Cast in bronze

In her impetuosity and irrationality UP Chief Minister Mayawati can surely rival the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland. What she says is law. So, when she says that she will have statues of herself all over Lucknow as part of the city’s beautification plan, it will be done, naysayers and sceptics be damned.

Asked about it, she has said that she is carrying out the wishes of her late mentor and founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Kanshi Ram. To reinforce the point, she is also building a huge memorial for him.

Is there method in the madness? There is. Apart from the obvious objective of creating a larger than life brand for herself, it is also to provoke and outrage the sensibility of the upper castes, her bete noire. Kanshi Ram used to say that all political norms needed to be overturned in order empower the weak and the oppressed. His bid to change the rules of the game verged on the cynical. Mayawati is treading the same path of shock and awe.

It is true that the simpler among the Dalits are quite thrilled by the pomp and pageant that surrounds Mayawati. There is a sense of familial pride. It gives them a sense of vindication and of one among them having arrived. Mayawati understands well the sense of identification that her people have with her.

So, she makes a virtue of her utter contempt for discreetness and a sense of modesty. Though there is much that is admirable about Mayawati’s indomitable spirit, she needs to be arraigned at the bar of public tribune and in the name of the oppressed people when she gets carried away by her own delusions of grandeur, and tries to justify them in the name of Dalits. There cannot be anything more cruel and unjust than a leader of oppressed people indulging in the same vices as that of the oppressors.

There is greater awareness among the Dalits today. Most of them may be poor and uneducated, but they have begun to understand that they have the might of numbers, which carries weight in a democracy. They admire and adore Mayawati because she has emerged from the same dark shadows as they are in and reached high office.

This does not mean that they will remain in unquestioning thrall of her. They will judge her with the same yardstick that they use for the others: what she can do for them in real terms, by getting them jobs, homes and dignity.

And they will reject her as surely that they have rejected the others if they feel that she has betrayed their trust. Mayawati cannot take the Dalits for granted.