Saturday, January 9, 2010

Mulayam Singh ji, it’s high time to rethink.

These are the events of year 1991 in the month of Ramazan, but not remember the exact date. There was a ‘iftaar’ at my Delhi residence. I don’t feel word ‘Iftaar Party’ suitable. In this iftaar Rajiv Gandhi was also expected to participate (I would describe reason for closeness with Rajiv ji in few other posts.) but he can’t manage the time that day as National Integration Council meeting on the same day stretched so long and it bared him from participation. In the meeting he praised Mulayam Singh Yadav. He send Congress General Secretary HKL Bhagat , party spokesperson VN Gadgil and Maj.Ved Prakash as their representative in the ‘iftaar’.I am giving these details only because to express Mulayam Singh’s importance in Indian politics. At this time I just had join Sahara India Pariwar and no newspaper was started yet. After few days I had a meeting with Mulayam Singh at Delhi Press Club .He requested me to share a seat in the car and on the way we talked in length. This is the starting of my closeness with Mulayam Singh. I admire him just because of a person who made an effort to safe the Babri mosque and I was very much impressed with his secularism. Probably this was the reason that’s why at the time of UP assembly election ,I very much plan the 1993 assembly election for Samajwadi party Dispute with Shahi Imam, and response to his letters ,I wrote slogans for Mulayam Singh and designed few posters for him also. These were the feelings from my core of the hearts. This was nothing to do with the commercial or any other interest. At this time Mulayam Singh was not in a position to even fund freely for election campaigns .I made the poster and Thakur Amitabh Aadhar bear the printing expenses. Amitabh Aadhar never used Thakur with his name but I am writing it intentionally to express that he was a Thakur.Slogans which were used by Samajwadi Party for 18-1years was
‘Ya Allah
jisne tera ghar toda uska Gurur Tod de,
Ya Allah
jisne tera ghar bachaya uski aabru bacha le

Aur who hai Mulayam Singh Yadav’

And the second slogan which was very close to me was

‘Unka ye nara hai,jo kehte hain kerte hain (BJP)
Aur ye paigham hamara hai,bura kehte hain aur bura kerte hain
Ye Bharat ko sharminda kerte hain’ (SP)

Mulayam singh sweep the elections and formed the government. I was very much satisfied. at this time I thought this person should be the Prime Minister of the country. At this juncture Rajiv Gandhi was became the victim of that unfateful incident. (I used to respect and like him a lot) I told Mulayam Singh that you are not the favourite of muslims in UP only but all over the India. Please go out of this circle and experience how you are being welcomed. For proving my statement right I organized a conference in Hyderabad for him. At this time Amar Singh was in the SP fold and we stayed in the same hotel at Hyderabad. Conference was truly successful.Mulayam was very much happy. My social status or identity within community was not as it is today, but sentiments for welfare of community and interest in politics was very much. That’s why I made contacts in so many cities across India so that I can repeat the same conference in cities like Kolkata , Begluru and Mumbai as organized in Hyderabad. With the passage of time there were so many people who came close to Mulayam Singh and I was distancing from his closeness but warmth within the relationship was maintained there continuously. There was no ill will between us. This relationship broke when Mulayam made Kalyan as his confident. Mulayam Singh might remember the last meeting with me in which we discussed on this issue in length .And for me this meeting was in many ways a deciding day. He was not ready to change his decision ,so I was. During the discussion there came so many chances when my eyes got wet and he also turned sentimental, even I used his wash twice to wipe out tears. These are the memories that I never wrote or shared with anyone, but today I am trying to turn the attention of Mulayam Singh that whatever would be his and Samajwadi party’s future; this is the time of introspection for him to calculate gain or loss during this period.
After my yesterday’s blog I had a long telephonic conversation with Amar Singh.He called me up from London, and central idea of an hour long conversation was too long that I can not think of pen it down today. This conversation was very much personal but there were few points that I can write at any point of time. At this moment I had a copy of statement of Prof.Ram Gopal Yadav about Amar Singh ‘Amar ne kiya Samajwadi Party ka satyanash ‘and Amar Singh’s Press release which is available on a website’ SP mein koi Kaikeyi Hai’ is in front of me. But I am not going to comment on this today or tomorrow, because I am going to write on my website, blog, Facebook and Twitter. About the ‘impact of changing political scenario on Congress’. Yes, I am not going to write all these thing in my regular column series’ Azad Bharat ka Itihas’, because all these conversation are of personal in nature and my editorial wisdom does not allow me , but there must be some other platforms to express my opinion so let it on website and blog.

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