Two heated clashes within the past six months between the Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and the Bharatiya Janata Party has pushed the latter against the wall while boosting the former’s prospects in next year’s Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
In February, the Dalit leader gained the upper hand over the ruling party after a much publicised argument in Parliament with then Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani over the suicide of Hyderabad University Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.
This week the Dalit leader had the entire BJP leadership grovelling at her feet in penance for the outrageous remark by its Uttar Pradesh vice-president Dayashankar Singh, comparing her to a prostitute.
Some months ago the BJP paid a heavy price for the needless theatrical manner with which Smriti Irani had sought to bully Mayawati when the latter raised the Rohith Vemula suicide issue in Parliament. Undaunted, Mayawati turned the tables on the former television soap opera star who in a rhetorical flourish offered her head if her version of the Dalit scholar’s tragic suicide was proved false. When shortly afterwards portions of her statement did turn out to be factually incorrect, Mayawati was quick to remind the minister of her earlier offer.
Ultimately the BSP leader had the last laugh with Irani losing her HRD ministerial perch in the recent cabinet reshuffle, largely because she had become a political liability to the BJP keen to woo the Dalits before the Uttar Pradesh polls. Rohith Vemula had become a Dalit icon in Uttar Pradesh even in rural areas where Irani was seen as the minister responsible for his death.
On the other hand, Irani’s clash with Mayawati in parliament brought the latter into prominence in the controversy over the Dalit scholar’s suicide, despite Hyderabad being far away from her bastion of Uttar Pradesh and where the BSP was not a major political force.
Self goals
Now the BJP has provided an even more potent rallying cry to Mayawati even as it hammered a second nail in its own coffin in Uttar Pradesh. Mayawati’s fiery response in the Rajya Sabha to Dayashankar Singh’s foul verbal assault was not only reminiscent of her youthful firebrand days but also elicited unanimous full throated backing from the entire Opposition both within the House and outside.
Significantly, even the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha, who is supposedly close to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, described “sister” Mayawati as a “peerless leader of the oppressed masses” and said that the BJP leader, by abusing her, had brought disgrace to the party and demanded his prompt expulsion and punishment.
The public limelight on the BSP chief, coming as it does amidst growing attacks on Dalits in BJP ruled states most notably Gujarat, is likely to further consolidate and amplify her already formidable hold on the Dalit vote in Uttar Pradesh. It also provides her an emotional momentum just at the right time to propel her party’s campaign over the coming months before the Assembly polls.
The massive angry demonstration by the BSP cadre in front of the Ambedkar statue in Lucknow on Thursday indicates the new dynamism in the party. Moreover the manner in which Dayashankar Singh’s intemperate remarks against Mayawati has exploded in his face will put her political rivals wary of criticising her too fiercely as the poll campaign heats up and will make those rebels who recently left her squirm uncomfortably, fearing a Dalit backlash.
In sharp contrast, the BJP looks down in the dumps in Uttar Pradesh with its carefully crafted outreach to Dalits and other lower castes in complete disarray. The large scale disturbances in Gujarat over atrocities against Dalits had already plunged the party into a serious dilemma considering that the state continues to be associated with Modi. Now that the party’s vice president in Uttar Pradesh has added insult to injury for the Dalit psyche, it would require extraordinary damage control by the top party leadership to even partially retrieve the situation.
Panic in the party
The wholesale panic in the ruling party and Modi government over the escalating Dalit controversy is evident. It is underlined by the frantic manner in which the errant Uttar Pradesh state vice-president was within a few hours removed from his post then expelled from the party for six years. He is now being asked to surrender to the police to be incarcerated for violating The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Considering that Dayashankar Singh was, till Wednesday afternoon, a key Thakur leader of the BJP who was expected to garner crucial votes in eastern Uttar Pradesh, shows just how shaky the top party leadership is feeling.
Ironically, while whatever desperate measures the BJP may take to defuse the current hostility of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh towards the party may be too little and too late, it could in the process also antagonise the Thakurs, considered so far to be its major vote bank.
Indeed, the Thakurs of eastern Uttar Pradesh under the leadership of the volatile Yogi Adityanath are already restless that the latter has not been named as the party’s chief ministerial candidate. A few weeks ago, the BJP president Amit Shah was heckled at a meeting near Gorakhpur by supporters of Yogi Adityanath demanding their leader be given due respect.
The humiliation by the party high command of a prominent Thakur leader like Dayashankar Singh for making remarks against a Dalit leader, that many in the community do not feel inappropriate because of age old prejudices, is not likely to go down well, which could further dent the prospects of the BJP.