How Akhilesh humbled the BJP and proved he is his own man

Unlike his father, Akhilesh Yadav never fancied wrestling. Mulayam Singh Yadav had, in his youth, slammed many a man in dusty Etawah, but young Akhilesh was always drawn to the team sports of cricket and football.

This, perhaps, explains his penchant for finding partners to take the political field. After becoming party president in 2017, Akhilesh first teamed up with fellow dynast Rahul Gandhi, then the Congress president. The Hand on the Cycle would propel it faster in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh had promised. The wheels were swept away in a saffron wave and a monk replaced him as chief minister.

Two years later, he offered his pillion to his father’s foe, former chief minister Mayawati, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. No luck again.

Third time’s the charm, Akhilesh must have thought, before caste-ing a wider net in the run-up to the 2022 assembly elections. A rainbow coalition of smaller parties to take on the monochromatic BJP. Sadly for him, saffron stayed strong.

Not one to give up, he hopped on his bicycle once again in 2024 in the Lok Sabha polls to fight the BJP that had fulfilled its promise of building the Ram Mandir and also declared the election a foregone conclusion months before the elections.

This time, Akhilesh once again teamed up with the Congress, this time under the umbrella of the INDIA bloc. The aim was to block the BJP from reaching 272, and block it they did.

He promised atta and data, an end to question paper leaks and stressed that faith was a personal matter and not one to be broadcast during election campaigns. He also expanded the MY (Muslim-Yadav) formula of the Samajwadi Party to PDA―not public display of affection, but a sort of political one. PDA stood for pichhde (backward), dalit and alpsankhyak (minorities), who seem to have come through for the Yadav scion.

Tipu has thus roared once again. Akhilesh was named Tipu at birth by a family friend who admired the Tiger of Mysore (1751-1799), who died fighting the British. “My father and mother did not give me my name,” he says in the book Akhilesh Yadav: Winds of Change by journalist Sunita Aron. “How many kids have you met who name themselves?”

Stepping out of his shadow: Akhilesh with wife, Dimple, and father, Mulayam Singh, in 2017 | PTI

“The Yadav family has interesting nicknames: Tipu, Teju, Billu, Sillu, Tillu, Dharmia, Dipu, Chotu, Babbu et al,” Aron writes. “Ask for their formal names and the senior Yadavs look around and fumble for answers!”

Growing up, Akhilesh saw little of his father. Mulayam was climbing the political ladder and a child in his arms would only slow his ascent. It was the grandparents, uncles and aunts that doted on the naughty little Tipu. A local journalist told Aron: “He was very fond of climbing trees and used to demand kampat (a boiled sweet) when asked to climb down. Terrified, the family used to buy kampat from the nearby Gendalal’s shop for two rupees to bring the boy down!”

Perhaps to rein in this streak of mischief, Akhilesh was bundled off to the Dholpur Military School in Rajasthan when he was 10. He had been pulled out of school after class three as the region had become a den of dacoits.

At Dholpur, he was academically average, sporty and well behaved. He followed a rigorous physical schedule and, if nothing else, the military schooling gave him the stamina to cycle up and down his home state in search of votes.

Akhilesh’s connection with the bicycle goes back to his childhood. His uncle Rajpal would take him to school and bring him back home on a bicycle. Decades later, the former chief minister has been seen on a BMW bicycle worth a lakh or so. And, of course, there’s the little matter of the party symbol.

As he neared the end of his Dholpur days, Akhilesh saw that most of his friends were keen on getting into the Army. Not him. As fate would have it, Tipu went to Mysore. He joined the Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering and chose civil environmental engineering. This was also where he broke his nose in a sporting accident, getting the trademark crookedness that still delights caricaturists across India.

“I became chief minister with the same nose and it is a good luck charm,” he said at a book release function. “Netaji (Mulayam) took me to a doctor, who asked me if I was married. After knowing that I’m married, he said there was no need for any surgery to rectify my nose.”

Another “good charm” was a pahadi girl called Dimple Rawat. They had met in Lucknow through common friends, became friends and fell in love. He came from a political family, she had an Army officer family. He was a Yadav; she, a Thakur. Two castes averse to each other. Yet, love won and they got married in 1999 in a star-studded ceremony featuring actors Amitabh Bachchan and Sridevi.

Next year, Akhilesh won the Kannauj Lok Sabha byelection at age 27. Mulayam had won two seats in the Lok Sabha elections and had vacated Kannauj. And, just like that, Akhilesh was catapulted to power.

But not many were on board with his sudden rise. His critics argued that giving Akhilesh Kannauj was an affront to socialist stalwart Ram Manohar Lohia, who was strongly anti-dynasty and had once held the seat. They called him inexperienced and pointed out that the son of the staunchly anti-English Mulayam had been educated in Sydney. In an interview, Akhilesh had said he was a fan of Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams and Metallica, among others.

Though he did not know the intricacies of his home state’s politics, he had known enough about the impact his father had. “He clearly recalled how the Ayodhya issue would obsess some of his batchmates and professors in Mysore, and the accusations levelled against his father for having “killed” Hindus in cold blood,” writes Aron. “Although Akhilesh was saved from facing any criticism for his father’s acts as his real identity was hidden from his college and friends, the Ayodhya episode taught him to be resilient when faced with crises early in life. The ease with which he accepted the self-imposed anonymity had benefited him later in his political life.”

As a freshly minted parliamentarian, he was quick to trade his casual clothes for kurta pajamas and a Nehru jacket. He spoke only in Hindi, and worked on his brand as a heartland kid with a modern outlook.

The highlights of his over 20-year career include courting arrest along with party workers in 2001, launching a rath yatra in 2002, becoming state party president in 2009, and winning the 2012 assembly elections to become the youngest chief minister in the country at 38.

But that first term as chief minister did not go well. Though he had promised better law and order and to control errant forces within his cadre, Akhilesh could not wash the goonda stain off the party. He was accused of turning a blind eye during the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 and making inappropriate comments about the Badaun rape case of 2014.

Also, during that term, an oft-heard quip in Lucknow was that the state had three-and-a-half chief ministers. Apart from the patriarch Mulayam, there were uncle Shivpal Yadav and senior party leader Azam Khan. Whatever vision Akhilesh had, had been made blurry by those controlling him, it was speculated.

Eventually, ahead of the 2017 state elections, he took over the party after a messy battle and became its de-facto face. The party lost because of the Modi wave, but also due to the ripples within.

Now, seven years into becoming party president, Akhilesh seems to have found his balance. The wrestler might no longer be around to see his son’s rise, but the team player has humbled the mighty BJP for the biggest alliance he has ever been part of.