Applause is not power: The single lesson connecting Uma Bharti, Prashant Kishor

Indian politics is marked by a recurring delusion: a leader begins to mistake applause for permanence and their authority for absolute ownership.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

The shift is subtle at first, then absolute — they conclude: “I am the party. Without me, it collapses.”

The trajectory of Uma Bharti is the purest early case study of this syndrome.

In November 2003, she became Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, elevated by the BJP as a mass mobiliser and Hindutva icon of the Ram Janmabhoomi era amidst slogans like “Bharat ki beti kaisi ho, Uma Bharti jaisi ho”.

By then, her self-perception had already evolved from leader to the embodiment. The rupture came in August 2004, when the Supreme Court revived the 1994 Hubli case and the BJP leadership asked her to step down. She resigned, even as plans were already in play within the party to “cut her to size”. By April 2005, she walked out of the BJP and launched the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party — not as a carefully designed alternative, but as an act of political defiance.

The belief was clear: the BJP would sink in Madhya Pradesh without her. The verdict arrived in December 2008. Her party, which had contested 200 seats, could only win 5. The BJP strengthened under Shivraj Singh Chouhan while her party shrank into irrelevance. By April 2011, Uma Bharti returned to the very organisation she once tried to politically punish. The organisation endured. The myth did not.

This pattern became familiar.

In August 2017, one of the tallest socialist leaders and one of the poles of Janata Dal (United), Sharad Yadav, revolted against his disciple-turned-‘boss’ Nitish Kumar, convinced that ideological history and the “real” JD(U) would walk with him. By 2018, his faction had faded into political insignificance while the party remained intact.

In September 2021, Captain Amarinder Singh resigned from the Congress and announced his own outfit in October 2021, believing Punjab still revolved around his persona. The February 2022 Punjab Assembly elections dismantled that illusion. His party barely registered on the electoral map.