The Many Ebb & Flow In Kalyan Singh's Life

An epoch of radicalization and polarization in India's political history ended with the demise of 89-years-old Kalyan Singh "Babuji" on 21 August 2021; a recherché species among contemporary politicians, the contentious Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the iconoclast of the BJP, and an unabashed messiah of Hindu nationalism, i.e., Hindutva, in the late 1980s and then in the 1990s during the apogee of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the first subaltern movement that evinced the egalitarian dispensation of the often-disaggregated Hindu society.

Kalyan Singh was born and bred in Atrauli, United Provinces (modern-day Uttar Pradesh), in the second-last decade of British India on 5th of January, 1932 in the agriculturist Lodhi community, who claim to be "Lodhi-Rajputs", albeit categorized as OBCs in the present-time caste system of India. He joined the Brahmin-dominated Hindu nationalist organization RSS on the eve of Independence as a schoolchild. This rookie, under the tutelage of BJS veterans Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya and Nanaji Deshmukh, was elected to the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Legislative Assembly for the first time in 1967 from his hometown Assembly constituency of Atrauli as a BJS candidate, the same year as the Socialist Party Young Turk Mulayam Singh Yadav. Singh retained the constituency 10 times with the 1980 Assembly elections being the only anomalous one when he was trounced by Anwar Khan of the INC. He had a prepossessing persona and was a proficient demagogue. Gradually rising through the echelons of the Party (now, the BJP), he was made Leader of the Opposition in the UP Assembly in the turbulent year of 1989.

Amidst the pinnacle of the Ram Temple movement, the BJP won the 1991 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in an indubitable polarised atmosphere. The BJP heavyweight Kalyan Singh was sworn-in as the Chief Minister and his impulsion to erect the Ram Temple gave an impetus to Hindu nationalist organizations such as the VHP and the RSS to ramp up their strive to build the Temple adjacent to the Babri Masjid site, a flashpoint for communal disharmony and religious enmity between Hindus and Muslims for a protracted time. On December 6, 1992, the kar sevaks led by the VHP, RSS & Co along with members of the Marathi nationalist Shiv Sena (SS) with Balasaheb Thackeray at the helm razed the 16th-century mosque within hours with virtually no resistance from the state police, which acted as a mute spectator (ironically, it was the same UP Police which had mown down kar sevaks on the diktat of Mulayam Yadav in October & November 1990). They were charged with the grandiloquent speeches of BJP leaders Kalyan Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Uma Bharti, etc, and were impelled by VHP leaders Ashok Singhal (widely known as Hindu Hriday Samrat, or the ethnarch of Hindu hearts), and Sadhvi Rithambara. Having been submitted an affidavit of not letting the mosque be demolished, Kalyan Singh stepped down as Chief Minister and President Shankar Dayal Sharma dissolved the UP Assembly. But the catchphrase "Kalyan Singh kalyan karo, Ram ka mandir nirman karo" still resonated among the masses. Singh also introduced a motley politics of Mandal and Kamandal – meaning caste identity politics with a flavor of Hindutva – a seducing concoction for the unlettered ones.

"Sharp-edged stones have come out. No one can sit there. The ground has to be levelled. It has to be made fit for sitting. Arrangements for a yagya will be done, so there will be no construction." ~ Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 5 December 1992, Lucknow

After Dalit leader Mayawati's stint as Chief Minister in 1995, the 1996 Assembly elections resulted in a hung assembly; Kanshi Ram's BSP and the BJP signed a concord of power-sharing which led Mayawati to become CM in March 1997. Kalyan Singh assumed the charge of Chief Minister for the second time on September 21, 1997. It proved to be a debacle when the Dalit-appeaser BSP withdrew its support on October 10, 1997; but the savvy Kalyan Singh managed to endure in power fleetingly by defections in the BSP, JD, INC, etc. He again suffered a setback when Naresh Agrawal of the newly formed Akhil Bharatiya Loktantrik Congress (INC breakaway) pulled out of the frail coalition. His government was dismissed by Governor Romesh Bhandari but was reinstituted within two days after a high-voltage showdown at Allahabad High Court. But given the rampant & unbridled crime rate (gangster Shri Prakash Shukla had allegedly even taken a contract of Rs 60 million to assassinate CM Kalyan Singh; such was the dread of gangsters, history sheeters, and malefactors in the state), political & social instability, and rebellion within the BJP, Singh was sacked by Delhi high command under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on November 12, 1999.

Later, he floated a separate party called Rashtriya Kranti Party (RKP) and successfully contested the 2002 UP Assembly elections. But the murky future ahead made him and his successive generations dismal and Singh was compelled to rejoin the BJP on February 3, 2004. He was appointed in charge of the party's state-level election committee for the forthcoming General Elections. He secured the Bulandshahr Lok Sabha constituency but five years later, just before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, on January 20, 2009, tendered his resignation as BJP National Vice President. The Economic Times reported, "Citing neglect and humiliation in the party, the former Chief Minister and national Vice President of the BJP Kalyan Singh resigned from his post and the primary membership of the party on Tuesday; Kalyan Singh said that he has faxed his resignation to the BJP president Rajnath Singh and leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha LK Advani; The former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh clarified that he would not float any new party or revive his old political outfit the Rashtriya Kranti Party. He also made it clear that he would not join any other political party nor retire from politics, though he refrained from disclosing his future course of action; Kalyan Singh confirmed that he had a meeting with the Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh [on Sunday]. He said that Yadav is a friend [and] all options are open in politics; Singh who had been keeping away from important meetings of the BJP for the last many months said that the BJP had sidelined him and he was not given due importance in the party which he had contributed in establishing". He also campaigned for the SP in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and his son Rajveer Singh, now a BJP MP from Etah Lok Sabha constituency officially joined the socialism-propagating SP. But again being discredited by SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav for wreaking his Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) vote bank, Kalyan Singh proclaimed a new party Jan Kranti Party (JKP), oriented on newfangled Hindutva of the 21st century. The new party's affairs were superintended by his son and Singh remained a veteran consultee. But when the tides turned in BJP's favor around 2013, before the epoch-making elections of 2014, Kalyan Singh commingled both his parties – the RKP & JKP – into the BJP. An inducement could be his crave to secure his son's gloomy political future. He rejoined the BJP for the second time in March 2014 and was conferred the post of the Governor of Rajasthan on September 4, 2014, under newly-elected Gujarat Chief Minister-turned-Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He concluded his five-year term in September 2019 and was succeeded by Kalraj Mishra. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, on 30 September 2020, Kalyan Singh along with LK Advani, Uma Bharti, MM Joshi, and others among the list of 32 incriminated in the Babri Masjid demolition case were vindicated by the apex court. He succumbed to sepsis and multi-organ failures on the night of 21 August in Lucknow.

Kalyan Singh will be memorialized in the pages of India's political history as an unrepentant & obdurate Hindu, a polarising politician who fractionated the Indian society, and a foxy and at the same time a virtuous individual, and above all, the sankatmochan of the BJP.