The Hype about the BSP (this appeared in The Economic Times, January 5, 2008)
After the BSP won a simple majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, there is hype about Mayawati and her party in the media. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister’s recent visit to Chennai and the BSP’s role, in the elections to the Gujarat assembly, are just a couple of instances of this. An impression is sought to be created that the BSP will end up playing the kingmaker in May 2009 or even earlier if elections to the Lok Sabha are advanced.
The BSP, without doubt, is an important party and will remain a force in the political discourse in Uttar Pradesh for several years. This is not to say that the party’s strength in the next Lok Sabha will go up, in proportion to its strength in the state assembly. In other words, there is no way that the BSP can win 35 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh. The party’s Lok Sabha strength will continue to hover around 19, its strength in the Lok Sabha now. And most of that will come from Uttar Pradesh; the only other state from where the BSP could win Lok Sabha seats would be Karnataka and even there it will not win more than a couple seats.
In Tamil Nadu, where Mayawati called upon the Dalits to unite behind the BSP, there are political parties such as the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (the Dalit Panthers) and the Puthiya Tamilagam that have consolidated into powerful and representative platforms of the Dalits in the northern and the southern districts of the state. This consolidation of the Dalits had been taking place in the past couple of decades against the increasingly violent forms of dominance by the other backward castes, whose members had captured the leadership of the DMK and the AIADMK in the districts and down below.
These Dalit exclusivist platforms have not been able to win more than a couple of assembly seats in the past several years. Even that was possible only with the help of the DMK. The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal has two MLAs in the assembly now and the party was an ally in the DMK-led Democratic Front in May 2006. And the Puthiya Tamilagam has no representative in the assembly because it failed to manage a place in the alliance. These two parties have ensured a complete consolidation of the Dalits behind them.
And this helped them contain acts of violence against the community; the emergence of these parties and their organisational growth was carried out in a manner where the youth in the community was mobilised to retaliate with equal force. This has ensured that the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal and the Puthiya Tamilagam continue to sustain themselves as powerful political platforms notwithstanding their inability to emerge as strong groups in the assembly. The BSP has none of these attributes.
Moreover, there is a substantial difference between the social-polity in Tamil Nadu (as well as most other states) and Uttar Pradesh. And that has to do with the significantly large Brahmin population in the state. The proportion of the Brahmins in Tamil Nadu is rather insignificant: just about 3% of the population. It is at least four times more in Uttar Pradesh. This means that the BSP’s chemistry in Uttar Pradesh made of a Dalit-Brahmin social alliance will not mean much in Tamil Nadu in terms of winning elections.
This is true of almost all the states other than Uttar Pradesh.
In Bihar, for instance, the BSP has come a cropper in all elections in the past. In May 2004, for instance, the BSP fielded candidates in all the 40 constituencies and 39 of them forfeited their security deposits. The BSP could not achieve in Bihar what it could in Uttar Pradesh and this was the case even in those parts of Bihar that are contiguous with Uttar Pradesh, and some of them have a substantive Brahmin population too. The reason is historical.
The presence of one or another left group in Bihar including the Maoists have redefined scope of the Dalit agenda in substantive terms and thus closed the potential for the BSP to emerge in Bihar. This is the case with the BSP and Andhra Pradesh too. As for Gujarat, the discourse in the state is substantially different from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar or Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu. The BSP may have polled 2.64% of the votes. This certainly is not a sign of the party having arrived in the state.
Any party with resources could ensure a couple of per cent votes across India in the context where the election laws have been changed to curtail the number of independent candidates (by way of increasing the security deposit). The BSP has been spending its money (and it has a lot to spend) by fielding candidates everywhere and thus been able to garner votes that would have otherwise gone to independents. It helps the party to claim a couple of per cent votes in almost all the states.
This is different from what happened in Uttar Pradesh. The BSP arrived with a bang in November 1989, polling close to 10% of the votes. The party improved its vote percentage in every election after that, when it built further on the Dalit exclusivist agenda and then added the Brahmin votes to its kitty, beginning 1999. This happened because the Brahmin population in Uttar Pradesh is substantive; and also the fact that there are several Brahmins among the ganglords who control the society and politics in Uttar Pradesh.
Hari Shankar Tiwari and Amarmani Tripathi, for instance, are not software professionals or B-school graduates, waiting for a H1-B visa to the US. They have a reputation for possessing weapons and expertise in using them. They are part of the mafia and there are a whole lot of criminal cases pending against them. They refuse to accept that India is now a democracy; and the democratic state too lets them behave the way feudal chieftains do!
The BSP clicked in Uttar Pradesh because Mayawati could muster such men as her supporters; and these lords found it useful to be part of the BSP. The BSP, after all, achieved what it did in 1989 in Uttar Pradesh only because the state did not have a tradition of radical mobilisation of the landless sections of the society as well as the fact that Kanshi Ram had built an organisation, in each and every Dalit locality across Uttar Pradesh without anyone really noticing him do that. There is no such BSP organisation in Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat or Rajasthan or in Tamil Nadu. And hence the hype about the BSP is misplaced.
After the BSP won a simple majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, there is hype about Mayawati and her party in the media. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister’s recent visit to Chennai and the BSP’s role, in the elections to the Gujarat assembly, are just a couple of instances of this. An impression is sought to be created that the BSP will end up playing the kingmaker in May 2009 or even earlier if elections to the Lok Sabha are advanced.
The BSP, without doubt, is an important party and will remain a force in the political discourse in Uttar Pradesh for several years. This is not to say that the party’s strength in the next Lok Sabha will go up, in proportion to its strength in the state assembly. In other words, there is no way that the BSP can win 35 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh. The party’s Lok Sabha strength will continue to hover around 19, its strength in the Lok Sabha now. And most of that will come from Uttar Pradesh; the only other state from where the BSP could win Lok Sabha seats would be Karnataka and even there it will not win more than a couple seats.
In Tamil Nadu, where Mayawati called upon the Dalits to unite behind the BSP, there are political parties such as the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (the Dalit Panthers) and the Puthiya Tamilagam that have consolidated into powerful and representative platforms of the Dalits in the northern and the southern districts of the state. This consolidation of the Dalits had been taking place in the past couple of decades against the increasingly violent forms of dominance by the other backward castes, whose members had captured the leadership of the DMK and the AIADMK in the districts and down below.
These Dalit exclusivist platforms have not been able to win more than a couple of assembly seats in the past several years. Even that was possible only with the help of the DMK. The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal has two MLAs in the assembly now and the party was an ally in the DMK-led Democratic Front in May 2006. And the Puthiya Tamilagam has no representative in the assembly because it failed to manage a place in the alliance. These two parties have ensured a complete consolidation of the Dalits behind them.
And this helped them contain acts of violence against the community; the emergence of these parties and their organisational growth was carried out in a manner where the youth in the community was mobilised to retaliate with equal force. This has ensured that the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal and the Puthiya Tamilagam continue to sustain themselves as powerful political platforms notwithstanding their inability to emerge as strong groups in the assembly. The BSP has none of these attributes.
Moreover, there is a substantial difference between the social-polity in Tamil Nadu (as well as most other states) and Uttar Pradesh. And that has to do with the significantly large Brahmin population in the state. The proportion of the Brahmins in Tamil Nadu is rather insignificant: just about 3% of the population. It is at least four times more in Uttar Pradesh. This means that the BSP’s chemistry in Uttar Pradesh made of a Dalit-Brahmin social alliance will not mean much in Tamil Nadu in terms of winning elections.
This is true of almost all the states other than Uttar Pradesh.
In Bihar, for instance, the BSP has come a cropper in all elections in the past. In May 2004, for instance, the BSP fielded candidates in all the 40 constituencies and 39 of them forfeited their security deposits. The BSP could not achieve in Bihar what it could in Uttar Pradesh and this was the case even in those parts of Bihar that are contiguous with Uttar Pradesh, and some of them have a substantive Brahmin population too. The reason is historical.
The presence of one or another left group in Bihar including the Maoists have redefined scope of the Dalit agenda in substantive terms and thus closed the potential for the BSP to emerge in Bihar. This is the case with the BSP and Andhra Pradesh too. As for Gujarat, the discourse in the state is substantially different from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar or Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu. The BSP may have polled 2.64% of the votes. This certainly is not a sign of the party having arrived in the state.
Any party with resources could ensure a couple of per cent votes across India in the context where the election laws have been changed to curtail the number of independent candidates (by way of increasing the security deposit). The BSP has been spending its money (and it has a lot to spend) by fielding candidates everywhere and thus been able to garner votes that would have otherwise gone to independents. It helps the party to claim a couple of per cent votes in almost all the states.
This is different from what happened in Uttar Pradesh. The BSP arrived with a bang in November 1989, polling close to 10% of the votes. The party improved its vote percentage in every election after that, when it built further on the Dalit exclusivist agenda and then added the Brahmin votes to its kitty, beginning 1999. This happened because the Brahmin population in Uttar Pradesh is substantive; and also the fact that there are several Brahmins among the ganglords who control the society and politics in Uttar Pradesh.
Hari Shankar Tiwari and Amarmani Tripathi, for instance, are not software professionals or B-school graduates, waiting for a H1-B visa to the US. They have a reputation for possessing weapons and expertise in using them. They are part of the mafia and there are a whole lot of criminal cases pending against them. They refuse to accept that India is now a democracy; and the democratic state too lets them behave the way feudal chieftains do!
The BSP clicked in Uttar Pradesh because Mayawati could muster such men as her supporters; and these lords found it useful to be part of the BSP. The BSP, after all, achieved what it did in 1989 in Uttar Pradesh only because the state did not have a tradition of radical mobilisation of the landless sections of the society as well as the fact that Kanshi Ram had built an organisation, in each and every Dalit locality across Uttar Pradesh without anyone really noticing him do that. There is no such BSP organisation in Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat or Rajasthan or in Tamil Nadu. And hence the hype about the BSP is misplaced.
posted by Krishna Ananth at
10:13 PM
1 Comments:
Among middle-class cirles, it is a fashionable argument that Dalits (or for that matter of all non 'generals') vote on sectarian terms, without concern for 'development'.
That argument disinforms the rather amusing idea that Mayawati can become a national leader. For the classes who espouse the very essentialist (and casteist) idea of a Dalit, the dots join themselves to spell "PM Mayawati".
The rise of the BSP in UP was no flash in the pan. A Dalit party was not its destiny. Rather, conditions and grassroot organisation went into the making of the first single-party government in nearly two decades in UP.
A good part of the stunned reaction by the media and its worshippers to Mayawati's victory was from the fact that most media gave a skip to the formative years of the BSP, when Kanshi Ram criss-crossed the state, garnering support from Dalit basties. The growth of Dalit politics in UP was a steady process, not the upheaveal the media portrays it to be.
The position of Dalits in the economic/caste structure in UP, as pointed out is different from that in other states. A party would die a deserved death if it tried to cobble a Dalit-Brahmin alliance in Tamil Nadu, to cite one scenario.
It works in UP as Dalits and Brahmins are mutually antagonistic towards the land-owning upper castes -- the Dalits because of the oppression and the Brahmins because of the joust for social superiority.
In hardly any other state is this structure to be formed, where Brahmin and Rajput compete for the upper echlon of the ladder, even as the Singhs kick the Dalits who claw at the bottom rungs. Without this structure, the Brahmin-Dalit alliance is a no-starter.
One thing I'd have liked in this essay is a discussion on Madhya Pradesh -- a state which goes to elections soon. It's the state closest to UP in social structure, and Mayawati has sent her Brahmin lieutenant to stroke up a Brahmin -Dalit coalition there.
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