No state witnesses the centrality of the Dalit question as intensely as Uttar Pradesh on account of its deep politicisation since 1980s and thick demographic weight, accounting for 21% of the state population.
BSP, founded in 1984 under the leadership of Kanshi Ram, emerged on the political scene of the most populous state both as a party as well as a movement — thereby emerging as the natural claimant of a new generation of assertive Dalits, taking them away from the old patronage mode of Congress’ approach.
The fact that the Congress was the first choice of Dalits before BSP embarked on the political horizon, the question as to why the political shift of the community was a success in Uttar Pradesh but a failure in other states despite having a conducive demographic factor in its favour, acquires salience to account for its past as well as future in the Hindi heartland.
The context
BSP’s success in UP lied in the positive interplay of three factors. First, like every state it ventured into the Dalit question by privileging the socio-psychological issue of ‘Respect and Dignity’ against the humiliation faced by the Dalits. Thereby, it succeeded in striking an emotional chord with the community. This plank made the party more relatable to the Dalit masses as against the Congress that was following the old patronage model of Dalit politics.
Second, this leads to the other aspects to why the party succeeded just in UP. One of the crucial factors was the internal structure of Dalit demography wherein the most conscious Dalit sub-caste, Jatav-Chamars — which both Kanshi Ram and Mayawati belonged to — accounted for 55% of UP population.
Thus, there was a substantial core to the Bahujan experiment whose political loyalty to the party got doubly cemented by ideology as well as caste ties.
Though, the two factors help understand the rise of BSP in Uttar Pradesh, they don’t elucidate the failure of the party in other north and central states with a thick Dalit population — Madhya Pradesh (15.6%), Himachal Pradesh (25.2%), Punjab (32%), Uttarakhand (19%), Haryana (20.2%), Delhi (17%), Rajasthan (18%) and Bihar (16%).
Third and most crucial political factor accounting for the spectacular rise of BSP in UP is that while the state witnessed the electoral decline of Congress since 1989, the same was not true in other mentioned states, with the notable exception of Bihar.
Thus, it was the decline of Congress in UP that made factors like the emotional pitch of Bahujan-discourse and numerical dominance of Jatav-Chamars transcend into Dalit’s shift to the BSP. In other states, while the emotional pitch and demography offered the party a fertile ground, the continuance of Congress as a formidable political force prevented the shift of Dalits away from it.
This then inverses the widely held sequence of cause-effect in the state about Congress’ decline and BSP’s rise. It is argued that due to growing politicisation of Dalits under the leadership of Kanshi Ram along Ambedkarite lines, Congress lost their support, making the rise of BSP the cause and decline of Congress the effect.
However, had that been the case, then Congress should have witnessed the long-term electoral decline and the loss of Dalit support in other states too, wherein the thick Dalit demography and corresponding political awareness was as much as that in UP. Further, the fact that besides UP, Congress witnessed a long-term electoral decline in neighbouring Bihar, a state with no formidable Dalit movement, makes a case of Congress decline being the cause and BSP’s rise the effect more convincing.
In a nutshell, the combination of factors, demography; privileging emotional pitch of self-respect and dignity over redistributive politics of patronage and decline of Congress made BSP a success story in UP and the absence of the third factor accounted for its failure in other states.
This also partly explains as to why BSP wasn’t a significant factor in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh in the recent assembly elections.
2019 and beyond
In this backdrop, it could be strongly argued that the electoral fortunes of Congress and BSP in any state are inversely related. That is, unless BSP commands the dominant position in UP, the revival of Congress is beyond the point as the Grand Old Party needs to win over the Dalits. On the other hand, if Congress witnesses a revival at all, BSP, in all likelihood, would be at the receiving end.
This political equation poses a challenge for the Congress as well as BSP in the current political scenario in UP. Though Dalit political discourse in the state is fractured along various streams like Bahujan, Hindutva and electoral opportunism, the pragmatism of Jatav-Chamars and others is likely to ensure that they would vote for BSP in significant numbers. Therefore, 2019 is the moment of optimism for BSP.
However, there’s a new subtle trend in the making which, if it succeeds, would give a debilitating blow to the party. The fact that Congress is intensifying its effort to co-opt Dalit leaders like Chandrashekhar Azad, who has emerged from a protest movement with a massive emotional chord and traction among the community poses a challenge to the BSP on all the three counts.
First, leaders like Azad, if co-opted into Congress, could add an emotional and socio-psychological dimension along with the traditional redistributive mode of Dalit politics, thereby taking away the advantage BSP had since the 1980s. Second, the social background of Azad has the potential to cause tremors in the BSP core base of Jatav-Chamar as he himself hails from the same caste.
This becomes all the more important as hitherto, all the non-BSP parties have concentrated upon non-Jatav-Chamar Dalits to win over, leaving the Jatav-Chamars on the assumption that the core community would not desert the party.
However, when a young leader, who is the outcome of a movement signifying Dalit assertion, belongs to the core support base, strikes a deep emotional chord with the community and has been politicised outside the fold of institutional structure of BSP, joins Congress, the core would no more impregnable.
Therein lies the moment of anxiety and of potential crisis for BSP coexisting with the optimism.