After statue, Maya's deity fancy

A week is a long time in politics. Harold Wilson's one line wisdom has stood test of time for decades. That the political commentators are swayed by events to make predictions are commentaries on fallacy of being forgetful of what Wilson had so succinctly surmised.  

Only a few weeks back the Mayawati led BSP was rattled. The prominent face of the party in Uttar Pradesh Swamy Prasad Mourya had quit. He was followed by two more in quick succession. They all went out by alleging Mayawati's penchant for "money for tickets". Mayawati was seen defensive and waiting to see how many more would bolt her stable. She was apparently faced with a script of sabotage from within her party even before she launched the campaign to wrest the power back in the next year's elections in the state.

Mayawati

The BJP dropped a rope to Mayawati to swing back from the zone of self-doubt to that where she could street-fight her battle for Lucknow. The vice president of the state unit of the BJP Dayashankar Singh had a momentary loss of sanity to believe a public place as his private abode to abuse Mayawati. He succumbed to profanity. The Rajya Sabha was rocked. Leader of the House Arun Jaitely apologised. The BJP sacked Dayashankar Singh. He went into hiding, as the Akhilesh Yadav government went after him with full might.

The cadre of the BSP came on the street. The party battered in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections found the veins swelling with energy. The blue flag embossed with image of an elephant spurted on Lucknow streets. The verdict in New Delhi was out, that the BJP had handed the seat of power in Lucknow to Mayawati on a platter. The verdict was not misplaced either, for the BJP chief Amit Shah had been feasting and bathing with Dalits to win them over in the run up to the UP elections. The BJP story seemed over in UP. 

Dalits were bashed up in faraway Gujrat as well. They were flogged allegedly for skinning dead cows. The cow vigilantes have mushroomed north of Vidhyanchal strongly. The Narendra Modi government's ministry of agriculture and farmer welfare has rolled out ambitious plans for protection of cows. But the cow-worshipers choose not to remember that a few Dalits eke out their livings out of the skins of dead bovines. And, thus, the plan of feasting and bathing with Dalits by Amit Shah met with its anti-thesis in Una in Gujrat. The story which began with the suicide of Rohith Vemula on the Hyderabad University campus spread far and wide, that the BJP's love for Dalits was farcical. And, the BJP should forget taking a bite of the 20 per cent Dalit vote base pie in the electoral demography of Uttar Pradesh.

But politics is not stagnant waters. It's rather a flowing river. It absorbs the upheavals and goes on. And,

Dayashankar Singh

thus, the feast of abuse hosted by Dayashankar Singh was not the last one. Mayawati chose to become a deity from a wily politician. She sensed she could be the J Jayalaitha of Uttar Pradesh. And, she unleashed the hooligans upon the wife and minor daughter of Dayashankar Singh. Her crowd wanted his minor daughter. The woman and the girl were hurled choicest abuses. The battered women took shelter with the law of the land against the lynch mob set on them by Mayawati. They lodged an FIR against the BSP supremo. The score is now level. Akhilesh Yadav can now have the last laugh.

Mayawati's rise to political prominence in Uttar Pradesh had never been on account of militant Dalit politics. She had in contrast been the beneficiary of the Brahamanical uprising against the Mandal politics of the state. The BJP liberated her from the shadow of the BSP founder Kanshi Ram. The wily lawyer-turned-politician Satish Chandra Mishra made her the "Iron lady" of Uttar Pradesh. She practiced the mantra of "Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhay". Mishra helped her in scripting unprecedented social engineering in the run up to the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. She won support of upper castes, most backward castes, extremely backward castes, and, thus, became the queen of the UP politics. She built her political castle whose base was the 20 per cent Dalit vote constituency but the structure was provided by non-Yadav castes. 

Mayawati now appears to have overturned her mantra. Now, she threatens caste polarization. By fueling militant Dalit politics, her castle stands the risk to crumble with other castes likely to polarize against her. Uttar Pradesh is not a Tamil Nadu. The cow-belt is hardly congenial to militant Dalit politics. The past has shown that Dalits alone can not send Mayawati to the seat of power in Lucknow. She appears far from scripting the repeat of the magic of 2007. Much waters have flown in the Ganges in the last one decade.

This blogger had pointedly asked the then president of a national party how much money he had spent in the 2012 UP Assembly elections. He had paused, and then said "Rs 200 crores". He had apparently told the half truth. The amount was much higher. A cash starved political party stands no chance to win the UP elections. This is known to most of the political players. After leaving office in 2012, Mayawati has been out of power for more than four years now. She badly lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections not only because the Modi magic was blowing like a whirlwind, but also for the fact that her party had been financially drained. Even now she is said to be struggling to lay her hand into the deep pockets of her likely financiers. Those who allegedly benefited during her tenure in the office are either financially bankrupt or have passed away. 

No one raises a slogan on the street of Uttar Pradesh without laying hands on the green notes. Mayawati's show of strength on the Lucknow street may be her attempts to win the support of those who have deep pockets. But they are sitting on the fence. They believe in the words of Harold Wilson, that a week is a long time in politics.

And, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are still 10 months away.