They ain't comin' back anymore!

It is time political commentators stopped harking back to Gaya Lal and his ‘Aaya Ram Gaya Ram’ days. It is natural for politicians to switch sides

- JOSE K. GEORGE

The year 2022, like every other year and the one before, has had its share of politicians jumping ships, switching sides, and floating new fronts. Some, like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Hardik Patel, quit with much fire and fury, some after a few comfortable days at luxury resorts, while some others moved away in silence.

Whenever a leader worth his salt switches sides, political commentators like to hark back to the patron saint of floor-crossers—late Haryana politician Gaya Lal. For the uninitiated, he is the ‘Gaya’ in the popular political adage ‘Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram’. If you have been hiding under a rock, or cooped up at home minding your business or mining crypto all these years, let me attempt to introduce this humble politician who earned a place in the annals of history by changing political convictions at the drop of a topi.

Decades ago, in the autumn of ‘67, Gaya Lal, an MLA from Hodal constituency in Haryana, flitted in and out of Congress two times in nine hours. Lal quit the Congress to join the non-Congress United Front only to come back to the Congress hours later. Lal’s defections were so quick that had there been moolah involved, one would wonder if he had enough time to count it all before moving sides. Now, counting the number of times Lal switched sides in the next few years might take a bit of your precious time that you might as well spend on scrolling down your social media feed or doing nothing; suffice to say that his constantly vacillating loyalties gave political pundits a prase that former Haryana chief minister Rao Birender Singh used first while introducing Lal to the press—’Gaya Lal is Aaya Ram now’.