Uttar Pradesh Assembly election: Where does Dalit politics go from here?

BSP won just one of the 403 seats and secured a vote per cent of 12.8, down from 17 seats and a vote share of 22.2 per cent in 2017

Mayawati’s near-total elimination and the Azad Samaj Party (ASP)’s failure to open its account in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election have put Dalit politics at the crossroads in the state. Mayawati, who heads the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) — which articulated and advocated the rights and interests of Dalits and represented major Dalit sub-castes in UP since its electoral forays in the late ‘80s — was down to her most dismal showing. Her party won just one of the 403 seats and secured a vote per cent of 12.8, down from 17 seats and a vote share of 22.2 per cent in 2017. The ASP, launched by Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan on March 15, 2020, on the 86th birth anniversary of Kanshi Ram, the BSP’s founder and ideologue, was projected as a “clone” of the original. Azad is a young lawyer from Chhutmalpur (Saharanpur) and ushered in a political style that swung between flamboyance and logrolling. The ASP failed to open its account in the election; Azad lost his deposit in Gorakhpur Urban, which was won by Yogi Adityanath of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

So, where does Dalit politics go from here?

Author and activist Chandra Bhan Prasad, an advisor to the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “It is not in a happy state because there is no individual who can claim to be a Dalit leader. Mayawati says she’s a Sarvajan (universal) leader, and Azad calls himself a Bahujan (representing the 85 per cent non-upper castes) leader. Who is a Dalit leader?”

Although Kanshi Ram hailed from Punjab, where he was born in the Ramdasia sub-caste of Dalits (known as Jatavs in the heartland), he adopted UP as his political territory. He worked on an agenda that sought to re-group the Dalits and the backward castes (BCs) as a distinct electoral group by attempting to unshackle them from the clutches of Brahmanical Hinduism. He was partially successful although Mayawati, his protégé, won the UP election once on her own in 2007 by amalgamating the upper castes with the BCs, Muslims and Dalits.

S R Darapuri, a former police officer who worked closely with Kanshi Ram and currently heads the All India People’s Front, said: “Opportunism became an article of faith for Kanshi Ram and that corrupted and muddled Dalit politics. Dalits never learnt to fight for principles and livelihood issues. The poorer Dalits from the Valmiki, Koeri, Khatik, and Dhobi sub-castes were never attracted to the BSP. They were always with the BJP. As many as 90 per cent voted for the BJP this time.”

Vivek Kumar, a social sciences professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), said from the Jana Sangh era, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), assiduously worked on the less well-off Dalit sub-castes by using religion and local icons as identity markers. “The Khatiks and Muslims were pitted as rival claimants for economic resources and became permanent adversaries,” he added.

The BSP’s near wipe-out was ascribed to a transfer of its core votes to the BJP, allegedly at Mayawati’s behest. However, the allegation was contested by Dalit thinkers and commentators. “Mayawati’s core constituency deserted her but young and informed Dalits voted the SP (Samajwadi Party) and the RLD (Rashtriya Lok Dal) because they wanted to defeat the BJP. Mayawati fought the polls as a formality, without targeting the BJP,” said Darapuri. 

According to Prashant Kanojia, who heads the RLD’s scheduled caste/scheduled tribe cell, “Dalits are not traditional SP-RLD voters but voted for them this time. The BSP has a cadre vote bank that got fragmented. Some went to the SP-RLD and the rest to the BJP. The BJP successfully consolidated the votes it got.”

Sanjeev, a former associate of Azad who now helms the Bahujan Samajwadi Man­ch, believed the reasons why the SP-RLD lost out to the BJP in netting the BSP’s Dalit votes were two. “They lack­ed an organisational structure and there was no intellectual force among them. The anti-BJP Dalits went spontaneously towards the SP-RLD.”

What does the future hold for Dalit politics? Vivek Kumar is among a minority who reposed faith in the BSP’s ability to revive. “There is no way out. (Ram Vilas) Paswan and (Ramdas) Athawale burnt themselves out. At least Mayawati has remained a pole for us. We have seen the power of BSP politics manifest itself at various times. K R Narayanan became the president of India. The BJP appointed Suraj Bhan as UP Governor. If the Mayawati pole remains, there’s a chance that the Dalit voice will be heard.”

But Darapuri ruled out the prospect of a Mayawati comeback. “She has taken Kanshi Ram’s opportunistic politics to an extreme. He said no family member of his will enter the BSP. She has brought in her brother and nephew. She declared (in 2018) that she will head BSP for another 20 years. The party structure gives no scope for reform and change.”

As for options in the existing spectrum, Vivek Kumar thought the Congress could be one if it was “stronger”. “Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are always ready to share power with Dalits. There’s a lot of Congress-isation of the BJP but not in the aspect of empowering Dalits.” As for Azad, Darapuri’s view was, “The young man exists only as a newsmaker in media statements.”

Kanojia said if the SP-RLD were to nurture a Dalit vote base, it would have to be around the community’s “core issues, of which identity and self-respect are most important”.