India’s divided opposition

Mayawati cut a rather forlorn figure as she angrily stomped out of parliament. In a statement later, the BSP chief declared she had quit the Rajya Sabha after being “gagged” by the BJP on the issue of Dalit atrocities. Although some opposition figures expressed solidarity with the BSP chief, none of them came forward to dissuade her. In any case, her tenure will end in April 2018.

If Mayawati’s extraordinary move was a political theatre aimed at generating some buzz – especially among her Dalit supporters – and whether it worked is too early to say. It did not impress political pundits, especially those on the right, who were ensconced in television studios.

Is it really the end of the road for the tallest Dalit leader once hailed by Narasimha Rao as “a miracle of democracy” and by Newsweek as “India’s Barack Obama”.

It may not be all over for the four-time chief minister just yet. But her party certainly faces an existential crisis. Absurd as it seems, under the sustained assault of the BJP and Modi – who has been trying to portray himself as the ‘new messiah’ of Dalits and backward communities – Mayawati has been fast losing her support base of Dalits and the Most Backward Classes to an essentially upper caste Hindutva party.

Helped by its army of spinmeisters and strategic media messaging, the BJP has been successfully weaning away Mayawati’s flock. Less than two years after she lost India’s largest state to the Samajwadi Party in 2012, the all-consuming Modi wave reduced Mayawati’s BSP to a humiliating third position in the UP in the 2014 general elections.

Her critical Dalit support base shrunk by four percentage points, from 26 percent in the 2014 assembly polls to 22 percent in those conducted in 2017, reducing her party to a paltry 19 seats in UP. These numbers are not sufficient to send even one MP or Mayawati herself back to the Rajya Sabha.

But this is not merely about a Rajya Sabha seat or two. What is at stake is the political survival of her party. Mayawati may still be called the Queen of Dalits, but she has lost her kingdom and courtiers to a resurgent Hindutva wave. And it’s not just the BSP. Nearly all secular parties have been battling the same situation as the BJP positions itself as an all-encompassing presence that promises and means all things to all people.

The greatest threat is perhaps faced by the BSP. Its predominant Dalit support base has been under fierce saffron assault and has been steadily bleeding. Its erosion has accelerated with each election over the past few years.

India has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past decade or so. An overwhelming majority of its population is young and – like all young people everywhere – aspirational. The Dalit youth, armed with both education and political awareness, have not been immune to this change – which is ironically heralded by the economic liberalisation of the Congress. And Modi and the BJP have been aggressively targeting this section of the electorate.

As VVP Sharma argues: “The Dalit youth are looking for a messiah to deliver them. Many of them saw in Modi the deliverer as he played the Pied Piper in 2014. In many houses across the country, the father voted [for the] BSP while the son voted [for the] BJP”.

Seemingly, many of them are too young to care about the Mandal and Mandir issues. Much like the youth around the world, they are more concerned about their own progress – no matter who offers it.

The fact that Dalit leaders like Mayawati and Ram Vilas Paswan have been concerned about their own growth and have exponentially multiplied their assets over the past few years does not help. No wonder these groups are easily attracted to Modi and the BJP’s messaging which projects a large, happy Hindu Parivar offering growth to all sections – no matter what the ground reality is.

This is a disturbing state of affairs, to say the least – and not just for the likes of Mayawati. The same fate is faced by most political parties as the BJP poaches on their cadres and leaders as it pursues a grand strategy to emerge as the only ‘natural party of governance’ at everyone’s expense.

On the one hand, it is aggressively targeting the core constituencies and traditional vote banks of parties like the Congress, the BSP, the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh, the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Yadav and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. On the other hand, it is going after their leadership and anyone who does not fall in line by brazenly using the state power and institutions like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate at its disposal.

Look at the humbling silence that the Modi government has imposed on the immensely promising Arvind Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi chief minister. By ensnaring him in various cases, it has cut the anti-corruption crusader to size. Kejriwal had been the most vocal of all opposition leaders and was rightly seen as a credible alternative to the BJP and the Congress.

In Bihar, part of the critical Hindi heartland where the BJP was spectacularly defeated in the last state elections, the saffron party has been playing the classic good cop, bad cop routine with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

By reopening all these cases against Lalu Yadav and his children – who are part of the coalition in Bihar – it is turning the heat on Nitish, forcing him to dump his partner and return to the NDA fold. It also tackles two birds with one stone. Since the BJP’s drubbing in Bihar, Nitish was being seen as the potential PM candidate. He is now left worrying about saving his government in Bihar.

As for the Congress – which is already battered, bruised and confined to a couple of states – is being repeatedly shown its place with attacks like the National Herald case. Subrahmanian Swamy, the fierce lapdog, is solely dedicated to digging up dirt on the Gandhis to keep them forever embroiled in their own woes. In any case, with Sonia Gandhi preoccupied with her health issues and her ineffectual angel of a son refusing to grow up, the grand old party poses no immediate challenge.

The BJP is resorting to the same tactics down south, as it eyes potential new states like Orissa, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala to add to its kitty.

This is the endgame. Anyone who remotely represents a possible challenge to the BJP and Modi in the foreseeable future is being taken care of. And the longer it takes for the opposition to wake up to the clear and present danger it is facing, the harder it would be for it to ever recover.

Unless opposition parties come together for the sake of their own survival – if not to protect India’s secular democracy and diversity – they are staring at certain doom. Unless secular parties and their leaders work together – keeping aside their petty egos and self-serving agendas – to confront the BJP and its divisive agenda, there is little hope for India’s vibrant democracy. 

A mere opportunistic alliance at the time of elections cannot deal with a determined and ideologically-driven BJP and its large Parivar. The opposition must present a genuine alternative and a competing, redeeming narrative to take on the ideology of hate that has turned the whole country upside down.

Politicians like Mayawati must go back to the grassroots to revive their parties and work with other secular parties to confront the challenge posed by the BJP. If they do not get their act together, they will face certain peril, which is not good for the health of an inclusive polity and the idea of a progressive, secular India.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

The writer is an award-winning journalist.