Mayawati’s past alliances with BJP stand in the way of what she now wants in UP: The Muslim vote

Only the politically naive would have thought that the 10th death anniversary of Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram would be a solemn and sombre occasion.

It turned out to be a mammoth rally by even the BSP standards at the sprawling Kanshi Ram Memorial in Lucknow on Sunday, drawing over 3,00,000 people from different corners of Uttar Pradesh.

The event also became an occasion for the party to sound its poll bugle in the state. “I am launching my party’s campaign for the 2017 state assembly election from here today,” party supremo Mayawati declared.

Mayawati made it clear that she is all set to concentrate on building a new political axis by bringing Muslims to join hands with Dalits, her core constituency.

In the list of candidates already announced by her party, more than 100 Muslim names already figure for the 403 seats in the assembly.

“I would like to appeal to Muslims to vote only for the Bahujan Samaj Party and to not waste their vote by casting it in favour of Samajwadi Party or for the Congress,” she said, thus making it clear that her first priority is to ensure that her party is seen as the only credible opponent to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Electoral maths

In a state where her core constituency of Dalits account for nearly 22% of the population and Muslims over 18%, a combination of the two could prove to be decisive.

In 2007, when the BSP got absolute majority, winning 206 in the house of 403, its vote share was 30.43%. Brahmin vote was said to have played a critical role in helping Mayawati expand her core vote base and secure power.

Traditionally, the Samajwadi Party has been the largest beneficiary of Muslim vote in the poll-bound state, at least since the destruction of the Babri masjid in 1992 that sent the Congress into a terminal decline.

But the ruling Samajwadi party, with family feuds and other dissensions, seems more than weakened at the moment with last year’s shocking lynching at Dadri and the utter failure of the Akhilesh government to give any sense of security to the Muslims, amid strident pro-Hindutva noises from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

It is this that had provided a bit of hope to the Congress as well, strengthened as the party feels by its poll strategist Prashant Kishor, and renewed focus by its vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

Earlier, in August, a large turnout at Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s own rally at Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency, had provided a ray of hope to the beleaguered grand old party.

While simply dismissing the Congress prospects by saying that the party lacks a voter base in the state, Mayawati made it a point to emphasise how internal differences had made the ruling Samajwadi Party into a sinking ship, thus positioning her party as the only party that could take on the might of the BJP.

Discrimination against Muslims has increased since the BJP came to power, Mayawati reminded her audience, while accusing the central government of trying to gain political mileage from the incidents on the India-Pakistan border and the line of control.

It was clear that Mayawati was loudly declaring that she will go all out to create a split in the M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) combination, the core social base of the Samajwadi Party. And thus create a Dalit-Muslim formula for her party’s return to power in the country’s most populous state, where she has done three brief stints and one full-length five-year term as chief minister.

“The Samajwadi Party is now a divided house - one led by Akhilesh [Yadav, the chief minister] and the other by Shivpal [Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother] And both would move heaven and earth to damage each other’s followers, so any vote cast in favour of SP was bound to go waste” , she observed in an obvious bid to dissuade Muslims from continuing to go with the Samajwadi Party.

She urged Muslims to recall how the Samajwadi Party government’s poor handling of the situation had led to the bloodbath in Muzaffarnagar where Muslims remained at the receiving end. She also cited the lynching of Akhlaq Mohammad over the issue of beef consumption in Dadri as another glaring failure of the Akhilesh government in ensuring safety and security of the minority community in the state.

“Remember that the BSP alone is capable of giving the BJP a run for its money”, she told the cheering crowds.

Ironically, the BJP has so far sought to dismiss Mayawati’s relevance, maintaining that it considers Samajwadi Pary as the party's main competition.

This is because the BJP hopes to keep the contest at least triangular, if not quadrilateral with the Congress as the fourth contender. The calculation is that by keeping the Samajwadi Party relevant, the oppositional, particularly the Muslim, vote would be divided among the SP, Congress and BSP, instead of shifting in one large chunk to whoever is perceived as the strongest contender against it.

Which is why Mayawati wants to project that the “hawa” or the political wind is in her favour, thereby hoping that the vote shifts to her rather than get divided.

Past record

But Mayawati also realises that her past track record of having allied with the BJP to become chief minister remains a handicap for her. As if to cover her guilt of aligning with the BJP on past three occasions, she also made it a point to reassure Muslims that such a situation would not be repeated under any circumstances now. While running down the SP as a party of goons and criminals, she termed the BJP as an outfit of religious bigots and riot mongers .

Her party alone could ensure safety and security of the common citizen, she claimed. “Remember, communal riots do not happen, they are fuelled. The BJP is known for inciting Hindu-Muslim violence. And mind you, the victims are always the downtrodden and the poor.”

While hailing the Indian Army for the recent surgical strikes against Pakistan, Mayawati also flayed the Narendra Modi government for showing desperation to take political mileage out of the military action. And then she trained her guns on the prime minister.

“At a time when the government should be honouring the soldiers who carried out the surgical strikes or paying homage to those who laid down their lives in Uri, Narendra Modi is flying down to Lucknow to celebrate Dussehra – again with the obvious intent of making political hay out of a religious occasion. The least that one would expect from a prime minister is some expression of modesty,” Mayawati said.

She had some more barbs reserved for the ruling party at the centre. “The BJP ought to know that all those who crossed over from my party to their side were clearly our rejected stuff,” she said, in an obvious reference to her former state president Swami Prasad Maurya, and party-men such as RK Chaudhary, Brijesh Misra and some others who had recently switched loyalties to the BJP.

The massive attendance at the rally seemed to be further evidence that the desertions had failed to make any impact on her popularity with the rank and file of her support-base. Mayawati sought to drive the point home by pointing to the BJP’s role in anti-Dalit attacks in different parts of the country including the Rohith Vemula incident in Hyderabad, the Una violence against Dalit youth in Gujarat as well as former BJP leader Daya Shankar Singh’s unparliamentary remarks against herself.

Mayawati emphasised that it was only during her regime that the downtrodden community felt safe and secure. “It is therefore important that you all ensure that the BSP is voted back to power," she declared amidst resounding cheers. "I can assure you that I will provide not only a corruption-free governance but will also ensure the end of the prevailing jungle raj and restoration of the rule of law in this state.”