Only another Mayawati can beat Mayawati
June 19, 2011
By Kancha Ilaiah
All-India Congress Committee general secretary, Mr Rahul Gandhi's
attempts to destabilise Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's
government and win the next elections in Uttar Pradesh will have
serious implications for the national polity. The Congress seems to
have realised that Ms Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and the
Bharatiya Janata Party don't have the ability or strength to fight Ms
Mayawati, and hence it should step into that space.
Since the Congress made huge gains in the 2009 general elections, the
next Assembly elections would be its best bet. Mr Gandhi, whom Ms
Mayawati calls "Congress yuvraj", is in agitation mode to achieve that
goal. Mr Gandhi's activism has revolved around the Dalits of Uttar
Pradesh for some time. But he seems to have realised now that whatever
one does, the Dalits are not going to abandon Ms Mayawati as she has
built a social and cultural capital of her own in that community. She
may not have done much for them in terms of economic welfare, but she
has shown them what self-respect means and has given them a
socio-cultural and religious identity. The Buddhist-Ambedkarite
shrines that she has built and even the new names of districts and
schools, colleges and institutions of Dalit-Bahujan icons has altered
the Hindu-centred cultural milieu of Uttar Pradesh.
Whatever Mr Gandhi and the Congress do around the Dalit constituency,
the people are not going to change sides now. The Congress seems to
have realised this. Interestingly, the other major vote base of Ms
Mayawati is the Brahmin community. The Congress wants, perhaps, to
wean them away by displaying the party's Brahmin leadership at the
state level. For a long time Uttar Pradesh was virtually a state of
Brahmin hegemony and now they too have gone over to Ms Mayawati. But
Brahmin voters will shift only when they feel that the Congress is
likely to come to power. Otherwise they will prefer to remain with the
Bahujan Samaj Party.
Muslims are the other social force that can make Ms Mayawati win or
lose. But Uttar Pradesh's Muslims don't trust the Congress. They still
feel that the Ram Janmabhoomi issue was created by the Congress during
Rajiv Gandhi's rule and that the party cannot be treated as the real
and permanent enemy of the BJP and the Hindutva culture.
Mr Rahul Gandhi's religious identity is not yet clear but Muslims know
for sure that Ms Mayawati is a confirmed Buddhist and her nationwide
Buddha Purnima advertisement on May 17 made her minority religious
position clear.
Muslims also know that Ms Mayawati did not allow the BJP to create any
communal tension during her tenure as the chief minister. Why should
they go against her in the next election? And thus, the Congress is
not sure of the Muslims' support. The higher other backward classes by
and large support Mr Mulayam Singh and the lower Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) swing between him and Ms Mayawati. Since the Congress
did not take a trustworthy stand on OBC empowerment, there is not much
scope for it to woo the OBC votebank.
The Congress, therefore, turns to farmers who constitute the middle
and upper Shudra forces, and who did not benefit from Ms Mayawati's
economic or social agendas. This is the motorcycle (even car) class of
Uttar Pradesh and Mr Gandhi wants to reach out them on a motorcycle.
This social class earlier was with the late Prime Minister Chaudhary
Charan Singh and a few of them are with his son Ajit Singh even now.
Since Mr Ajit Singh is not a force to reckon with, they seem to think
that the Congress is their best bet. But that class lost its lower
caste clout when the Dalits and lower OBCs were tied to its feudal
yoke. The BSP has broken that feudal tangle and this group does not
command winnable strength in the villages now.
In fact, if the Congress is identified too much with this Kulak class,
half of Ms Mayawati's headache is over. While the Dalits hate this
class, the Brahmins and Muslims too dislike it. Uttar Pradesh is not
Bengal where the landed gentry could control the village lower caste
votebank. Mr Gandhi must have taken his inspiration from West Bengal
chief minister Mamata Banerjee to take up and fight for the rights of
farmers. In Communist Bengal, the upper caste feudal hold on lower
castes still exists, but in Uttar Pradesh that hold is completely
broken. Mr Gandhi, in my view, is walking into a new trap of the Kulak
class in a state where its political back is already broken by caste
mobilisation from downwards.
UPA chairperson and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi was recently talking
against Ms Mayawati's caste politics. But Ms Mayawati's political
agenda has gone beyond caste now and it revolves around spiritual and
social and cultural transformation. Ms Mayawati made it clear on
Buddha Jayanti that she is working to transform the "Hindu Uttar
Pradesh" into a Buddhist Uttar Pradesh, and will continue to do so if
she comes to power in the forthcoming elections. With her common sense
approach she chose to bury the BJP in its own place. The Congress
cannot stop this transformation with its so-called "secular agenda".
If the Gandhis continue to work around the Kulak class and keep on
talking against caste politics, whatever work they have done around
Dalits will be treated as gimmicks. Mr Gandhi is too close to the BJP
in cultural terms. His father's moves had given Uttar Pradesh to
Kanshi Ram; the son cannot finish the disciple by walking into the
same trap. If the Congress wants to come to power in Uttar Pradesh, it
has to find a stronger Dalit woman than Ms Mayawati from the same
state as its leader. The Bahugunas and the Tiwaris cannot shake her at
all.
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