Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is beginning to balloon into a sad elephant that seems to have a tear dropping down one eye. The party has been out of power since 2012, and has been consistently losing support at the grassroots.
Apart from lashing out at her political opponents, the BSP chief has not been up to much lately. These days Mayawati is busy hurling verbal attacks on the Samajwadi Party (SP) Akhilesh Yadav or raining fury upon Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Ever since Gandhi talked of reservations in India during his visit to the United States, the former CM Mayawati has been calling the claim of the Congress to conduct a caste census in India “just hogwash”. Mayawati has been warning her considerably shrunken audience to beware of the Congress conspiracy.
The Congress talks about how neglected the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Communities when the party is not in power. But when in power, the Congress works against the interest of the oppressed, said Mayawati.
She claimed that the Congress was “conspiring to end reservation”, and asked people belonging to the deprived sections to be cautious in the wake of the dangerous statement made by Gandhi.
Mayawati was reacting to Gandhi's remarks that Congress will think of scrapping reservations once India is a fair place, which it is not right now.
The real reason for Mayawati’s attack on both the Congress and the SP is not lost on analysts. Mayawati is peeved because she is losing Dalit, Muslim and OBC votes to her political opponents.
The BSP was born from the politics of the All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees’ Federation and later by the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti. It offered itself as an umbrella organisation of the oppressed castes and the BSP was formally floated as a political party in 1984.
At that time, the BSP had emerged like a lotus from the very muddy politics of Uttar Pradesh (UP), making the eyes of the majority population of the country’s most backward state sparkle with hope for the future.
The social justice slogan of the BSP had held the promise of at last fulfilling the dream of the country’s greatest Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.
A Dream Come True
Since the early 1950s and until the mid-1970s, the upper castes had controlled political power in UP. The lower castes in the state were excluded from most activities needed to add a little dignity to one’s life.
Fortunately for the oppressed population this situation began to change in the early 1980s, especially with the emergence of the lower caste-based political politics of the BSP and the SP. These parties not only questioned the upper caste domination but also facilitated an increase in the participation of the lower castes in the political power structures of UP.
Under the leadership of the BSP, the majority (bahujans) were able to at last enjoy state power. The world had watched wide-eyed as members of the oppressed castes came to power not by violent means but through a peaceful process at the ballot box.
It had been the dream of the founder of the BSP Kanshi Ram that Dalits take part in the electoral process, and once in power, to use that power to make provision for better wages and good working conditions for the marginalised, leading to a creative social transformation. That dream of Kanshi Ram seems to be on brake right now.
Three times the BSP had ruled UP in alliance with other political parties. However in 2007, the BSP formed a government on its own strength for the first time, by winning a majority of seats in UP. The strategy that made the BSP victorious was a colourful coalition of four major communities in the state like the Dalit, Brahmin, Muslim and the Most Backward Classes (MBCs).
UP’s Female Dalit Leadership
That a Dalit woman called Mayawati had led the BSP in the upper caste and male dominated political landscape of UP only added to the joy of the moment. Mayawati went on to become UP’s chief minister four times but the BSP has been out of power since 2012.
The question today is what happened to all the goodwill that the BSP had earned in the 1980s? Today the BSP is accused of having squandered the trust of the voter over the years.
The political power enjoyed by the BSP was used to gain short term objectives like first and foremost desperately trying to remain in power, and amassing wealth for its top leadership. As far as the followers of the party are concerned, all that they had received were half hearted demands for caste-based reservation in public sector institutions.
It is difficult to figure out what the ideology of the party is now. There is no answer to questions like how does the BSP plan to improve the condition of the majority of Dalits who remain oppressed? There is no vision or programme in sight for the emancipation of Dalits, and to the end of violence against especially Dalit women.
The powerful ideas of social justice announced initially by the party are not even a whisper today, resulting in massive losses for the BSP at the polls in recent times.
Not My Party
Besides, the Dalit voter feels that the BSP is no longer working for its interest. In the 1980s, the BSP was not particularly concerned with the plight of other communities like the Brahmins, Thakurs and Banias. By the late 1990s, the BSP had shut its exclusivist policy, and opened itself to the inclusion of ‘upper castes’ as well.
Since it is no longer an exclusively Dalit party, the Dalit voter too has wandered off in search of new leadership like the newly elected Lok Sabha parliamentarian Chandrashekhar Azad. The Dalits are about 21 percent of the population in UP and had once stood staunchly with the BSP.
Today the Dalits cast their vote also for the Congress and the SP.
The loyalty of BSP’s Muslim voters too is split between the Congress and SP all to the disadvantage of the BSP, making Mayawati very angry without knowing how to win over the trust of voters all over again.