You may be wondering what makes Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh so powerful that the entire establishment is rallying in his defence, as if he was an invaluable national asset or a victim. Here’s my humble attempt to put the power and persona of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in perspective.
I do so with enormous help from our Lucknow correspondent Shikha Salaria, whose piece on Brij Bhushan you can read here.
The WFI chief has been accused of sexually harassing women wrestlers, including a minor. Two FIRs have been filed against him based on the complaints. Protesting wrestlers have demanded his removal and arrest.
On Friday, Brij Bhushan cancelled a rally he was to have held in Ayodhya on 5 June. The BJP MP had earlier said he had garnered support from religious leaders in Ayodhya to advocate for a dilution of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) law.
To understand how special is the man’s power, fame and method, you have the choice of two periods: 1993 or 2008.
Since 1993 is more dramatic, let’s look at that first.
On 24 October, 1993, the CBI caught Ahmed Mansoor and Suhel Ahmed from Delhi’s Jama Masjid area for being “active members” of the Dawood Ibrahim group. Remember, this was the year of the serial Bombay (now Mumbai) blasts. The CBI found that the two, among other D-Gang “shooters”, were being harboured at the NTPC guest house in New Delhi’s Safdarjung Development Area.
This was allegedly under the guardianship of Congress Party’s Kalpnath Rai, then Union minister of state for food (independent charge). The CBI case was that the accommodation was arranged by Rai through his personal secretary S.P. Rai. In the same probe it was also “revealed” that Brij Bhushan, then a BJP MP, had allegedly sheltered some terrorists of the same gang at his residence in New Delhi.
Initially, the CBI did not directly name him.
Investigations continued and as his name kept cropping up, he was named in the supplementary chargesheet. CBI now sought to prosecute all three, Kalpnath Rai, S.P. Rai, and Brij Bhushan, who surrendered in Gironde in 1996. His secretary Sanjay Singh and Sabu Chacko, regional manager of the now defunct East-West Airlines, were named too. Brij Bhushan was locked up under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).
Bemused? Confused? Let me try and clutter this up further for you. Just a year earlier, Brij Bhushan was charged under serious criminal laws for the demolition of Babri Masjid as one of the key karsevaks involved. Now he was locked up under TADA for allegedly being in “cahoots with” a Congress leader and allegedly harbouring, alongside him, D-Gang terrorists.
And you know what, while he was in jail — under TADA, on a Dawood-link terror charge no less — the BJP would still not disown him. He was so indispensable that they gave the party ticket from his stronghold Gonda to his wife Ketaki Devi Singh. She won.
If the much more genteel Vajpayee-Advani BJP found him to be such a vital stalwart, even when under a TADA charge, in the decades of relatively gentler politics, should we be surprised if the Modi-Shah BJP has a similar view today, three decades later?
Also read: ‘Bigger than Olympics’. Wrestlers brave heat, mosquitoes, abuses to mount Nirbhaya-like protest
Jump to July, 2008, now.
The vote of confidence is taking place in Lok Sabha with the entire Opposition ranged against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s United Progress Alliance (UPA) government on the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Many shenanigans take place in the course of that vote. Among the least talked about and remembered incidents is the rarest of rare ‘defection’ of a sitting BJP MP. He defied the party whip and voted in favour of the UPA.
The BJP now expelled the MP — Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. Equally promptly, he joined Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP). A three-time BJP MP already, he now contested on an SP ticket from the pocket borough of Kaiserganj and won again.
Why did Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh make that switch, is a more cluttered story. Or, maybe, not-so-cluttered given how easily crime and politics mix in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Among the many criminal cases he has faced — 38 at last count — a prosecution for attempting to kill his old friend, partner and later rival Vinod Kumar “Pandit” Singh in a nearly successful shooting was the most challenging. Pandit Singh (the name used more popularly), was rescued by Mulayam Singh who sent a helicopter to move him to Lucknow for treatment. But you know what? Our wrestling federation chief never even faced a proper trial, forget being convicted. Why?
Because no prosecution witness appeared in court. Not even, hold your breath, the victim who nearly got killed, Pandit Singh himself. He was a Mulayam loyalist and a former minister in his cabinet. Apparently, Mulayam had “mediated” some kind of a compromise between the two Rajput strongmen. That vote and defection was most likely the price Brij Bhushan paid for it.
If this shows how smart he is, the fact that he won easily on an SP ticket now, despite being a lifelong BJP man, underlines his popularity in that region. Any surprise then that by the next election — 2014, Modi-Shah BJP’s first — he was admitted back to the BJP, all indiscretions forgiven? He has now been a BJP MP again for two more terms.
What is the nutgraf of this story: that the ever-so-holier-than-thou, “only Muslims and Yadavs harbour criminals In Uttar Pradesh” BJP did not expel Brij Bhushan when he was charged with attempt to murder.
It fired him only when he voted for the UPA in defiance of the party whip. Of course, only to embrace him again later.
Singh is a six-term MP — five times as a BJP member and once as an SP man.
When you read this, you will find echoes of some of the earlier episodes of ThePrint’s ‘Cut The Clutter’ I have done on the baahubalis, dadas or gangsters of eastern Uttar Pradesh — from Atiq Ahmed to Mukhtar Ansari, from Brijesh Singh to Harishankar Tiwari. That’s the political terrain.
This also reminds us of the lesson we had drawn from those episodes: that the crime-politics-mafia nexus is integral to eastern UP politics. You can’t blame any specific faith or caste for it. They are all in it together. Or, as the saying goes, ‘iss hamaam mein sab nange’ (everybody is naked in this bath-house).
Now Brij Bhushan’s record may not be close to that of these ‘illustrious’ men, but he has had 38 cases against him under various charges, including attempt to murder. Apart from TADA, he has also been booked under UP’s Control of Goondas Act and the UP Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act. He’s been acquitted in most, and a few trials may drift forever.
During a media interview, the BJP MP had himself once revealed that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had suspected him of being behind the alleged ‘accident’ in 2004 that led to the death of Ghanshyam Shukla, the BJP’s candidate for the Lok Sabha elections from Gonda that year, as Brij Bhushan was denied his own stronghold. Many suspected this was no accident, but political assassination by design.
For sure, the controversy faded away soon enough.
Further, 37 other cases also, over time, faded away. As we say in the Hindi heartland, ‘Saiyyan bhaaye kotwal, toh darr kaahein ka? (My lover is the sheriff, so why should I be afraid?)’.
I will also quote for you from an interview that he gave to a well-known Hindi media portal The Lallantop on 21 February, 2022. In it he said, and I quote, “Mere jeevan mein mere haath se ek hatyaa hui hai. Log kuchh bhi kahein, maine ek hatyaa ki hai (In my lifetime, one murder has taken place from my hands. People can say whatever they want, but I have committed one murder).”
Now, this murder he said “happened” in the course of a fight at a panchayat meeting in 1991 and the group he was supporting was fired at by the other side. He joined in the firefight and a person from the other side (Ravindra Singh), also a local goon, was killed. Now what happened to that case? Was anyone tried? Don’t ask any such questions, because in eastern UP’s culture, particularly when it comes to baahubalis, no such rules apply.
You can read more details in Shikha’s piece. It also has details of the effort she’s been making to speak with him. As and when he responds, we will update this article as well.
The same BJP whose ministers will start jumping with joy even if somebody wins a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games — which is several notches below even the Asian Games standards — will not speak for the wrestlers who have won medals at the Olympics. In fact, it has worked very hard at discrediting them and undermining them.
Why, is a mystery. Politically, Brij Bhushan is an asset but in his limited political geography. Not important enough to put so much prestige at stake.
Unless you see it as part of a pattern. By now we know that this BJP’s method is of never backing down, never being seen near a failure, never dumping one of their own.
This is exactly how it played out in the case of Ashish Mishra, son of central minister and Lok Sabha MP from UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri, Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni. A similar approach is playing out in Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s case too.
Also read: Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is no saint. But BJP has reasons to look away from wrestlers’ protest