Nitish Kumar to see the writing on the tin-sheets for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to see the writing on the Wall! (IPA
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