Only days ago, Mayawati supped with Sonia Gandhi and a BSP-Congress alliance was in the offing. Then, at a rally in Patna on Thursday, the BSP chief pointedly lashed out at the Congress as well as the BJP, declaring them both ‘‘manuvadi’’ forces. So does this amount to a volte face, did Mayawati blow hot only to blow cold? Yes and no. It is true that Mayawati has backtracked, again. But, equally, she has never made any secret of the fact that she considers it her democratic right to do so. When opportunism becomes the absolutely unabashed and frankly articulated thing that it is in Behenji’s arsenal, it could almost pass off as legitimate political strategy. It has been insistently argued that a new vocabulary is needed to evaluate Mayawati’s brand of politics. Hers is a separate, embattled location, it is pointed out, and she must necessarily devise unorthodox, even impolite, ways to lead the Dalits to their rightful share of power in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere — a share they have been so long denied. That argument has lost its sheen. Mayawati’s unapologetic bargaining, her ploy of keeping all her options open till the last possible moment and her flaunting of ‘‘vote transfer capacity’’ as sole criterion for deciding on alliances, are beginning to look more and more like the manoeuvres of a parochial leader boxed into a very small corner of her own making. And, much more depressingly, like an unforgivable abdication. As the leader of the BSP, Mayawati is endowed with a vast responsibility — to represent the aspirations of millions of Dalits in India. She does grave injustice to their fight for an equal place in the sun by refusing to practice a more principled, more generous politics. Dalit politics needs to grow and reach out to larger concerns. It needs to become less fragmented and more articulate, more agenda-driven. It is unforgivable to treat Dalits as a vote bank to be manipulated this way and that, even when it is done in their own name.
