The signs are clear: Maya is marching on

The replicas of Parliament and India Gate at her recent rally, her slogans, her attack on Rahul—Mayawati makes no attempt to hide her national ambitions

The Bahujan Samaj Party’s victory in the by-polls for three Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats in UP comes in the backdrop of Mayawati’s attempts at becoming a key player on the national political scene. While her newly-acquired hold over UP seems to be far from over—despite speculations of a possible alliance against her by her opponents after the Tikait episode—she has her sights set firm on expanding beyond the state.

The BSP strategy is simple: consolidate the core and acquire greater support outside the core. While socially it has meant playing up the Dalit empowerment symbolism even while constructing a Sarva Samaj—meaning upper caste, Muslim and lower OBC—discourse, geographically it has meant using the success achieved in UP to send a strong message across India that Mayawati has finally arrived on the national scene.

Aware that the Congress is the “national” claimant of her core Dalit vote, Mayawati has made it a point to attack Rahul Gandhi over his stay in Dalit and tribal homes. While Rahul Gandhi seems to believe that the symbolism of night-stays at Dalit homes will help recover lost electoral ground, Mayawati makes it a point to claim that he bathes with a special soap afterwards to implicitly suggest that a hidden “untouchability” underlies the “Yuvraj’s” egalitarianism.

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Mayawati has conducted a string of public meetings covering different parts of the country, making it a point to project herself as the future Prime Minister of India. From the use of slogans like ‘UP to hamari hai; ab Dilli ki baari hai (UP is ours; now it’s time to capture Delhi)’ to the construction of a wooden replica of Parliament at the venue of her public meeting at Agra, the national aspirations of the BSP are clear all the way. Significantly, Mayawati generally begins her address with her national aspirations and makes the region-centric announcements right at the end, revealing her priorities.

In every Mayawati rally across the country, one finds an innovative social engineering at work. Aware of the deep emotional urge for a political agency among Dalits, her rallies have stuck to the core symbolism of Dalit empowerment and liberation. Before the predictably late arrival of the leader herself, the stage for her arrival is set through folk songs celebrating B.R. Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Sri Narayana Guru and Kanshi Ram.

At the venue of the latest rally at Agra to celebrate Ambedkar’s 117th birth anniversary, one could see a large cutout of Mayawati standing in a pose reminiscent of Ambedkar statues: a Constitution-like book in the left hand and the index finger of the right hand pointing outwards.

Even as the Dalit cause acquires centre-stage in her rallies, the Sarv Samaj rhetoric is employed side-by-side, as part of a bid to expand beyond the core Dalit constituency. Local leaders from among the upper castes—particularly Brahmins—and any other numerically important communities are also made to speak briefly, and they make it a point to highlight their community identity even while celebrating Dalit empowerment. Interestingly, one local Brahmin leader in Karnal in Haryana suffixed ‘Jai Parshuram’ to the BSP’s conventional slogan ‘Jai Bhim, Jai Bharat’, showing how Mayawati has so far managed to balance the somewhat contradictory symbolisms of Dalit empowerment and past Brahminical glory.