How many corners in Uttar Pradesh?

With ascriptive identities losing importance, there is a desperate search for new social constituencies by all parties. While Mandir has reached a point of electoral exhaustion and Mandal failed to unite the OBCs, Dalit identity-based support has reached a plateau. Consequently, broad, aggregative ‘social rainbow’ identities, and new alignments in a bid to widen bases, are being constructed.

These shifts are best symbolised by the attempts of the SP and BSP — two avowedly lower caste parties — to gain the support of the upper castes. Since early 2005, both have held sammelans to gain the support of the brahmins, thakurs and vaishyas who in the early 1990s had gravitated from the Congress to BJP. They were attracted by the Ayodhya movement but are now eager to distance themselves from a party they view as a marginalised force.

At these brahmin sammelans, chanting of Vedic hymns, blowing of conches and symbols such as the silver axe — the mythical weapon of Lord Parashuram — are used to create a new ‘savarna’ identity for the BSP. The SP has employed tactics such as supporting Amarmani Tripathi to woo the brahmins, using strongman Raja Bhaiyya’s “persecution” under POTA during the Mayawati regime to invoke thakur ‘pride’; mobilising the vaishya community during the 2002 assembly elections; not implementing VAT to gain the support of traders and engineering their defection from other parties.

The emerging bi-polar pattern is a product of the sharp decline of the BJP and the Congress: collapse of its fundamentalist Hindutva ideology in the case of the former, while organisational decay has affected the latter. Both performed badly in the 2002 assembly elections and subsequent by-elections. In contrast, the SP won over 41 per cent and the BSP almost 31 per cent of the votes. This means that the earlier genuinely three-cornered fight between the BJP, BSP and SP is now a bi-polar contest.

Aware of this reality, the two strong contenders are using every opportunity to weaken the other. The SP brought down the BSP coalition formed after the 2002 assembly elections by splitting the party in September 2003 and capturing 40 MLAs. The BSP decided not to contest the October-November 2006 municipal elections, arguing that it would prevent rivalry over ticket allocations that could divide the party in the coming elections. However, the absence of the BSP led the upper castes to move back towards the BJP and Congress, and Muslims towards the latter, adversely affecting the tally of the SP. The decision by both parties to woo the upper castes and not to form alliances with smaller groups has further intensified the confrontation between them.

The parties which could lose the most in this scenario are the BJP and Congress though their better performance in the municipal elections has fueled hopes of revival. The former hopes to bring back the upper castes and attract the lower castes through ‘social engineering’. The latter is trying to regain the support of the minorities, OBCs and dalits as many of its recent policies — the Sachar Committee report, reservations for OBCs, compensation for victims of Gujarat riots — show.

Such attempts remain fraught with difficulties. Viewed as a favourable option in parts of UP due to the entry of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress may not have the political will and organisational machinery to convert public appeal into electoral gains. The BJP, despite past losses, has yet to give up its Hindutva platform, remains badly divided, its cadre demoralised. The impact of the formation of two Muslim parties and a possible Third Front of smaller parties remains unpredictable.

The trend is undeniable: if a bi-party system consisting of the two lower caste parties emerges, with the Congress and BJP becoming spent forces, it would be a major political transformation achieved within two decades in a state that is highly socially conservative. It reflects the strength of lower caste assertion in the country.

The writer is senior fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi