MAYA’S MARCH

outside Uttar Pradesh every Sunday. “By the end of 2008, she would have met every BSP activist across the country at least once,” says an aide. And their numbers are evidently on the rise.

After her May 2006 election victory, Mayawati has not taken a day off. On December 31, when most politicians disappeared for some year-end merry making, the Dalit leader was addressing a gathering at Varkala, Kerala, of the Ezhava community in memory of Sree Narayana Guru, the 19th century social reformer of Kerala who had shaken the caste system in the state.

As Chief Minister, she is sending out the right signals to her political constituency—by promising incentives for industrialists who initiate affirmative action and by introducing reservation for Dalits in Public Private Partnerships (PPP). Getting a foothold across the country and expanding the party’s presence is Maya’s priority now. She has addressed huge gatherings in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab in recent months. “The BSP has become a necessary part of all political calculations in these key states,” says Brajesh Pathak, party MP who is also among the party’s Brahmin faces.

There are many factors that are helping her. Other Dalit parties across the country are on the decline—factions of the RPI in Maharashtra, Puthiya Tamizhagam in Tamil Nadu and various factions of the Dalit Panthers could not grow despite the growing awareness in their potential catchment areas. “All these parties have been reduced to appendages of other parties. Like the Congress runs a Scheduled Caste cell, the RPI (Athawle faction) has become a cell of Sharad Pawar’s NCP, while in Tamil Nadu, Puthiya Tamizhagam and Dalit Panthers act as cells for either of the Dravidian parties,” says Ambeth Rajan, a BSP Rajya Sabha member.

Rajan, a Tamil and a follower of Periyar Ramasamy Naicker’s reformist agenda, was converted to Kanshi Ram’s philosophy of empowerment through political power in the early 1980s. Rajan travelled with Kanshi Ram to every nook and corner of the country—a strategy that the BSP founder relentlessly pursued for building the organisation.

“In Tamil Nadu, leaders of Dravidian parties keep pictures of Rama and Periyar side by side. The spirit of Periyar has been compromised and the BSP will revive it,” he says.

Then, there is an evident leadership vacuum in Dalit politics in different parts of the country. “The Khailarji violence in Maharashtra proved how toothless the Republican Party has become as a vehicle of Dalit aspiration,” points out Sudha Pai, author of Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: BSP in UP. The clashes in Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh between Dalits and backward castes in September 2007 made a similar point. “The Dalits of the area were eagerly waiting for Mayawati to arrive, which she did subsequently,” recalls Pai, who had visited the area then.

At her rally in Mumbai recently, participants were calling Mayawati “mother”, a status the poor amongst the Dalits had till now reserved for Indira Gandhi.

But Maya’s constituency is not just limited to poor Dalits who lament over upper caste oppression. As its population gets increasingly younger, Dalit aspiration too has changed in recent years. “The younger lot is seeing Mayawati as the peak of Dalit success and look up to her,” says Pai. “A large, articulate Dalit middle class is being formed. They are unwilling to accede to a Congress-style accommodation,” says Chandrabhan Prasad, a commentator on Dalit affairs.

But the BSP’s march has not been without its limitations. In UP, the party’s big leap forward to capturing power was enabled by expanding its social base, particularly through an alliance with the Brahmins. The party had initially based its politics on a confrontationist agenda against the upper caste and after consolidating its hold over the Dalits, had moved on to an overarching alliance with the Brahmins.

Elsewhere in the country Mayawati cannot act on the confrontationist agenda before moving on to a rainbow coalition. So, Mayawati’s attempts in Kerala, for instance, to stitch an alliance between Dalits and backwards may not be easily digestible.

Second, Mayawati is not willing to create and hand over command to strong state leaders. In Karnataka, she has poached P.G.R Scindhia from the Janata Dal (Secular) and he is a leader of prominence. In other states, the BSP state president is faceless and she likes to keep it that way. But this could cut both ways, analysts feel. “Kanshi Ram created a Mayawati but she has created none,” Pai points out.

“But that keeps the spotlight on Mayawati as the ultimate leader,” says Prasad.

Mayawati has now set out to do something that even Ambedkar couldn’t create—a pan-Indian Dalit party. Will she succeed where the RPI failed? The RPI too had set out to spread across the country but disintegrated, with its leaders joining other parties. Even Mallikarjun Kharge, Karnataka State Congress president, started his political career in the RPI.

Maya is out to reverse that process and the Karnataka assembly election is her next litmus test. States such as Karnataka, where the Dalit population and political awareness are high but mobilisation is low, are ideal grounds for the BSP.

The elephant, which was originally the election symbol of the RPI, now belongs to the BSP. Other Dalit leaders have compromised for power. Mayawati, too, has compromised, but on her own terms, often making the Congress and the BJP a junior appendage. “The BSP will upset calculations of everyone, particularly the Congress, across the country,” says Prasad.

Since every state and region has its unique characteristics, replicating the UP strategy may not be possible. But then Mayawati’s biggest success so far has been her ability to micro-manage to the extent of making winning social combinations for individual constituencies.

She may or may not succeed but never before has a Dalit leader come this close to Raisina Hill.