Maya, Modi, Azad is focused on Dalit politics in Uttar Pradesh (UP), critically examining the decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) after its dramatic loss of power in the 2012 Assembly elections. It is focused on UP, India’s political heartland, where Dalit politics took institutional form and emerged as a force within mainstream politics. It traces the trajectory of the Dalit movement in UP,
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in the post-BSP phase, while looking at the Hindutva outreach and expansion of influence among the diverse and multitudinous Dalit communities across Uttar Pradesh. It also looks at the changing nature of Hindutva and the BJP’s outreach to subaltern Hindu castes to strengthen its ideological claim that the Party encompasses all Indians, while rejecting caste hierarchy.
The two authors are political scientists, with deep expertise in the regional and local politics of UP and north India. Sudha Pai pioneered the study of Dalit ideology and politics with her 2002 study and expanded her canvas by another rigorous work on Dalit politics in Madhya Pradesh. Kumar and Pai collaborated on a 2018 study of everyday communalism in UP, focusing on the post-1992 political context of UP. For the work under review they have conducted extensive fieldwork in UP’s different sub-regions and spoken to Party functionaries across the political spectrum.
The book is divided into three parts and comprises eight chapters. Part 1 is focused on the BSP and the upswing and downturn in the Party’s electoral fortune. Pai and Kumar characterize the BSP as ‘a new “umbrella” Party with a Dalit core’, seeking to build a wider ‘rainbow’ coalition based on the inclusive idea of sarva samaj (all sections of society). BSP’s record in office during the critical years of 2007-2012 is analysed at length. The book provides a compelling analysis of Mayawati’s leadership style and her many controversial projects and policies, which paved the way for the BSP’s crushing defeat in the 2012 elections. The narrative is then extended to cover BSP’s dramatic and continuing downslide since 2012, with its vote-share declining from 30.43% in 2007 to 12.9 % in 2022, with the number of MLAs shrinking from the high of 206 to a token presence of just 1 in the Assembly of 403.
Part II of the book is focused on BJP’s outreach to the Dalits and the wide-ranging and complex set of strategies and policies which the Hindutva Party has employed under the leadership of Narendra Modi. Such outreach has included ‘promises of development, welfare programmes, cultural inclusion and nationalism to religiosity’. The 2022 Assembly elections testify to the dramatic success of this outreach, with BJP gaining the support of 41% of scheduled castes in UP and as much as 21% votes of the Jatavs, who have been the traditional mainstay of Mayawati’s support.
In Part III Pai and Kumar look at new Dalit formations and leadership. They have profiled three new and importantly autonomous initiatives: a) the Bhim Army led by Chandrasekhar Azad in western UP; b) the Bahujan Mukti Party led by Daddu Prasad in Bundelkhand; and c) Ambedkar Jan Morcha led by Shravan Kumar Nirala in Purvanchal. They draw attention to the fragmentation of UP’s Dalit politics along sub-regional lines. Led by young radical leaders, these formations compete with each other, which only serves to show the organizational decline of the Dalit movement in UP, a State where it took its most institutional form in mainstream politics.
Maya, Modi, Azad narrative draws on Pai’s decades of research and observation of the Dalits and Kumar’s multi-sited fieldwork between 2017 and 2022. Together, their analysis also draws upon wide-ranging interviews with prominent BSP and BJP leaders, Bhim Army activists, journalists, commentators, election analysts and scholars.
The central argument put forward in the book is about the unravelling of the institutional forms of Dalit movement symbolized by the decline of the BSP and its fragmentation and sub-regionalization in Uttar Pradesh. It looks at length at the fracturing of the Dalit movement in the north Indian State in which it was most prominent. Pai and Kumar argue that the BSP is facing an ‘existential crisis’. Alongside, they draw attention to the BJP’s quiet, almost indiscernible transformation in UP from ‘being an upper-caste-centric party to adopting a new subaltern approach of Dalit inclusion’ (p. xiii). They highlight Modi’s success in attracting a sizeable section of the Dalits to the saffron fold.
The book also points to the daunting, almost monumental challenge faced by the new generation of Dalit leaders in safeguarding the movement’s legacy anchored in the ideological foundations provided by Dr Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. It also suggests that the political appeal of Hindutva and its outreach to the Dalits may be reshaping the contours of Indian democracy. Further, it argues that the political arena within which Dalit politics operated in UP has been significantly altered with the ascendancy of a hegemonic Hindutva Party in power at the Centre and the State.
Pai and Kumar grapple with the ‘puzzle’ of Dalit politics in present day Uttar Pradesh, the simultaneous Dalit outrage against atrocities and their electoral preference for the BJP. They pose two central questions.
1. Why do Dalits exhibit political protest against atrocities and political preference of voting for the BJP?
2. Does the move by Dalits towards BJP signify tactical or instrumental support due to the decline of the BSP or a conversion to the party’s Hindutva ideology?
A key finding of the book is that the BSP is facing an existential crisis, and that the Dalit movement has seen fragmentation and sub-regionalization. Pai and Kumar see a bleak future with regard to the prospects of an autonomous Dalit movement led by Dalits, for the Dalits. They also draw attention to a shift of a sizeable section of the Dalits towards the Hindutva-centric BJP. Their narrative begs the question: is the shift towards the BJP tactical, pragmatic, or cultural?
They also document new stirrings within Dalit politics, spearheaded by a radical leadership representing the aspirations of young Dalits for rapid economic advancement.
Pai and Kumar’s work has ramifications for those looking ahead at the 2024 national elections and the prospects for a third term for the BJP–a verdict in which the State of Uttar Pradesh will play a decisive role. However, they pose the question that if the opposition comes together, which Party will be the fulcrum of the opposition alliance in UP. They forecast a hopeless electoral future for Mayawati and the BSP, and highlight that the political space being vacated by the BSP is increasingly being filled by the BJP.
Gyanesh Kudaisya is Associate Professor, South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore, Singapore.