The massive crowds at the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati’s largest public rally in recent years, on the occasion of her mentor and party’s founder late Kanshi Ram’s birth anniversary, has sent out two important political messages.
By spending vast financial resources and months-long organisational groundwork to put up such a grand show with the 2027 Uttar Pradesh state polls not far away, Behenji is signalling that she is not ready yet to throw in the towel despite her party’s relentless electoral decline over the past decade that has left it with no representation in Parliament and a solitary seat in the Legislative Assembly.
Simultaneously, by attacking the two main opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh—the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress—and adopting a conciliatory tone towards the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state government, the veteran Dalit leader has made it clear on whose side she is on.
Eyes on 2027 UP Polls
There is little doubt that Mayawati and her party face an existential crisis after repeated defeats in successive Parliamentary and Assembly elections. Even for a leader who has survived many ups and downs in her turbulent career, often snatching success from the jaws of defeat, the BSP’s vote percentage in her political bastion Uttar Pradesh dwindling to single figures and a mere two percent nationwide must be scary.
Faced with imminent political irrelevance, Behenji knows that she has to somehow stop the waning morale of her depleted core voter base mostly among middle-aged and elder Dalit sub-caste Jatavs before she loses even them.
Clearly, a large rally like the one the BSP supremo addressed in Lucknow last week does pick up the spirits of her remaining demoralised flock still clinging to the dream of a revival of the glory days of the erstwhile Dalit behemoth, when Behenji was in the seat of power in India’s most populous and politically crucial state.
Showing good tactical sense, Mayawati has chosen the right time, with enough time left for the 2027 electoral contest but not too far away to demonstrate that the somnolent BSP blue elephant was waking up again.
Maintaining Status Quo with BJP
Some analysts feel that the disastrous performance of the BJP in last year’s Lok Sabha polls is a result of the BSP's failure to pull in Dalit voters from the opposition INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh.
Unfortunately for Mayawati, her mutually convenient arrangement with the BJP while shielding her from a witch hunt on corruption charges from the government, is not good for the image of her party which had for long projected itself as opposed to the upper castes and the establishment both of which the ruling party represents.
It is an open secret among political and media circles in Uttar Pradesh that the BSP supremo has an understanding with the Yogi Adityanath-led state government that she nor her party leaders and activists would embarrass by agitating on controversial issues, even if it concerned atrocities on Dalits.
Last year, during the Lok Sabha poll campaign, when her nephew and declared political successor Akash Anand fiercely attacked the BJP’s sectarian politics, comparing it to the Taliban, he was promptly suspended from the party.
Dalits, including her core Jatav supporters are dismayed that Behenji, earlier known to be a firebrand who raised provocative slogans targeting the upper caste politics of the BJP, has remained largely silent on controversies that concern the dignity and safety of the community.
For instance, Mayawati has strangely refused to condemn or even comment on the recent provocative hurling of a shoe at the Dalit Chief Justice BR Gavai inside Supreme Court by a Hindu fanatic lawyer. She also seemed to turn to blind eye to the recent lynching of a Dalit in Rae Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh by a mob who said they were supporters of CM Adityanath.
Who Will Lead the Dalits?
The fact that Behenji in her speech at the rally went out of her way to express her personal gratitude to the saffron-clad monk for the upkeep of Dalit memorials and parks, even as she savagely attacked the Samajwadi Party and the Congress is the latest example of her political bias.
This has provided further impetus to younger and more confrontational upcoming Dalit leaders like Chandrasekhar Azad, who are not afraid to take on the BJP government on issues concerning Dalits, and is steadily corroding Mayawati’s own base among the community particularly among the younger and more politicised sections. In the Lok Sabha polls, Azad won handsomely trouncing his BSP rival who lost his deposit.
Significantly, she indirectly castigated Azad in her rally speech, warning the audience not to waste their vote “selfish and saleable” splinter leaders from the community.
She once again projected her nephew 30-year-old Anand, twice thrown out of the party but taken back, as the one who will carry forward her legacy along with that of Kanshi Ram.
However, after repeated humiliations by his domineering aunt, the young Dalit protégé is a pale shadow of his former enthusiastic self, afraid to trust his own political impulses and make the BSP a fighting force again. Having lost considerable stature both within the community and outside it is doubtful whether Anand can recreate the magic of the feisty Mayawati of the early years given virtually free hand to spearhead the Bahujan movement in Uttar Pradesh.
Ultimately, despite the never-say-die spirit of Mayawati and her ability to still marshal such a large audience at her rally, she may find it difficult to translate this into votes considering her isolation from most other castes and communities except her core Jatav which is also fast slipping away.
Still, Behenji, astride of her elephant, will not go down without a final charge.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)