Opinion The great UP hope
Discussing the future of the Indian Youth Congress on a sultry afternoon in summer 2008,Rahul Gandhi suddenly asked IYC leaders...
Discussing the future of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) on a sultry afternoon in summer 2008,Rahul Gandhi suddenly asked IYC leaders: Have you read Barack Obamas Audacity of Hope? The book was a rage in the US,then witnessing a historic duel between Obama and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. You must, Rahul advised them. In the weeks and months that followed,they talked about his recommendation without many following it. The scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family,however,does seem to have audacious hopes: to reclaim the partys traditional support among the Dalit votebank.
On Thursday,in Congress-ruled Haryana he paid an unscheduled visit to the Dalit victims of caste violence in a village in Hisar district. It did not matter,clearly,how his visit would reflect on Bhupinder Singh Hoodas government as long as the message reached Lucknow. Barely 48 hours earlier,the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had voted for the UPA government in the Lok Sabha,sparking off speculation about new possibilities in Uttar Pradeshs political theatre. Rahuls visit to Mirchpur village in Haryana set the record straight: he will continue to challenge Mayawati in his endeavour to win over Dalits.
Rahul was audacious too at Ambedkarnagar in UP on April 14,when he used a single garland to cover the portraits of both Mahatma Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar on the latters birth anniversary. Rahul was not just laying out the Congresss claims on Ambedkar he said it was the Congress that made him chairman of the Constituent Assembly and the countrys law minister and challenging Mayawatis politics of identity and symbolism,he was also rejecting the BSPs re-casting of the father of the nation.
Right from his DS-4 days in the early 80s,Kanshi Ram had sought to undermine Gandhi,criticising his use of the word Harijan as condescending and replacing it with Dalit. If Dalits are children of god then was he (Gandhi) son of shaitan? Mayawati was to ask later in 1997.
On April 14,therefore,Rahul was attacking the BSPs ideological moorings as he sought to put Ambedkar and Gandhi on the same page in the history of Dalit uplift and emancipation. The BSP eulogises Periyar from Tamil Nadu and Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj from Kolhapur,but it has no place left in its pantheon of social reformers.
Mayawati has been vehement in attacking the Amethi MP. Not only did the BSP hold a parallel rally in Ambedkarnagar the same day as Rahuls,but the district administration also did not allow the young Congress leader to garland Ambedkars statue at the venue. What is it in Rahul that brings out the worst in Mayawati? Famously,she went to the extent of saying that he took a bath with special soaps and purified himself with incense after spending nights at Dalits houses.
His visits to Dalit houses are,of course,creating a buzz. Besides,the Congress did show signs of revival in the state in the last general election,securing 22 seats. But subsequently,the Congress was back on the political margins in the assembly bypolls. Does Mayawati share the popular belief that her Dalit-Brahmin social engineering formula,that had worked in the 2007 assembly elections,failed in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections? Is there any substance to Congress leaders claims that non-Jatav Dalits are disenchanted with the BSP? The answer to these questions could be deduced from her recent decision to sideline her confidante Satish Mishra.
But these questions give rise to another: what does the Congress offer Dalits? The AICC general secretary in charge of the party in UP is a Thakur,Digvijay Singh. The state PCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi and CLP leader Pramod Tiwari are Brahmins. Can you think of a senior Dalit in the UP Congress? Party leaders would name Barabanki MP P.L. Punia,former principal secretary to Mayawati in her previous stints as chief minister. As for the Congresss attempt to woo the Dalits,the best that one can remember is Joshis derogatory remark about the CM that landed her behind bars and the more recent one about the colour of Mayawatis statues.
The question here is: how does Rahul then take on Mayawati,who has mastered the politics of identity and symbolism? In the idiom that Dalits are seen to understand,Mayawati has been so adept that even her cash-studded garland was projected as a matter of pride simply because a Dalit ki beti wore it. So are the wasteful expenditures on memorials and statues. Can Rahul outmatch Mayawati in evoking Dalit pride the way she does?
The young Amethi MP has asserted that he does not believe in identity politics. I go to a human beings house,not to a Dalits house, he had said in Thiruvananthapuram last October. The days of the politics of caste and religion are over. It is time for the politics of the youth and the future, he said again,in Ambedkarnagar.
If Congressmen are to be believed,Dalits in UP have already started seeing how their political empowerment has failed to translate into social and economic empowerment. Thanks to the communication revolution,people living even in remote villages have growing aspirations for a better life. It is these which Rahul Gandhi is seeking to voice. But have such Dalit aspirations grown strong enough to override all the other concerns arising out of centuries of oppression at the hands of dominant castes?
The answer lies somewhere in Mawayatis strong reactions to Rahuls moves,betraying insecurity on her part. And this is what has given Congressmen the auda-city to hope in UP because the BSP supremo is a master in reading peoples pulse.
dk.singh@expressindia.com
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