Trauma or drama: Can anyone explain why Behenji is riled up?

On Tuesday, July 18, 2017, BSP supremo Mayawati walked out of the Upper House of Parliament. What was the provocation? Behenji, as the BSP leader is popularly known, had started an extempore declamation on Dalit atrocities in UP. But the Deputy Chair of the Rajya Sabha, PJ Kurien, did not give her more than her allotted three minutes. Mayawati raged against being thus curtailed, threatening to resign. Later that day, she tendered a three-page fulmination against the BJP’s attempts to muzzle her. Was her indignation an instance of trauma or drama?

Whether Mayawati’s resignation was premeditated or spontaneous may be hard to ascertain, but what is clear is that she turned outrage into opportunity. Behenji had already tabled her demand to have a full-fledged discussion on Dalit atrocities, but was not being allowed to go on beyond her allotted time. When Kurien requested her to retract her resignation, as did other well-wishers, she declined. Indeed, in its original form, the resignation was not accepted on technical grounds. One has to “unconditionally” resign from the Rajya Sabha, not offer reasons. Others before her, such as Captain Amarinder Singh, who had given a lengthy justification, or Navjyot Singh Siddhu, who resigned on “moral grounds”, had to “re-resign”, so to speak, in the correct format. Behenji, who met the leader of the Rajya Sabha, Vice-President Hamid Ansari on July 20, also submitted a one line hand-written note to confirm her resignation.

The truth is that Behenji’s term in the Upper House would anyhow have ended come April 2018. Moreover, her chances of returning to the Rajya Sabha on her own strength appear limited. BSP has been out of power in UP since 2012. It managed only 80 seats to Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party tally of 224. Mayawati’s performance in this year’s Assembly elections was even worse. She managed to secure only 19 in the 403-strong house. This drastic decline in fortune since the heyday when her writ ran unchallenged in India’s most populous state would be sobering in addition to sad for Behenji. Why has the BSP, a party she nurtured and led to power, been pushed to the margins even in their stronghold, Uttar Pradesh? What has changed so drastically in less than 10 years? Let alone dreaming of being India’s next Prime Minister, Behenji is on the brink of obsolescence in India’s new political calculus.

But Behenji is a tenacious fighter. Several times in the past, she has demonstrated her capacity to face, even overcome, adversity. Moreover, her cause cannot be dismissed; she claims to represent the interests of the most backward and downtrodden sections of our society. She not only became the first Scheduled Caste Chief Minister of UP, but fought for the welfare and dignity of her community. What is more, she has been aggressive and fearless, representing the very opposite of the soft, humble, collaborative approach of Babu Jagjivan Ram, whose daughter, former Lok Sabha Speaker​ Meira Kumar, is the losing candidate in our all-Dalit presidential sweepstakes.

Behenji is now looking for any means that will bring back her slipping Dalit vote-bank back to her. Her move to resign shows just how desperate she is.

But however fierce her will to power or frantic her efforts to project herself as the Dalit messiah, Behenji may have failed fully to grasp the huge churn going on in Indian politics. Call it the NaMo wave or something else, this drastic unsettling has also affected the dominant Dalit narrative in India. If Behenji’s militant brand of politics has few takers today, it is because more than ever Dalits wish to join the national mainstream.

Many who have risen out of their traditional backwardness also want to enjoy the privileges of being unmarked and ordinary middle-class Indians. Mayawati’s angry, oppositional, and antagonistic politics no longer seems attractive, especially her periodic assaults on Hinduism and its symbols. Dalits, increasingly, want to be part of the Hindu body politic, albeit as honourable and equal partners.

What has really changed? The answer is simple. Mayawati’s rhetoric was useful, even appealing, as long as the ruling Congress party pushed its secularist-minoritarian rhetoric down our throats. Identity politics, whether caste, region, religion, or language-based, was encouraged because it stalled a nation-wide Hindu consolidation of votes. The UPA, thus, ceded power at the state level in exchange for retaining its hold at the Centre.  But now that formula no longer holds. The Modi-effect has changed that. Both at the regional and national levels, the most powerful consolidation is actually founded on being Hindu, being Indian, and being nationalistic. 

Will Behenji succeed by going back to the people who once supported her? Will her re-entry into the rough and tumble have a meaningful impact? Indian politics is an unpredictable minefield, but all the signs suggest that the real reason behind her resignation gambit is the hope that she will have a key role to play in some sort of anti-BJP mahagatbandhan rejig before the 2019 general elections. Can Behenji reinvent herself and her brand of Dalitism?

That remains to be seen. But the writing on the wall seems unequivocal: adapt, transform, or perish.

The author is a poet and Professor at JNU