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Journalism of Courage
In Lucknow on Thursday, Mayawati was completing her own ideological leap. Even as the furore touched off by L.K. Advani’s relook at Jinnah — and at the BJP — raged and roared in New Delhi, Mayawati formally extended the olive branch to Brahmins and other upper castes at the Brahmin Samaj Mahasammelan at Ambedkar Maidan. Join the BSP, she exhorted, and together we can rule UP. The mahasammelan capped a series of ‘Brahmin Jodo Sammelans’ the BSP has held across the state in the last three months. It’s a crucial moment in the country’s politics when its only national Dalit party hands out an open invitation to sections it used to proclaim as the enemy. Now, the BSP is revising some of its more virulent slogans.
The parallel is unmistakable and it nudges us towards a larger point. Advani in Delhi and Mayawati in Lucknow are impelled by a similar force. There was a time in the ’90s when Mandir and Mandal seemed to have given birth to parties which harnessed energies unleashed by pointed and sectarian politics. The Other was to be as clearly identifiable as the core constituency. And the core constituency must be tightly rallied around exclusive symbols and slogans. It was the time of fragmentation in Indian politics when the broad social coalition that the Congress had cobbled together was splintering into its newly-assertive parts. It bequeathed us with an array of new parties. But over the years, as vote banks settled and congealed, and yielded serial hung legislatures, a new imperative has been making itself felt. It points to the need to reach out across borders. To forge broader coalitions, to stake out middle grounds.
It’s still mainly about numbers, admittedly. Mayawati realises that a Brahmin-Dalit combination within the BSP can put her party in a winning position against the SP in the next polls — the Congress and the BJP gave further proof of their irrelevance in the recent by-polls in the state. Realpolitik is also on her side, given that the primary contradiction is between OBCs and Dalits in UP’s Yadavraj. Yet, many a dynamic, once begun, has been known to spin out of control. It could yet be that the seams begin to disappear in the new social coalition that Mayawati is stitching up. It could lay the ground for a genuine meeting of minds.
