BSP churn likely to create vacuum in Uttar Pradesh's Dalit politics

Analysts predict bleak future unless the party reinvents itself and sheds its perceived BJP ties. Radhika Ramaseshan writes

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) may not have made a mark in the recent general and Uttar Pradesh elections, but unlike other beaten and disorganised outfits, it is undergoing a massive churn for rather bizarre reasons.

 

“The limitations of caste mobilisation are writ large over the BSP. When the Bahujans (the less empowered and disempowered castes) have power, they have fusion. Without power, there is fission,” said Vivek Kumar, sociologist and professor at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University and the author of Dalit Leadership in India, among other works.

 

In the BSP, the post-defeat bursts of energy are manifest not in