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BJP's overtures to Dalits drive Mayawati round the bend

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati seems to be at her wit's end. And none other than the Bharatiya Janata Party is responsible for it.

The strategy of the BJP, which has been targeting the Dalit votebank, has evidently made Mayawati jittery, since it has made some dent in the otherwise exclusive BSP domain.

Once realisation dawned in the highest levels of the upper caste dominated Sangh Parivar that the BJP could expand its votebank only by wooing OBCs and Dalits, the party's bigwigs instantly got into action. In politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, the first step was taken years ago with the projection of Kalyan Singh (an OBC).

In the second round, Kalyan Singh further consolidated his position by digging into the OBC votebank of other parties and thereby talking the party's political graph to an all-time high of 60 seats (including two of its allies) in the last general election.

Once the BJP had succeeded in its OBC-wooing plan, the party's new target were the Dalits. It began with the appointment of a Dalit TDP member as Lok Sabha Speaker, followed by that of a Haryanvi Dalit, Suraj Bhan, as UP governor. The message was loud and clear: the BJP was out to refurbish its image and fast remove its tag of being an 'upper caste Hindu party'.

That the party's new strategy had begun to pay dividends is evident from the BSP's sharp reactions that speaks volumes of the brewing frustration at the party's highest level, and which culminated in Mayawati's recent arrest following a flop demonstration.

The party's senior vice president, who has always been BSP chief Kanshi Ram's heir-apparent, has really become jittery of late. Failing to raise any real issue, she sought to extract political mileage from what she termed as "gross neglect" and "abandoning" of her dream project -- the Rs 1 billion Ambedkar Park initiated by her when she was chief minister in a BSP-BJP coalition last year.

But her much-publicised Dalit rally proposed to be held at the incomplete Ambedkar Park as well as the threatened gherao of Raj Bhavan, remained a non-event. Despite Mayawati's tall claims of enlisting an attendance of tens of thousands of people, only 2,880 BSP volunteers courted arrested in different parts of the state for defying the restrictions imposed by the government on their movement.

Mayawati was taken into custody along with party MP Arif Mohammed Khan and a legislator, Daya Ram Pal, as she stepped out of her residence to march down to the governor's house. But what obviously became extremely embarrassing for the Dalit leader was the presence of not more than eight party volunteers to offer arrest along with her. Another MP and five other legislators were picked up from the railway station on their arrival from different corners of the state, while Kanshi Ram was taken into custody at Delhi airport, officials said.

Stringent preventive measures taken by the Kalyan Singh government did not allow the BSP plan to take off, and the protest remained a non-event. Both the rally and the dharna were formally banned by the administration. Not even a single BSP volunteer could make it to the venue of the proposed rally. The volunteers were barred through an official circular issued by the state home secretary to each of the 85 districts to restrict the movement of BSP workers.

The circular, issued on May 19, directed the district magistrates in no uncertain terms to "prevent movement of BSP workers from their respective districts to Lucknow on both May 20 and 21". It went on to add, 'It is imperative that the crowd collection of BSP be dispersed at the formation stage, rigorous checking of ticketless travellers on these dates be undertaken.'

Officials down the line were further warned, 'Failure to prevent movement of BSP workers from your district towards Lucknow will be viewed seriously by the state government. Kindly ensure all necessary preventive actions needed to abort mobilisation at Ambedkar Park in Lucknow on May 21'.

In Lucknow the police had swung into action the previous evening itself, when a virtual siege was laid both around Mayawati's home as well as the governor's house. Meanwhile, Mayawati called a press conference at 10 that morning, but the police barred the entry of journalists. "She is under house arrest, so you cannot meet her," officials told mediapersons.

In the meantime, Mayawati came out of her home and walked till the wooden barricades guarded by a heavy police contingent. After a brief altercation with the police, she was finally arrested, only to be released along with others later in the evening.

Asked what was the cause of the party's ire against Governor Suraj Bhan, that she threatened to gherao Raj Bhavan, she pointed out, "Well, we wish to tell this Dalit governor that he should refrain from playing into the hands of the BJP and confront Babasaheb Ambedkar by turning a blind eye to the latter's public humiliation."

The governor, who cut short his Nainital trip to return to the state capital the same afternoon, however, Rediff On The NeT, "I am still not aware why the BSP is resorting to such extreme measures when their leaders have not even cared to meet me once and apprise me of their grouse." About Mayawati charging him with "confronting Ambedkar", he remarked, "I am a bhakt of Ambedkar myself and would ensure that there is no discrimination against that great architect of the Constitution."

"Let me tell you that even while I was deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha, I demanded that the house in which Ambedkar lived in Delhi be converted into a national monument." And added, "As far as completion of the Ambedkar Park is concerned, I am sure the BJP government has no intentions of abandoning it; that is Mayawati's own figment of imagination. After all, a thing like this cannot be just abandoned midway, irrespective of who initiated it."

Later that evening, while addressing a press conference, Kalyan Singh remarked, "The poor response to the BSP's demonstration reflects the falling political graph of the BSP." He claimed knowledge of increasing frustration in the BSP cadres against what he termed as "dictatorship" of the party leadership. "We had received intelligence reports about possible large-scale violence, hence we had no choice but to impose the restrictions," he pointed out.

Mayawati's frustration was writ large in the eight-page pamphlet, issued on the day of the rally. Described as an 'appeal to Dalits, most backwards and Muslims', it was more in the nature of a clarification about the alleged large-scale misappropriation of funds in the Ambedkar Park project (that is a subject matter of a high level probe). And it also castigated the BJP for playing the 'Dalit card' by appointing a Dalit as Lok Sabha speaker and another as UP governor.

The chief minister played yet another trump card by formally handing over an ancient fort built by the only Dalit, Raja Bijli Pasi, to the 'Pasi' community which had been staunch supporters of the BSP. Standing in a ruinous state, the fort had remained in oblivion until members of the Pasi Dalit community made it an issue during Mayawati's chief ministership. The BSP promptly responded by even holding a Pasi rally there. Subsequently, when Mulayam Singh Yadav took over, he too tried to play it up by promising to hand it over to Pasis. However, it was Kalyan Singh who not only fulfilled the lip-assurance from his arch adversaries, but by also announcing a grant of Rs 2.5 million for the fort's beautification.

No wonder therefore, Suraj Bhan remained the target of her tirade even in a press conference held on May 25, when she even went to the extent of accusing him of interfering in the day to day working of a popular government in UP. "What else does the governor mean by declaring that he would hold divisional-level meetings to assess the progress of developmental works in different parts of the state," she asked, while adding, "Wouldn't this mean that there is a constitutional crisis in the state?"

Surely, there is much more than what meets the eye. After all Mayawati is not naïve to miss out on the overall impact of Suraj Bhan's statewide tours, during which he proposes to have a one-to-one contact with the man on the street. Soon word would spread that the BJP has brought in a Dalit governor, who is out to reach out to the masses. And who could deny that it would mean danger signals for Mayawati and her political outfit that considers the Dalit votebank its exclusive pocket-borough.

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