'She feels it will send her to jail.'
Last week Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati sacked her nephew Akash Anand, who was perceived as her heir-apparent, from the party.
'As long as I am alive there will be no heir to the party,' Mayawati told supporters after sacking Anand.
Akash Anand's speeches reportedly struck a chord with BSP cadres who felt enthused that Mayawati had found a successor to lead the party which her late mentor Kanshi Ram founded in 1984.
Under her leadership the BSP reached its pinnacle when it formed the government in Uttar Pradesh in 2007 on its own, surprising political pundits.
Since 2012, after the loss of electoral power to the Samajwadi Party, it has been a downhill trajectory for the BSP.
Today the party has just one MLA in the state assembly.
So what has gone wrong for the BSP? Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com asked Sudha Pai, retired professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
"This downfall of the BSP was coming for a long time, but Mayawati made it worse by her own actions," says Pai, arguably the foremost authority on the BSP and the author of Dalits in the New Millenium and co-author of Politics of Representation: Historically Disadvantaged Groups in India's Democracy.
Mayawati recently sacked her nephew from the BSP for the second time. What is going on in her mind?
Mayawati has become very temperamental and part of it is that she is afraid of the Bharatiya Janata Party as she feels it will send her to jail (in corruption cases). They are putting pressure on her.
When Akash was first appointed he made a lot of speeches about the BJP and Yogi Adityanath, that he was running a bulldozer government, after which Mayawati removed Akash from the BSP.
Many people say there was pressure from the BJP against Akash and that is why she removed him.
People said she did so because the BJP was gunning for her over her unaccounted assets. This could be the reason why she sacked him at that point of time, but once the results of the 2024 general elections came out and the BSP did badly, she brought him back to the forefront.
Does Akash have the potential to become a successful leader?
It looks like that. He is young. He is learning fast and BSP cadres seem to like him.
Many people feel he could be the alternative to Chandra Shekhar Azad who is a young Dalit leader and from the Jatav caste.
Mayawati is saying now that Akash's father-in-law (Ashok Siddharth) worked against her. She feels that Akash and his father-in-law will remove her and take charge of the BSP.
Mayawati has become very suspicious of people. She has always been like that. She wants control of the party for as long as she is alive. She is apprehensive that she might lose control of the party.
Does Mayawati not realise that the BSP has been reduced to one MLA in UP, a state it ruled once?
I think she realises it, but she is not doing anything about it.
If you see, from 2012 onwards the BSP has been unravelling. It is doing very badly.
In 2019, very briefly, the BSP got 10 members of Parliament, but that was more due to the mahagathbandhan (with the Samajwadi Party). Otherwise the BSP is doing very badly in UP.
She probably thinks she has nothing to lose as the party is losing ground right now and she wants to buy time to make a comeback, which seems impossible now.
Is she not destroying the BSP then?
Mayawati destroyed the BSP in a number of ways if you look carefully at her actions in the past few years.
In 2012 the organisational structure of the BSP deteriorated largely because she got rid of a large number of people who were very useful to her. Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Baba Kushwaha, young leaders like Shrawan Kumar Nirala from Gorakhpur who was very close to her, she got rid of all of them.
In the 2022 elections Nirala wanted to contest elections from the BSP but she did not give him a ticket. He then quit the party and started an Ambedkarite organisation in Gorakhpur.
Mayawati's action led to the fragmentation of the party. This happened across regions of UP and many of her supporters went to the BJP. As a result we have a series of Ambedkarite organisations within the BJP, BSP and outside both the parties.
How different is she from Kanshi Ram?
Kanshi Ram prepared a second line leadership.
When he appointed Mayawati as his successor there was a lot of differences within the party.
For example, (Union Minister Of State) Anupriya Patel's father Sone Lal Patel in eastern UP, he quit the BSP to form his own party, the Apna Dal-Sonelal.
Many BSP leaders left at that time and the disintegration of BSP begins from early 2000. 2007 was a bit of a fluke for the party as it formed the government on its own strength in Uttar Pradesh.
She did a lot of work as chief minister of UP from 2007 to 2012. Somehow Dalits felt they will do very well (economically) after the BSP came to power. But that is not possible as Brahmins (in UP) have always been the elite class. They have always controlled everything and if you control the economy you control everything.
And post 2014, the rise of Narendra Modi and the rise of the Right changed things for her.
Whenever an upper caste political party does well in UP, the BSP does not do well. This happened during the Congress' time too and now it is happening during the BJP's time.
This downfall of the BSP was coming for a long time, but Mayawati made it worse by her own actions and her own doings.
She is 69 years old and the BSP has no other face. Does she not feel that the party is going nowhere?
If she saw it like that she would have allowed Akash Anand to continue or designated someone else. There are younger leaders in the BSP but Mayawati is so suspicious of people.
When I interviewed Chandra Shekhar Azad for my book he told me that he tried many times to meet Mayawati and join hands with her at the time he formed the Bhim Army.
However, Mayawati was very suspicious of Chandra Shekhar Azad and told him to stay away from her.
In places like Saharanpur, BSP cadres too were told to stay away from Chandra Shekhar Azad; in spite of all that he won the Nagina Lok Sabha constituency.
Will going back to caste politics and raising slogans against upper castes work again considering the Hindutva wave has become so strong in the country?
Ideologically, the BSP is a spent force.
Once she shifted from Bahujan Samaj (the Dalit community) to Sarvajan Samaj (universal community) and even before that in the latter part of the 1990s she gave a lot of tickets to upper castes and OBCs. This step made the smaller Dalit communities like Passis and Kushwahas feel that they have been neglected.
And once the party became an election fighting machine in the second half of 2000s there was no downward democratisation within the BSP as far as eastern UP is concerned.
The mobilisation of anti-upper castes ended by the second half of 1990s. They tried the Samajwadi Party alliance earlier (in 1993) and with the Congress (in 1996), so this led to a shift from a (political) movement to a party.
This destroyed the BSP because there was too much of shift.
Why did she never become a part of the INDIA group?
I think the BJP has a role to play in this because she is afraid of going to jail.
When we did field work and asked Dalits what would happen if Mayawati is sent to jail, they told us that they will hit the streets to protest.
They said she should go to jail because we respect Behenji (Mayawati).
'When atrocities are done on Dalits we call Dalit leader Chandra Shekhar Azad for help and we do not call her because Mayawati never hits the road to help us.'
'Hum BJP ko vote isiliye daal rahey hain kyon ki Behenji baahar uttarti nahi hai (we vote for the BJP because Mayawati never steps out of her house).'
She also changed some of her candidates in the 2024 parliamentary elections as I think she is afraid of the BJP and at their behest she made this move. She does not want to go to jail.
Are these charges of corruption very serious? Is there concrete proof?
There are charges against her which will stand up. All the assets she has were accumulated when she was (heading) the party.
And you never know, the BJP will put you in jail without having too much (proof) against you. They have done this to so many people (in the Opposition).
With the BJP you don't need a strong reason to put the Opposition in jail.
Today the Dalit movement in UP is in a post-BSP phase. By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, UP's experience of globalisation was very late and there was a shift from identity politics and desire for social justice to economic development.
Therefore, you will that see poorer Dalits who had no attachment to Mayawati went over to PM Modi's party.
PM Modi spoke about 'achche din' and employment. Also, they have been on a long phase of Hinduisation, like the Valmikis and the Passi caste.
Do these Dalits then get due respect under the UP government?
They are not getting respect, but getting welfare.
The smaller Dalits are very poor and they have nobody to turn to.
They do not want to vote for the Samajwadi Party because Yadavs are their oppressors in the countryside.
They do not want to support the BSP because it is nowhere.
The BJP gives them welfare, that is food.
If you do field work, the younger poorer Dalits will tell you that at least they are able to feed their parents and children under the BJP's rule.
They feel extremely humiliated to take this food, but have no option.
Therefore, in 2024, it was not only 'Samvidhan khatrey mein hai (the Constitution is in danger) that worked for the Opposition but also sheer economic distress post-Covid pushed Dalits towards the INDIA bloc in the general elections.
It was Akhilesh Yadav in alliance with the Congress, whom they used to vote once, and found them an alternative.
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