The Battle for UP

But if that makes India8217;s most populous state a psephologist8217;s nightmare, it can also be a political observer8217;s delight. For UP, despite all the bad press it gets, is a place where politics is inextricably mixed with the plasma that runs through its people8217;s bloodstream.

The much-reviled 8216;8216;Ulta Pradesh8217;8217; that lies at the heart of the great Indo-Gangetic plain is politically crucial not just because it sends the largest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha but because its residents 8212; be they learned Kashi pandits, semi-literate Agra maulvis, unlettered peasants in a faceless village or jobless youth hanging around the chai shop in one of those innumerable kasbas 8212; have a more canny understanding of politics than most 8216;8216;analysts8217;8217; who pontificate in print and on television in Mumbai and Delhi.

That the road to Delhi must pass through Lucknow, that whoever wins UP gets to rule the Centre has become an overused 8212; if not entirely accurate 8212; cliche. After all, in 1991 and 1996 the BJP won the giant8217;s share of UP seats but could not form a lasting government in Delhi. Conversely, it won only 29 seats 8212; of 85 in the then undivided, pre-Uttaranchal, state 8212; in 1999 but still managed to complete a full term at the Centre.

Yet the pre-eminent position of UP in India8217;s political landscape cannot be denied. And its importance lies not in electoral statistics but in political alchemy. Whether it was Charan Singh8217;s revolt in 1967 that heralded the rise of the backward castes or the politics of Mandir and Mandal that transformed north Indian politics, UP remains the best place for political trend-spotting.

So forget the numbers 8212; each of the four main contenders is looking at a 15-25 seat range, give or take a few 8212; and focus on the trends.

For the Congress, it8217;s goodwill rising

AS the election campaign peaks, three visible currents and an invisible undercurrent make up the big picture in Uttar Pradesh. The most significant trend is the revival of the Congress in a state where all but its last rites had been concluded.

The Grand Old Party, long synonymous with UP, was reduced to zero in 1998. In 1999, its tally of nine 8212; reduced to eight when it failed to win the Shahjahanpur byelection after Jitendra Prasad8217;s death 8212; did not spell a revival.

Over the past five years, UPCC chiefs have been changed every season but that has made little difference to a decrepit party structure. When elections were announced, the Congress high command tried desperately to sew an alliance, wooing the BSP and SP by turn and failing to get either.

The common refrain at 24 Akbar Road, the Congress8217; HQ in the capital, was the party was doomed. Without an ally it didn8217;t stand a chance in UP, and without a revival in UP, it wouldn8217;t be in sniffing distance of Delhi.

The Congress revival in UP 8212; not in terms of seats or even vote share but goodwill 8212; has taken place despite the party. Well before the poll campaign got underway, reporters travelling through the state were taken aback by how often people mentioned the 8216;8216;good old days8217;8217; under the shade of the Congress umbrella.

It was first dismissed as sentimental nostalgia. But as the campaign picked up and Rahul Gandhi entered the fray, the pro-Congress mood slowly moved from nostalgia to hope.

But outside the Amethi-Rae Bareli-Sultanpur triangle, the Congress did nothing about it. It was only on the final two days before campaigning ended for the first phase April 26 in the state that Rahul made a whistle-stop tour through parts of eastern UP. And wherever he went, the Congress candidate was suddenly in the reckoning.

Big challenge for the little Gandhis

HAVING learnt a lesson, albeit belatedly, the Gandhis are now planning to campaign in a lot more seats that go to polls on May 5 and 10. But that may not help.

The party botched up in the selection of candidates; in many seats the announcement was held up till the last minute. And the Congress organisation remains riven with dissension and lassitude brought on by long years out of office.

The average 8216;8216;Congress worker8217;8217; gets galvanised by the thought of power, not struggle. And with exit polls hinting at a far rosier picture than they had hoped for, the organisation too is showing signs of picking up. But it is by far too little, too late.

What is does mean, though, is that the Congress is no longer a has-been in UP. Its real battle will be the assembly election that is likely to be held far before the scheduled 2007, and then of course the next Lok Sabha election.

No 8216;feel good8217; in the Ayodhya backlash
THE second current, anti-current if you will, is the BJP8217;s complete disconnect with the aam janata of UP. For a party that prides itself on its grassroots organisation, the BJP has miserably failed in convincing the people of its new avatar and new message.

It is difficult to find a single person in UP who is moved by the party8217;s 8216;8216;feel good8217;8217; campaign. The phrase provokes anger in some, resigned amusement in others.

They invariably point to the quotidian miseries of their lives 8212; the absence of not just bijli, sadak, paani BSP but also TNT: taleem, naukri, tarakki education, jobs, progress.

As for the 8216;8216;Atal wave8217;8217;, most people mention him approvingly but only when asked. But in constituency after constituency, it is the local MP who matters more than the distant PM.

The BJP has also suffered for sending out mixed messages. No one talks of the Ram mandir anymore but the party8217;s failure to deliver on the one issue on which it rode to power has led to a great loss in credibility.

Outside the Krishna Janmasthan in Mathura, shopkeeper Girdhari Lal Gautam rails against the party for whipping up the 8216;8216;mandir-masjid masla8217;8217;, the unresolved status of which has had a ripple effect in Mathura and on his business. Erstwhile BJP supporters in Allahabad say the party used Ayodhya only to get power and then promptly forgot all about it.

What has damaged the party8217;s image most is its poll-eve sops to Muslims. For a party that built its Hindu vote bank by attacking 8216;8216;Muslim appeasement8217;8217; by 8216;8216;pseudo-secularists8217;8217;, this move is seen as utterly cynical by Muslims and Hindus alike.

A few Muslim leaders have expressed support for the BJP but their brethren dismiss them as avsarvadis opportunists. A group of Muslims in Siddhauli near Sitapur, for instance, mockingly say, 8216;8216;If we had got crores of rupees, we too would have been singing praises of the BJP.8217;8217;

BJP: full throttle on an empty tank

BUT if the Congress lacks an organisation to translate goodwill into votes, the BJP still has the capacity to extract victories despite voter indifference, bordering on hostility.

It has requisitioned the services of all its first, second, and third rung leaders, stars and starlets from Bollywood, and the entire saffron brotherhood.

The panic in the BJP can be gauged from the way it has stepped up its campaign in Lucknow. Scores of BJP leaders and 8216;8216;samarthaks8217;8217; are holding meetings in Lucknow every day and Atal Behari Vajpayee himself has despatched letters to the city8217;s denizens listing all the projects he has sanctioned as MP.

The high-pitch campaign apart, the BJP think tank has systematically sought to divide the Muslim vote with party leaders doling out certifcates to Mulayam Singh Yadav, only to damage his credibility among Muslims. In the end though, even if the BJP manages to retain its tally in UP, the party8217;s claim of being a party with a difference has taken a beating.

Socialite tune to socialist song
THE third trend the election has thrown up is the beginning of Mulayam8217;s decline. He may still win more seats than the other parties, but no longer enjoys the status he once did.

Wary Muslims say they are giving him a 8216;8216;last chance8217;8217;. If he does end up allying with the BJP, he can no longer take their support for granted in the assembly polls.

It is not Muslims alone who have lost their devotion to him. Samajwadi Party workers who belong to the old socialist school privately complain that 8216;8216;Netaji8217;8217; has changed since falling into the clutches of Amar Singh.

Lucknow is full of anecdotes of the simmering differences between Amar Singh and Mulayam8217;s son Akhilesh; of how Bombay industrialists have taken over the party of 8216;8216;mazdoors and kisans8217;8217;; and of how even the ever-loyal Yadavs are beginning to have misgivings over the ascendancy of Thakurs in the party.

Watch it. This Maya is just no illusion

AND the invisible undercurrent? The magic of Mayawati. The BSP has been unusually low-key throughout the election campaign. Mayawati herself has been far less combative or controversial. But everywhere you go, people 8212; most of them non-BSP supporters 8212; will tell you 8216;8216;haathi ka vote to set hain8217;8217; BSP has a fixed vote and it is therefore a formidable kona in the trikoni ladai three-cornered contest.

The BSP has been particularly adroit in its choice of candidates. In Agra and Bahraich, for instance, the BSP8217;s Brahmin candidates are expected to get a chunk of the caste8217;s votes even though upper castes are otherwise suspicious of 8216;8216;Behenji8217;8217; Mayawati.

And while Muslims and the upper castes are veering to the Congress in seats where the party is in the fight, the Dalits remain largely loyal to the BSP. How it fares will have an important bearing in the post-election games in Delhi.

At the heart of the Muslim mind

Varghese K. George

THE morning after an unexpected summer rain that cooled Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mohammad Shakir, 85, was reading an Urdu newspaper advertisement by Mulayam Singh Yadav. 8216;8216;We don8217;t consider Muslims a vote bank,8217;8217; Mulayam beamed defensively from the paper. The accompanying text detailed Mulayam8217;s services to the Muslim community, 8216;8216;which were not done for votes8217;8217;. Mulayam can be sure he won8217;t get as many as last time.

The Muslims Mind in UP is more diverse than ever: largely favouring ghar vapasi to the Congress, partly engaged in a germinal debate about backward and Dalit Muslims, for whom pan-Muslim concerns are less appealing. One thread that binds almost all Muslim minds is their feeling for their failed messiah.

Shakir turns away from Mulayam8217;s picture and pretends he hasn8217;t heard the question. Which was: will he vote Mulayam again?

He smiles the 8216;8216;you know it anyway8217;8217; smile. A small crowd of Muslim weavers gather outside Shakir8217;s shop in the Old City area, with its 100,000 population. More and more of them are being displaced, every passing month.

Shakir8217;s son chips in: 8216;8216;Let me answer. The vote this time is for the Congress.8217;8217; He is aware of the risks; he might help a BJP victory.

8216;8216;We can8217;t care less,8217;8217; he says, 8216;8216;they will win next time perhaps. Congress has to come back and it will come back.8217;8217;

The wall of silence broken, the second and then the third man speak. Then it becomes a chorus. 8216;8216;We may vote BJP, but not Mulayam 8230; Why vote indirectly for the BJP 8230; He has taken us for granted 8230;8217;8217; And hold your breath: 8216;8216;He has been instrumental in increasing the Hindu-Muslim divide.8217;8217;

Mulayam is facing an unprecedented Muslim ire. Take his announcement of a school holiday for Friday prayers. The order was later revoked but it still has the community fuming.

8216;8216;Who asked for it?8217;8217; wonders Naimuddin Chaudhary in Gorakhpur. 8216;8216;Woh Mussalmano ko bewakoof banana chahta tha He wanted to fool Muslims,8217;8217; says Mohammed Hashim Ansari, the original plaintiff in the Babri Masjid title suit in Ayodhya and till recently a committed Mulayam supporter.

Muslims in Uttar Pradesh are engaged in an informed political debate, wiser after the turmoil of the 1990s. They are keen to get rid of stereotypes, including that of the 8216;8216;Muslim Mind8217;8217;.

At the core of this phenomenon is the increasing restlessness among the backward-Dalit Muslims. 8216;8216;The debate around universal Muslim concerns such as Ayodhya or the uniform civil code has camouflaged the real bread and butter concerns of poor Muslims,8217;8217; says Haji Nissar Ansari in Mau district. Ansari is an organiser of the All India Parsmanda Muslim Mahaj, fast spreading in UP and Bihar.

8216;8216;Secularism has been a tactic for Mulayam,8217;8217; says Ali Anwar, convener of the Mahaj. 8216;8216;If Mulayam talks about the welfare of weavers rather than Muslims,8217;8217; says Ansari, 8216;8216;it will help the poor Muslims. It will help the poor Hindus too because 30 per cent of the weavers are Hindus.8217;8217;

They have more talking points: that all but one of 31 Muslim MPs in the dissolved Lok Sabha were upper caste, that in the Ghosi constituency in eastern UP 8212; it has almost 300,000 Muslim voters 8212; Mulayam did not consider a Muslim candidate because he took the community8217;s vote as a given.

Amroha, in western UP, and Ali Hassan Ansari of the BSP offer the only case of a major party giving a backward Muslim a seat it is defending. In 1999, Rashid Alvi won Amroha for the BSP. Now Jamat Ulema-e-Hind general secretary Syed Mahmood Madani is contesting from Amroha on a Rakshtriya Lok Dal ticket, with SP support, to jeopardise the BSP8217;s chances.

There is a strong though scattered feeling in the community that the political elites 8212; largely constituted by the upper caste Syed, Sheikhs, Pathan and Malliks 8212; have used the Muslim identity for their own advance.

And this feeling makes Imam Bukhari8217;s fatwa and Arif Mohammed Khan8217;s possible victory in Kaiserganj only minute steps in the BJP8217;s 8216;8216;woo Muslim8217;8217; strategy. The BJP is a party that only a power elite, which moves with the wind, would prefer, at least in the near future.

Also, the diktats of organisations such as the Milli Council, which gave directions to Muslims on which party to vote for in a constituency, are losing their grip.

This leaves Muslims with two realistic political options: the BSP and the Congress. Mayawati is conscious of the possibility of an alliance between Hindu and Muslim Dalits and Muslim backwards, comprising Ansaris, Rains, Dhunias, Dhaphalis, Qureshis, Dhobis.

The BSP has more Muslim candidates than any party in UP. As a result, her earlier alliances with the BJP notwithstanding, Muslims may look at Mayawati favourably.

But the Congress remains the first choice. 8216;8216;We used to be afraid of arguing for the Congress, now the situation has changed dramatically,8217;8217; says Rashid Ansari, lawyer in Gorakhpur.What works in the Congress8217; favour is the belief it is the only party that cannot think of joining hands with the BJP. There is a realisation that Congress-style moderation served the community better than the militant advocacy of a Mulayam or even a Mayawati.

But the Congress is far from prepared. Aziz Ahmad, a former Congressman, wanted to return to the party but was unsure. 8216;8216;The same people who caused the party8217;s debacle run it. We have no access to them. Even the party president is controlled by them,8217;8217; Ahmad says. He finally joined the BSP and his wife is the candidate from Maharajganj, eastern UP.

Yet as more and more ordinary Muslims find voices independent of the small crowd that hitherto ran Muslim politics, UP will is set for a new churning in Hindu-Muslims relations, and caste relations within both communities. For the heartland8217;s Muslims, it8217;s time for social engineering.