Mayawati’s Brahmin card: UP Election 2021
BSP supremo Mayawati wants to repeat her splendid 2007 achievement in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections amid the scorn of Dalits and neglect of Brahmins.
But after almost a decade and a half, is the social equation of Uttar Pradesh such that it should benefit them?
BSP chief Mayawati is openly making efforts to bring the Brahmin community into her fold, aiming to turn the clock in the opposite direction in next year’s Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Mayawati’s Brahmin card: BSP, which has completely lost its political ground, wants to repeat the results of 2007
This Dalit leader actually wants to repeat the results of 2007, when some Brahmin brotherhood meetings started in Uttar Pradesh before the assembly elections created an unexpected nexus between the upper and lower sections of the society, through which the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party had won a landslide election victory.
Behenji’s close aide Satish Chandra Mishra, himself a Brahmin, was the architect of the political equation that was formed about a decade and a half ago and is still Mayawati’s chief strategist.
The BSP, which has completely lost its political ground in the last few months, has once again shown a spurt in playing the Brahmin card through enlightened conferences, which are a revamp of the nearly one and a half-decade old Brahmin brotherhood meetings.
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Mayawati’s Brahmin card: UP Election 2021
This time, along with Satish Chandra Mishra, his son Kapil and son-in-law Paresh are also helping in organizing these enlightened conferences, and they are hoping that through these conferences, the BSP will be able to get 12 per cent of the Brahmins’ vote in the state in the assembly elections.
Recently one such enlightened conference was held in Lucknow, where Mayawati herself raised the issue of security of Brahmins under the chaotic rule of the current BJP government.
Raising the issue of the recent arrest of Khushi Dubey, the 17-year-old wife of slain criminal gangster Amar Dubey, by the state police, he said that despite being a teenager, the police administration is not giving bail to Khushi Dubey, in such a situation, her party is legal. Will fight.
The enlightened conference of Lucknow was also described as very important because after a long time such a crowd had gathered in any program of BSP, so it is being considered as the beginning of the campaign of BSP given next year’s elections.
Despite this, there are many such reasons, due to which it seems that the Brahmin card will not prove to be as effective for Mayawati in the next year’s assembly elections as it was fifteen years ago.
At that time there were reasons for the Brahmins to join the BSP.
In fact, a decade and a half ago, North India was in the grip of the post-Mandal movement, and the upper varnas of the society—and especially the Brahmin community—were stunned by the rise of the backward castes.
It is for this reason that the Brahmins of Uttar Pradesh decided to side with Mayawati, whose leader was Mulayam Singh, who had huge Dalit support, to stop the Yadav-dominated Samajwadi Party.
One of the reasons for that decision was that the Brahmin community then considered Mulayam Singh Yadav, the leader of the Yadavs, as a big threat to themselves.
However, in such a situation, this important fact should not be neglected that even before the resounding victory of the BSP in the year 2007, the Brahmin leadership of BJP formed minority governments under Mayawati’s leadership multiple times in the state with the tacit support of the Congress, so that SP to prevent the formation of the government.
But since then a lot has changed in Uttar Pradesh. One is that Mayawati and her party are no longer even a shadow of their golden past.
Apart from this, not only has the influence of Behenji in other lower castes including non-Jatavs diminished, but the younger generation of Jatavs who were their main voters is also joining the comparatively more aggressive and energetic leader Chandrashekhar Azad and his Bhim Army.
Then as far as Behenji’s influence among Muslim voters is concerned, it should be remembered that during the last assembly elections, Mayawati herself took the initiative to woo Muslims.
But Mayawati’s influence among Muslims is now negligible. The reason for this is the belief that has developed in the Muslim community that Behenji has surrendered to the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
The way Satish Chandra Mishra started the enlightened conference from Ayodhya after worshipping Ram Lalla, unfortunately, this belief of Muslims about the BSP has only been strengthened.
A Lucknow-based political analyst, who is incidentally a Brahmin, told the author of these lines, “Today Mayawati’s image is not at all victorious.
This is the reason why the Brahmin community of the state wants to teach a lesson to the BJP in the assembly elections due to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath giving preference to Thakurs and neglecting the Brahmin votes of the BJP.
But he also feels that Akhilesh Yadav is far more capable of defeating the BJP in the upcoming election than Mayawati.
Therefore, the Brahmin community, which is angry with the BJP, will prefer to go with the SP instead of going with the BSP.
On the other hand, a well-known Dalit analyst of the state believes that the disillusionment of the Dalits with the BSP due to the enlightened conferences being led by Satish Chandra Mishra will take a more widespread shape in the coming days.
