Daulat Over Dalit For Mayawati

Is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, 70, responsible for reducing a powerful Dalit movement into a melodramatic soap opera?

When Mayawati addresses her medical doctor daughter- in- law Pragya Siddharth as “that girl” the BSP supreme leader sounds less like a social reformer and more like a voice from the very popular soap opera called Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thii.

However, the BSP was conceived as no laughing matter. Its founder Kanshi Ram spent a lifetime struggling to fight the caste system that continues to allow 15 percent of the population to live off the toil of 85 percent of the country’s population. Kanshi Ram passed away in 2006 at the age of 72 years after having made Mayawati the successor of his political struggle in 2001.

Kanshi Ram’s grassroots presence had allowed him to introduce the significance of the principles of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar to the educated members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backwards Classes and Minorities.

During 1992 when the Babri Masjid was pulled down, Kanshi Ram had together with the Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav fought against communal forces inspiring unity amongst the backward and Dalit castes. The slogan that had rent the air at that time was, mile Mulayam Kanshi Ram hawa mein udh gaye jai Shri Ram.

Inspired by Ambedkar’s book Annihilation of Caste, Kanshi Ram was wedded to concepts like educate, agitate and organise. Kanshi Ram shared the book and the ideas of Ambedkar with aspirational Dalits who had made it up the social ladder but felt alienated from their community.

In 1982, Kanshi Ram had published The Chamcha Age. The book is dedicated to Jyotirao Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar who had dedicated their life to the emancipation of Dalits.

Kanshi Ram was convinced that Ambedkar’s ideas were relevant to this day and age. He had believed that Ambedkar was heartbroken when he was unable to get the British to agree on a separate electorate for Dalits and was forced to sign the Poona Pact due to Mahatma Gandhi’s fast unto death. Ambedkar had feared for the future of the Dalit movement that he had spearheaded.

In the spirit of Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram too had wanted autonomy for the Dalits and freedom from both the patronisation and oppression by the upper castes. In 1981 Kanshi Ram wrote a book called The Chamcha Age. In the book Kanshi Ram says that Dalit leaders have been reduced to a stooge in present day politics that continues to be dominated by upper castes. Kanshi Ram saw politicians like Jagjivan Ram and Ram Vilas Paswan as Dalits who had pawned their soul in exchange for political power. The Dalit leaders like them who shared power with the upper caste were concerned only with their own progress, not with the good of Dalit society that continued to exist in miserable circumstances all over the country.

The way some Dalit leaders had compromised their conscience and became a stooge of the upper castes gave Kanishi Ram’s book its title The Chamcha Age. Those Dalits who only think of their own social and economic success and remain blind to the fate of the majority of Dalits were nothing but a chamcha or stooge of the present political dispensation.

Kanshi Ram’s solution to the alienation of the Dalit elite was to pay back those Dalits who were still exploited in society.

This sentiment of Kanshi Ram raises the question if Mayawati is behaving today like a chamcha or a comrade of Dalits, a majority of whom exist in subhuman conditions?

Since early 2000, Satish Mishra has been Mayawati’s closest aide. Mishra is an upper caste politician who is the BSP’s national secretary. The golden period for Mayawati was the electoral victory of the BSP in 2007. Mayawati had enjoyed a successful stint as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP). She was praised for her presence on the street and was seen as a capable administrator of the state. The impression was that the Brahmin vote had contributed to BSP’s electoral gains, and Mishra was seen everywhere with Mayawati like her shadow.

Is it Mishra, many wonder today whose whispers have kept Mayawati confined to her fortress like home? Is it Mishra who tells Mayawati that it is not necessary for her to dirty her shoes to find out for herself what the Dalits want in their miserable dwellings? Is it Mishra who keeps Mayawati connected to the ruling party, giving the impression that the BSP is the B team of the ruling party?

Once upon a time the favourite slogan of the BSP was tilak tarazu aur talwar, inko maro jutey chaar.

The tilak had referred to the upper caste Brahmins, tarazu to the Vaishya or Bania caste and talwar to the warrior caste of the Kshatriya. Today the entire vote bank of the BSP has transferred to the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). The BSP’s vote share has dropped to a little more than two percent. Once the BSP had ruled UP, recently it got less than 10 percent votes. In the last assembly elections the party won one seat and its vote share was 13 percent.

While the Dalits are divided into multiple sub castes it is only the Jatav caste, also the caste of Mayawati that continues to support her. Although many educated and urban based Jatavs too have in recent times distanced themselves from the BSP.

Mayawati remains unmarried and without children. When Akash Anand was born in 1995 to Anand Kumar, Mayawati’s youngest brother, she adopted him. Akash Anand grew up in the lap of his powerful aunt and was educated at an elite school. After graduating in business studies from London, Anand returned home to take on the mantle of Mayawati’s political successor at the age of 22 years.

While the multiple time Chief Minister of UP remained the party head, Anand was appointed national coordinator and prepared extensive notes for the party on Dalits, religious minorities, OBCs, and tribals in 2017.

In 2019, Akash Anand addressed his first political rally in Agra. He also led a two week walk to touch base with voters and workers on the ground. To prove that the BSP is no B team of the ruling party, Anand had lashed out at the unfair politics of the government of the day.

When Anand spoke people had listened to the self-confessed Ambedkarite. Like Kanshi Ram, Anand too is inspired by Amedkar’s concept of educate, agitate and organise. The presence of the youthful Anand in their midst had filled his Dalit supporters with hope and excitement.

However in an obvious clash of two generations, Anand was not allowed to introduce any change within the BSP, or to blossom as a leader.

It had been the concern of Anand to increase the dwindling vote share of the BSP.

Anand had succeeded in waking up the drowsing BSP and had the youth dreaming again. Today it is ironic that Anand has been punished for wanting to realise the dream of seeing Mayawati become the first female Dalit Prime Minister of the country.

Anand has been stripped of all his posts and also expelled from the party. He is no longer the political successor of Mayawati.

Mayawati blames Anand’s father-in-law Ashok Siddharth for the political insult that he faces today within the BSP. Siddharth was once a close confidante of Mayawati. A medical doctor, Siddharth left his practice to join the BSP in 2008. Two years ago Siddharth’s medical doctor daughter Pragya married Anand. The couple was blessed by Mayawati at a glittering wedding ceremony in March 2023.

Today Siddharth is accused of trying to build a parallel power within the BSP house. She is angry with Anand for continuing to be respectful to his father-in-law, and for being under the influence by his wife Pragya. Annoyed that she is not being obeyed, Mayawati is trying to make her brother, and the father of Anand go against him.

Mayawati has shocked her well-wishers as well as her political opponents by the shabby and whimsical ways chosen by her to tackle the multiple problems she faces today. She has dragged out Anand’s younger brother Ishan from the same family into public life to pitch brother against brother.

In the meanwhile the BSP is starved of female members who had once brimmed with hope and enthusiasm and most grassroots leaders groomed by Kanshi Ram have been sidelined by Mayawati.

The BSP is deadwood today. Mayawati may still enjoy authority as BSP supremo but political repression and her lack of passion to serve Dalits or to delegate responsibility at the grassroots has lost BSP respectability.

Once a role model for Dalit populations around the country, Mayawati seems to have chosen to serve daulat (wealth) over Dalit concerns. Mayawati’s indifferent political attitude is killing the BSP as Dalits lookout for an alternative leader.

Will it be Akash Anand or Chandrashekhar Azad or another who will stop the BSP from being swallowed up by the tide of time?

Only time will tell.