The fall of Mayawati: Brahmins leave the BSP building
By Ajoy Bose
The devastating rout of the BSP finally brings the curtain down on the amazing saga of Behenji. Her meteoric rise since the early 1990s has been followed by successive setbacks each worse than the other over the past eight years. Even Mayawati cannot survive this series of relentless body blows.
Her hysteria was evident when she declared that the EVMs had been rigged and that an unknown mysterious journalist ‘wearing a cap and a beard’ had warned her so at a previous press conference. Mayawati now faces the mortification of losing her own Rajya Sabha seat after her term expires next year. The meagre number of BSP legislators is not enough to send her back to Parliament. It can be argued that the BSP was helpless like other political parties against the Modi tsunami in UP in 2014 and once again now. But there is reason to believe there is one elemental dynamic influencing the rise, decline and fall of Mayawati: the support and loss of it from Brahmins.
It is a telling paradox that the first big success of a Dalit party in mainstream Indian politics was propelled by Brahmins in UP who decided to prop up a political outfit with an overtly anti-Brahminical ideology. They were determined to curb the rising clout of Mulayam Singh Yadav who had, with the help of the BSP, defeated the BJP in 1993 in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.
In the summer of 1995, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi, both Brahmins, engineered a coup that led to the installation of Mayawati as CM of a minority BSP government in UP supported by both the BJP and the Congress. The then Congress Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, also a Brahmin, publicly celebrated it as “a miracle of democracy”.
Despite the fall of the shortlived Mayawati government, because of
wrangling with local BJP bosses, the party’s top Brahmin leaders like
Vajpayee and Joshi brought her back to power twice more in the next few
years. Each time, backward caste leaders like Kalyan Singh and others
like Rajnath Singh, a Thakur, fiercely complained that this was damaging
the party, but to no avail. Nurtured by the BJP’s powerful Brahmin
lobby, the BSP kept increasing its electoral tally at the cost of its
political ally.
Exactly a decade ago, Mayawati played her master stroke bypassing the BJP Brahmin lobby and striking adeal directly with the Brahmin community in UP. This led to her historic 2007 assembly poll victory.
Unfortunately, unable to handle the daunting task of accommodating Brahmin interests in a Dalit party, Mayawati started losing support from both communities, each resenting that she was favouring the other. This tug of war between her political sponsors and core support base first snuffed out her prime ministerial dream in 2009. Then it ousted her from power three years later. With the advent of the Modi juggernaut in 2014, the Brahmins appear to have abandoned her completely.
For a leader and a party belonging to a marginalised community such as Dalits, it is crucial to get support from Brahmins who provide both legitimacy and brand value. Despite their political and economic decline, Brahmins still control conversations at tea shops across towns and villages in UP. It is the support of Brahmins first from within the BJP and then outside that had enormously enhanced the stature of Behenji from the mid-1990s till the end of last decade.
It had helped her get backing from various sections across the caste spectrum, including from a section of Muslims. But they all started drifting away from her the moment she lost the Brahmins. Now she stands isolated only with Jatavs. Amove to replace her earlier Brahmin alliance with one with Muslims has ended in an unmitigated disaster.
It failed to get the BSP a substantial minority vote and possibly resulted in ‘Hindu’ consolidation in the process. It shows that subaltern groups going it alone or clinging to each other without any support from ‘higher up’ in the social hierarchy has severe limitations in mass politics.
The devastating rout of the BSP finally brings the curtain down on the amazing saga of Behenji. Her meteoric rise since the early 1990s has been followed by successive setbacks each worse than the other over the past eight years. Even Mayawati cannot survive this series of relentless body blows.
Her hysteria was evident when she declared that the EVMs had been rigged and that an unknown mysterious journalist ‘wearing a cap and a beard’ had warned her so at a previous press conference. Mayawati now faces the mortification of losing her own Rajya Sabha seat after her term expires next year. The meagre number of BSP legislators is not enough to send her back to Parliament. It can be argued that the BSP was helpless like other political parties against the Modi tsunami in UP in 2014 and once again now. But there is reason to believe there is one elemental dynamic influencing the rise, decline and fall of Mayawati: the support and loss of it from Brahmins.
It is a telling paradox that the first big success of a Dalit party in mainstream Indian politics was propelled by Brahmins in UP who decided to prop up a political outfit with an overtly anti-Brahminical ideology. They were determined to curb the rising clout of Mulayam Singh Yadav who had, with the help of the BSP, defeated the BJP in 1993 in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.
In the summer of 1995, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi, both Brahmins, engineered a coup that led to the installation of Mayawati as CM of a minority BSP government in UP supported by both the BJP and the Congress. The then Congress Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, also a Brahmin, publicly celebrated it as “a miracle of democracy”.
They don’t hang out any more
Exactly a decade ago, Mayawati played her master stroke bypassing the BJP Brahmin lobby and striking adeal directly with the Brahmin community in UP. This led to her historic 2007 assembly poll victory.
Unfortunately, unable to handle the daunting task of accommodating Brahmin interests in a Dalit party, Mayawati started losing support from both communities, each resenting that she was favouring the other. This tug of war between her political sponsors and core support base first snuffed out her prime ministerial dream in 2009. Then it ousted her from power three years later. With the advent of the Modi juggernaut in 2014, the Brahmins appear to have abandoned her completely.
For a leader and a party belonging to a marginalised community such as Dalits, it is crucial to get support from Brahmins who provide both legitimacy and brand value. Despite their political and economic decline, Brahmins still control conversations at tea shops across towns and villages in UP. It is the support of Brahmins first from within the BJP and then outside that had enormously enhanced the stature of Behenji from the mid-1990s till the end of last decade.
It had helped her get backing from various sections across the caste spectrum, including from a section of Muslims. But they all started drifting away from her the moment she lost the Brahmins. Now she stands isolated only with Jatavs. Amove to replace her earlier Brahmin alliance with one with Muslims has ended in an unmitigated disaster.
It failed to get the BSP a substantial minority vote and possibly resulted in ‘Hindu’ consolidation in the process. It shows that subaltern groups going it alone or clinging to each other without any support from ‘higher up’ in the social hierarchy has severe limitations in mass politics.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
