How times have changed! The political greats as well as stalwart politicians of our recent past — and we may include in this category men and women widely admired and justly looked up to in the international arena as well, e.g. Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, JP, Indira, Lohia, Vajpayee and many others — were not known to celebrate their birthdays as public events, leave alone do so at the expense of the public exchequer. It is an entirely different story now. The smaller the fry, or the more insecure, usually the bigger the bang. It is a pity therefore that Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, who runs his own party and has been UP chief minister and defence minister of India, should seek to place himself in that category. “Netaji”, as he is known to his followers, has walked many a mile in public life, and climbed many a hill. Of all people, he — among his contemporaries — could have reposed at home on his 76th and let the people come to him in the comfort of his home, bearing flowers and warmth.
The event at Mr Yadav’s home village of Saifai on Saturday appears to have been a high-profile affair with the renowned music director A.R. Rahman in attendance. The Saifai show is now a hardly annual, and stars and starlets come to pay obeisance to the SP leader — some because they get paid and others because they’ve earned personal favours. This breed swarming around the socialist leader doesn’t quite fit the “man of the people” image Mr Yadav has sought in his life. Indeed in more recent years, the country’s most senior still active socialist has revelled in the company of the rich and the famous, thanks in particular to a UP politician — known as a major social climber back in the day — who is in the habit of falling out of Mr Yadav’s favour, and then returning right back.
It is hard to believe all this is an advertisement for socialism. But the pity is this year the most important socialists in the limelight these days, Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav (now a near relation of the SP leader through marriage), chose to skip the birthday party, given the UP stalwart’s present inclination to play footsie with the BJP, a right-wing communal party, for the Bihar lot and many others. On their birthdays, people try to spread good cheer. Mr Yadav, however, chose to fire a broadside against the Congress, perhaps because he sees this entity as his only real “secular” challenger on the chessboard of UP. The real issue, however, is how ordinary folk — UP’s poor — look upon a birthday bash with the glitterati fawning on their “socialist” leader.
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