Another statue for Behenji?

Behenji --A Political Biography of Mayawati: Senior journalist Ajay Bose has timed this book well and is on the dot. Perhaps, in the current, hopeless flux in Indian politics, this feisty woman politician is strategically poised to become the most prominent threat to the ‘national' parties, especially Sonia Gandhi's bumbling Congress. Mayawati's ‘socially engineered' rise to power is evidence of the churning within the political sphere in ‘India at 60' -- because this Dalit supremo might well become a pan-India personality in the not-so-eventful days to come.
Mayawati's political base relies mostly among Dalits for whom she is a symbol of dignity and aspiration after centuries of "Manuwadi oppression" -- her favourite rhetorical paradigm of the past which has been currently strategically discarded. In order to broaden the social base of the BSP, she has wooed the upper castes now. In a process of ‘reverse social engineering', since the mid-1990s, she has made it a point to give party tickets to a significant number of upper-caste candidates, including money bags and history-sheeters. This was partly in tune with Kanshi Ram's belief that state assemblies should reflect the caste composition of society.
Mayawati's brand of politics has attracted attention of political observers far and wide. Amy Waldman wrote in the New York Times, in 2003: "In a state where Dalits are nearly one quarter of the population, Mayawati has used caste as a mobiliser, building on a social and political revolution 50 years in the making. It is a phenomenon that has reshaped the politics of India."

Her unprecedented rise to the top job in one of the most feudal and caste-entrenched states of the cow belt has broken stereotypes. The ‘sarvasamaj' combination of the ‘Savarnas and Dalits' along with Muslims and other castes has decisively restructured power equations. With the subaltern Dalit vote-bank as a permanent scaffolding, Mayawati's ‘impossible' strategy of sewing up a rainbow coalition by wooing Brahmins, Muslims and other dominant groups led to her unprecedented and massive victory in the 2007 assembly elections in UP.
The UP formula might have a strong impact on electoral politics across India. UP, a politically significant state, has for long been the testing ground for new ideologies - be it the Hindutva wave or bahujan politics that banked on Dalit votes. Clealry, the new BSP rainbow alliance is a formidable combination.
Bose skilfully and sympathetically sketches Mayawati's ‘struggle' from her humble beginnings in the cramped Jhuggi Jhonpri shanty town of Delhi's Inderpuri, to her consequent consolidation as a UP chief minister, having been elected four times. He then draws the big picture: her uncanny, persistence presence in India's larger political landscape, much to the discomfort of other parties, especially the Congress. However, sometimes, Bose's ‘saga' of her childhood ‘valour' smacks of a court chronicle of a medieval era where kings were projected as larger than live figures ordained by celestial bodies to rule the earth.

Along with the rather glorified tale of Mayawati's ‘achievements', the book has given due space to the stoic founder and catalyst of BSP: Kanshi Ram . Ram is rightly said to be the original crusader of Dalit rights in the BSP scheme of things. His relentless work among the Dalits which started in Punjab, his nuanced understanding of grassroots social change, his native cunning in terms of alignments and realignments, even with enemies, and ruthless realpolitik, enabled the unification of fragmented sections and provided them a united voice in the ‘power game'.

Kanshi Ram played a catalytic role in changing the complexion of power politics in UP by imparting a strong sense of strength and identity to the socially oppressed. Mayawati owes her present prominence to the incredible start and paradigm shift that Kanshi Ram originally crafted with meticulous detail and tenacious resilience. In the chapter ‘Kanshi Ram', Bose has described his struggle to form BAMCEF (trade union front) and the original inception which became a platform for this fight - and flight to power.

Bose describes Mayawati as a pragmatic leader focussed on electoral gains. "She thinks in a straight line, which is the shortest distance to get from point A to point B." He writes: "The Dalit leader is fiercely focused, and more importantly, not at all bothered about political conventions or ideological principles."

No wonder she aligned with the communal BJP, even backed Narendra Modi. This total ‘end of ideology' has helped Mayawati in wooing her arch enemies and focussing on her latest trump card: the all inclusive ‘Sarvajan'. The change in social engineering can be seen from the slogans that the BSP used in 2007 UP elections: Haathi nahin ganesh hai Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai and Brahmin shankh bajayega, haathi aagey badhta jaayega. Old ‘anti-Manuwadi' slogans attacking the Brahmins, Thakurs and Banias like Tilak, Taraju aur Talwar -- inko maaro joote chaar' have been promptly discarded. Indeed, her cynics might be right: there is no reason why Mayawati might not join hands with the fascist forces in the future, including Modi. Let's not forget, that she was first the ‘Behenji' of Lalji Tandon and Murli Manohar Joshi.

However, Bose stretches the argument a bit too much when he visualises Mayawati capturing the Centre through her social engineering skills. In the chapter ‘Prime Minister Mayawati', he argues that her current alliance with the Brahmins will be replicated by her lieutenant Satish Chandra Mishra beyond the territorial boundaries of UP. This seems superficial, lacking insight into the complex differences between specific castes societies in different regions. Unlike in UP, most caste-based parties in other states, such as the RPI in Maharashtra, have conventionally aligned or are chalking out alliances with other parties like the Congress which has proved beneficial for the Congress. Significantly, the numerical figures of communities who voted for Mayawati in UP are not the same as in other states.

Besides, Dalits in other states like Punjab and Bihar have not thrown their lot behind Behenji. For instance, despite the bad deal since Independence, the landless and oppressed Dalits in feudal rural Punjab dominated by Jat Sikhs, still trust the Congress and have voted for the party, as in the Malwa region in the last assembly polls. And the fact is, Mayawati and her party has never really taken up the ‘Dalit cause' at the most marginal levels-fighting for their constitutional rights, taking on the might of the upper castes and the Indian State, waging a protracted land struggle - as the communists and Naxalites have done through the decades, including the current non-violent ‘people's movements' in Nandigram, to the Narmada valley. From Gohana to Jhajjar to Khairlanji - the Maywati factor seems stunningly missing.

Dalit singer Bant Singh's hands and legs were amputated after a murderous attack by upper caste men because he dared to politically fight them after his daughter was raped; he fought for social justice in the bylanes of his village earlier as a BSP supporter. Indeed, it seems, Mayawati can't even emotionally relate to similar stories of Dalit empowerment and resistance in several parts of India. For obsessively power-centric Mayawati, the Bant Singhs and their valiant struggles in Mansa, makes no ideological or political sense.

As for her great iconic political future in the power establishment, as Ajoy Bose prophesises, the scary question remains: Will she continue to erect her own statues all over India, or will she consider fighting the cause of Dalits and other oppressed sections like Bant Singh? That's the million ‘diamond' question.