OLD, MORE NEW

The Samajwadi Party in UP is on the edge of a transition. 2016 was the year of the struggle of the new

THE BATTLE BETWEEN father and son hurtled to a climax on Friday in Uttar Pradesh, with Mulayam Singh Yadav expelling Akhilesh Yadav after the latter issued a parallel list of party candidates for the upcoming assembly election in the state. There are many ways to see Mulayam versus Akhilesh. As a clash of egos and courtiers, a family squabble, a contest for control of the party. But it could also be seen as something else, something more, something not yet over: As a struggle which will determine whether the Samajwadi Party can make a crucial transition. From the old guard to a young leadership. From the tried and tested slogan and shibboleth to a more modern vision and view. From an identity politics that has run out of radical charge and exhausted itself to one that seeks to reset the centre of gravity, bring in the promise of development, pitch a wider tent. Of course, the reality is a lot untidier, and being younger is not necessarily equal to being more modern or less hidebound. Even so, the riveting drama still unfolding in UP could be the birth pangs of a Samajwadi Party less old, more new.

In the year that is ending, this struggle of the new was not confined to UP, it was visible in varied settings. In the Dalit upsurge, for instance, that began with the mobilisation triggered by the suicide of Rohith Vemula on the campus of Hyderabad Central University and spread with the atrocity at Una in which members of a Dalit family were publicly flogged by cow vigilantes for skinning a dead cow. In 2016, it was clear that this was a new protest using innovative tools, including the social media, throwing up leaders speaking a different language and forging fresh solidarities — on many campuses, for instance, Dalit organisations made common cause with the Left, while in other places, Dalit leaders shared the stage with Muslim groups. The agitations for quotas in dominant communities, as in the Patels, also showcased this struggle of the new. Here, the young and jobless were flinging out a challenge in an economy in which older forms of privilege were receding and more spaces are still not opening up to accommodate their aspirations outside of the state. This was the year when women, helped by the court, entered the sanctum sanctorum, in the Haji Ali Dargah and in the temple at Shani Shingnapur, breaking ossified tradition, holding out hope for a more equal and spacious new year.

In the new year, will these struggles end in satisfying or conclusive ways? Or will they only result in the equilibrium being reset? The time for those questions to be answered starts now.