Modi sights on Lohia legacy

New Delhi, March 23: Narendra Modi's project of appropriating political icons from the non-BJP political arena continues.

After extolling Bhagat Singh for two days, the Prime Minister paid homage to socialist stalwart Ram Manohar Lohia on his 106th birth anniversary today. "Remembering Dr Ram Manohar Lohia on his birth anniversary. A scholar & original thinker, he inspires people across party lines," Modi tweeted.

The post was accompanied by a letter Lohia wrote to Mahatma Gandhi on April 30, 1941. Lohia requested Gandhi to meet a political associate of his, Haridutt Khandelwal, who was in Almora jail where he was serving a sentence for participating in a satyagraha and was about to be released.

Gandhi, in his letter dated May 11, 1941, agreed to meet Khandelwal. Lohia and his associate were then in the Congress.

Picking up Modi's cue, another cabinet minister, Najma Heptullah, and Mansukh Mandaviya - a Gujarat MP and Modi confidant - also paid tributes to Lohia today.

On March 3 this year, Modi brought up Lohia's legacy in the Lok Sabha, looking at Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav when he spoke.

The Samajwadi Party has adopted the Uttar Pradesh-born Lohia as its political icon, although Mulayam's association with the legendary leader was brief.

However, while the BJP was quick to try and co-opt icons like B.R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in its line-up of historical greats, Lohia had escaped attention for years.

BJP sources cited two reasons for the recent Lohia discovery: one, Modi wanted to resurrect his backward caste origin as a Teli (oil-presser) in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh elections in early 2017. The BJP is up against the Samajwadi and the BSP, both of which have a sizeable following among the backward castes.

Lohia was an early proponent of the theory that caste, much more than class, was the basic unit of Indian society. His view was that the "lower" castes needed not just socio-economic redistribution but also empowerment to help them shed their sense of inferiority.

Second, Lohia was one of the first non-Congress leaders - he left the Congress to join the Socialist Party - to advocate the tactic of non-Congressism that in practice translated into fielding a single candidate against a Congress nominee in an election. BJP sources claimed Lohia's principle of non-Congressism was in sync with Modi's slogan of a "Congress- mukt Bharat" (Congress-free India)".