BSP's Dalit base may prove to be its Achilles heel in Uttar Pradesh

“Hathi nahin, Ganesh hai;
Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh hai”
This yesteryear slogan of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) suggests that the elephant — the party symbol — also represents Hindu gods. The line harks back to the heady days of 2004 when it had just realised the importance of wooing the Brahmins. After all, a 20-21% Dalit vote bank, though sizeable, is not enough to assure poll victory on its own. The blessings of Brahmins, who constitute 10-11% of the population of Uttar Pradesh, is just what the BSP needed.

Indeed it was a tectonic shift for a party that historically bent over backwards. This was the same party that swore by “Tilak, taraju aur talwar/ inko maro joote chaar” — the tilak representing Brahmins, taraju (weighing scale) the Banias and talwar (sword) the Rajputs, all upper castes. The provocative line exhorted the Dalits to overcome upper-caste dominance.

Swift Shifts
At the heart of this Dalit-Brahmin social engineering was Satish Chandra Mishra, a Lucknow-based lawyer; and, later, his close aide Brajesh Pathak. The political marriage was consummated soon, and the BSP duly went on to win the 2007 assembly elections with a 31% vote share. Mayawati was the queen, Brahmins the queen-maker.

Fast forward to 2016 and the Brahma-Vishnu-Ganesh imagery is seen to be deserting the party. And the blame for this is being placed squarely on Behenji’s shift away from Brahmins and towards the minorities.

Mishra is the undisputed No. 1 Brahmin leader within the party, and the responsibility of organising public rallies was vested with Pathak and his youth team. In short, the Pathak-Mishra duo were considered the Ram-Laxman of the BSP. Together they achieved a lot as well, taking the vote share of the BSP from the low of 19% in 1995 to a high of 31% in 2007.

It’s against this backdrop that Pathak’s crossing over from the BSP to the BJP early this week came as a shocker; perhaps even more shocking was Mishra saying — political analysts reckon he was forced to state — that Pathak was expelled as he demanded seats for his wife, brother and brother-in-law.

Last Sunday, Pathak was seen organising Behenji’s first mega rally ahead of the 2017 polls in Agra. The very next day, he was part of the saffron party, and of a photo-op with BJP president Amit Shah.

To be sure, the newfound focus of Behenji on Dalit-Muslim consolidation is being seen as one of the prime triggers for Pathak’s exit. “On her (Behenji’s) instruction I had worked to woo Brahmins to the BSP since 2004, but now the BSP is pursuing anti-Brahmin policies. Hence I have chosen to leave the party,” Pathak, a former member of Parliament from Unnao, told ET Magazine.


An indicator that Brahmins are not top priority is the shift in seat allocation — BSP has given just 34 seats to Brahmins for 2017 as against 90 in 2007; and Muslims have been allocated around 100 seats versus 59 in 2007, thus reversing the ticket allocation between the two communities.

Perhaps that also explains why Mayawati and Pathak did not share the dais on Sunday, with the former not feeling the need to, and the latter set to leave the party.

“Remember what Chanakya said: the raja ought to have a strong spy network and should know what is happening under his nose. Sadly, Mayawati lives in her own world. Merely chanting ‘our vote bank is intact’ is not enough in this crucial election,” said a political commentator who closely watches UP politics, on the condition of anonymity.

If Pathak’s induction is a plus for the BJP towards consolidating Brahmin votes and denting BSP’s image ahead of the do-or-die UP polls; for BSP it’s doubtless a setback — particularly as it comes on the heels of the exit of other party bigwigs like RK Choudhary and Swami Prasad Maurya, the Pasi and OBC leaders respectively who have joined the BJP. Early this year even a Dalit BSP leader, Jugal Kishore, had joined the saffron party.

Mission UP 2017
Small wonder the BJP is in a jubilant mood. “It’s a big jolt for the BSP, which is on the verge of being finished. Certainly, Pathak’s induction is a big advantage for the BJP. Slowly but steadily we are moving closer to Mission 2017,” an exultant UP BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya told ET Magazine.

Political analysts see Pathak’s movement not as a huge gain for the BJP but as a loss of face for the BSP. “It is true that Pathak was a dabang neta of the BSP but one must also know that he was disgruntled lately.

It must also be noted that four prominent Muslim MLAs have joined the BSP. The BJP is using all its might to weaken the BSP, who is their main rival in UP,” says Badri Narayan, professor at JNU’s Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion. For his part, Amit Shah in an interview with ET earlier this week insisted that “The BJP hasn’t weakened the BSP; the internal issues of the BSP have weakened it”.

Pathak, a former Rajya Sabha MP, last won an election in 2004. There are talks that in the upcoming elections Pathak might field his wife.

On Friday, prominent BSP OBC leader from Bundelkhand, Hargovind Kushwaha, too joined the BJP. In the run-up to 2017, expect some more shuffles in the electoral pack.