A Fight To The Finish

A reinvigorated Mayawati is raring to go and hoping to benefit from anti-incumbency and the support of a Dalit-Muslim combine.

- Ajit Kumar Jha

As the Bahujan Samaj Party heads into a make-or-break electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh, will the family crisis ripping apart the Samajwadi Party be the godsend for Mayawati to stage a comeback? Buffeted by the exodus of rebels, who quit the party in their scores and crossed over to an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party, Mayawati is making a determined bid to make a coalition of Dalits and Muslims—who between them comprise 40 per cent of the state electorate—see her as their best hope.

All her rallies so far, in Azamgarh, Allahabad, Saharanpur, and the one in Agra on August 21 where she launched the BSP’s election campaign, were thronged by hundreds of thousands of her supporters. In the past too, Mayawati has been a great crowd-puller, much more than other state leaders. What made these four rallies different is the number of Muslims that came and stood alongside the Dalits. And the passion of the young BSP supporter. On view was a new politics of assertion, in marked contrast to the image of the subdued, disciplined party worker who would trek miles to attend Behenji’s rallies, listen star-struck to everything she said, and return without having said a word.

Ever since Rohith Vemula committed suicide in the Central University of Hyderabad and four Dalit youth were mercilessly thrashed by gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) in Una in Gujarat, the younger Dalits have been livid. The atrocities committed by cow vigilantes of the Sangh parivar have alienated both the Dalits and the Muslims in equal measure. Led by radical organisations like the Ambedkar Students Union and BAPSA (Birsa-Ambedkar-Phule Students Association), alienated Dalit youth have joined the minorities in a bold new alliance that is bound to redefine UP politics.