Tremors from Gorakhpur: A series of regional skirmishes in 2019 is the BJP’s worst nightmare

The spectacular success of the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in the parliamentary bye-polls in Uttar Pradesh has evoked memories of the poll pact between Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram before the 1993 state assembly polls. Twenty five years ago, the pact had brought the Yadavs and the Dalits together to defeat the mighty Bharatiya Janata Party and its muscular Hindutva cadre that had just demolished the Babri Masjid. Today the two powerful regional caste groups have enacted a comparable coup albeit on a smaller scale against the saffron regime of Yogi Adityanath, humiliating him in his bastion.

There is, however, a key difference between 1993 and now. Then it was a deal between two party supremos brokered by two industrialists-cum-political lobbyists – Sanjay Dalmia working on behalf of Samajwadi Party and Jayant Malhoutra for the Bahujan Samaj Party. It happened during a secret meeting at Ashoka Hotel, from where Kanshi Ram had kept Mayawati away knowing her aversion to pre-poll pacts. Both industrialists were rewarded with Rajya Sabha seats soon after. Although the alliance led to the formation of a Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party coalition government, it did not take long for Behenji, as Mayawati is called, to take her revenge and bring it down, paving the way for her own appointment as chief minister with the help of the BJP and the Congress.

Different dynamic

Today the collaboration between the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party has a totally different dynamic and is a result of pressures from the middle level leaders and grass root workers of the two parties, rather than being propelled by a personal compact between Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati. As a matter of fact, the Dalit leader appeared at first reluctant to formally announce support to the Samajwadi Party candidates in Gorakhpur and Phulpur but intense and persistence pressure from her cadre convinced her to do so almost at the last moment. Similarly, despite the palpable hostility from his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle Shivpal Yadav to an alliance with the party’s arch rival, Akhilesh Yadav held on his resolve to reach out to “Bua” [paternal aunt], as he calls Mayawati, because his entire political support base – Yadavs and Muslims alike – pleaded with him to do so.

This solidarity between the workers and social bases of the two parties was evident during the election campaign when activists of both went around wooing voters together, wearing the Samajwadi red cap and waving the blue elephant-emblazoned Bahujan Samaj Party flag. The fact that the alliance worked on the ground made a huge difference to public perception in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur, especially the former where the Samajwadi Party was clever to cede the candidacy to a young leader of the local NISHAD Party (Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal) that commanded the support of a large chunk of local Nishads. The Nishad caste – also known as Kevat, Mallah and Bind – is one of the largest Other Backward Classes groups in Uttar Pradesh, and has a sizeable number in Gorakhpur.

The new bonhomie between the Yadavs and the Dalits is not the result of some new found chemistry between Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, although the latter is far less an anathema to her than his father. Much of the mutual acrimony between the two communities came from the Dalit antagonism to the political clout wielded by the Yadavs, who in turn feared that a resurgent Dalit party would snatch it away. However, today both groups face a common victimhood in Adityanath’s reign when the muscular Thakurs rule the roost – a phenomenon locally called thakurvad. The Dalits no longer see the Yadavs as predators, but as disempowered and vulnerable. The Yadav, on the other hand, are no longer in a position to impose their will on the Dalits.

Seismic shifts

This new shift in power equations, added to the overwhelming successive electoral triumphs by the BJP in parliamentary and state assembly polls, has resulted in these regional behemoths, who used to compete with each other till recently, to come together out of sheer survival instinct. That is why it is highly unlikely that an alliance or understanding between the two will break down in a hurry. While it is quite possible that in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Mayawati may display her intrinsic greed for power and money or Akhilesh Yadav come under pressure from his father and uncle, cooperation if not a formal alliance between the two parties seems logical from now onwards.

Since 2019 is a parliamentary poll, such an arrangement becomes easier with no local territory in Uttar Pradesh to be lost for either side. It is quite possible that Mayawati’s description of her support to the Samajwadi Party candidates as not a grand alliance but a pragmatic strategy to support the strongest contestant against the BJP could become the template for the battle across the country to stop the Modi juggernaut in 2019. The vastly weakened Congress would have no other option but to accept an aggregate of local alliances, leading the fight in the few strongholds that it still has, but without trying to assume leadership position at a national level.

This is the worst nightmare of the BJP – not being able to convert the 2019 polls into a presidential contest with the towering figure of Modi dwarfing any alternative leader, and to get bogged down in a series of regional skirmishes. Uttar Pradesh with its vast electoral pool of parliamentary seats will obviously have a crucial role in the emerging political scenario in the country and this week’s tremors from Gorakhpur and Phulpur have made the contest ahead between the BJP and the rest a fascinating one.