Two steps back

Uma Bharti is many things rolled into one. The sanyasin from Tikamgarh,the first woman chief minister of Madhya Pradesh,a co-accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case,an OBC,an aggressive campaigner. Having stormed out of BJP,her re-entry into the party,being designated a key campaigner in UP and finally,a candidate and chief ministerial contender has been a matter of much speculation. In this high-stakes election,she is the BJPs belated answer to the question of what it stands for,and its future positioning.

One option for the party was to define itself as a leader of centre-right forces conservative,but not communal. This would imply distancing itself from polarising figures,and articulating an intelligent version of India Shining,which could help widen its appeal beyond the partys core base. However,by pushing Uma Bharti as a candidate in UP,the BJP has risked upsetting the balance between other stalwarts in the state former party chief and CM Rajnath Singh,Kalraj Mishra and state chief Surya Pratap Shahi. Uma Bharti too,by attacking Sonia Gandhis origins in her first statement after being picked,has revealed her instinct to go back to the BJPs old talking points. This underlines that,rather than following the Atal Bihari Vajpayee vision of the party,the BJP is more anxious to draw on its mid-1990s history,when it fought the Mandal forces by grooming its own galaxy of OBC leaders including Narendra Modi,Kalyan Singh,Vinay Katiyar and Uma Bharti herself which helped it contain the Mandal forces and steal a march over the Congress.

Now,nearly 20 years on,the electorate has displayed its preference for a politics of development and welfare. The BJP,meanwhile,has tried another old trick trying to mobilise non-Yadav OBCs on the question of reservation for Muslim backwards. This combination of Hindutva-plus-caste politics,it hopes,will work. At a time when even the more successful caste parties like the BSP and the SP are out to prove they are more broad-based,the BJP may have taken two steps back.