Mayawati hopes to strengthen her position among her core constituents, the Scheduled Caste voters, with her resignation from the Rajya Sabha in their name. Will it workIJ
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati’s resignation from the Rajya Sabha has become a talking point, both inside and outside Parliament. Much of the clamour is not owing to her dramatic resignation but due to the flaky reason she gave. People and parliamentarians have been made to believe that she gave up her seat because she wasn’t allowed to speak on what she claimed as rising atrocities on Schedule Caste members in Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath regime. She also said that the treasury benches heckled her, interrupted her speech and did not allow her to speak. Further, she claimed that the presiding officer directed her to wind up her speech when she had a lot more to say. To top it all, to make her action look realistic, she cited BR Ambedkar’s resignation when the Jawaharlal Nehru Government refused to back the reformist Hindu Code Bill.
The explanation given by Mayawati for her resignation is not believable. Members of Parliament in the lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha often face interruptions of this kind. At times they are heckled and hectored by their opponents. But none has taken this so seriously as to quit. If MPs were to start leaving House membership on issues like this, then there will be very few members left in Parliament. Such interruptions have happened in the past; are happening; and will continue to happen.
As for the BSP supremo herself, it was not the first time that she had been heckled while speaking in the House. Nor was it for the first time that the Chairman has tried to restrict the duration of her intervention. Interruptions are part and parcel of a democratic ethos which Parliament represents. Some are motivated, while others are malicious in nature. But there are systems in place to handle them. Quitting the House is not the solution.
One recollects that, when Congress leader Meira Kumar was the lok Sabha Speaker and the BJP was in the Opposition, senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj had been given a raw deal by the Speaker. In fact, after Meira Kumar’s name was announced by the UPA as its presidential choice, Sushma Swaraj had put a video on Twitter, which showed Meira Kumar not allowing her to speak. As per reports published in The Pioneer, which was also tweeted by Swaraj, Meira Kumar interrupted her ‘60 times’ in the six-minute speech. Swaraj posted the video to show the partisanship of the then Speaker.
Coming to Mayawati, her resignation comes at a time when the BSP leader has rather few members in Parliament to raise issues. In the lok Sabha, her party has no presence at all after having been wiped out completely in the 2014 lok Sabha election. In the Rajya Sabha, it had just six seats, and after her resignation, the party is left with five. Every seat should have been valuable for Mayawati.
By resigning, she has not only reduced her party’s strength in the Rajya Sabha but has also made it difficult for the BSP to recoup this setback. It is difficult because the current electoral numbers in Uttar Pradesh simply do not favour the BSP. A majority of the MlAs and MPs are from the BJP and its alliance partners. Then how is the BSP to gain the seat that it has given upIJ
We need to understand what exactly is Mayawati’s game-plan. She may be impulsive and short-tempered but she is definitely not a greenhorn. There had to be some reason for the precipitate step she has taken. The immediate reason that comes to one’s mind is that she wants to bask in the glory of victimhood. By giving up her seat, she is seeking to send the message to her constituents that she has sacrificed her position because she wasn’t given an opportunity to raise issues regarding their welfare. Perhaps she also wants to spread the message that she is the sole credible spokesperson of the backward and the minority community. She believes that she can gain back their confidence by playing the martyr.
Despite a committed vote-bank, the BSP won nothing in the 2014 lok Sabha election. In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election too, it could get just 19 of a total 403 seats — a sharp decline from 80 in 2012. The numbers are all the more shaky given that the vote-share for the BSP has seen a rise from past years.
Second, even within her constituency, there has been a drift of votes, to a large extent to the BJP. Significantly, the non-Jatavs have already made the shift as they voted for the BJP and dumped Mayawati. In fact, much of Mayawati’s discomfort is due to the BJP’s recent move of nominating Ram Nath Kovind, who belongs to the backward caste community, as the presidential candidate.
Her fears are understandable. The Scheduled Castes comprise 56 per cent of Uttar Pradesh’s population. She believes that by her resignation drama, she may be able to bring these voters back to her fold and also further project the BJP as anti-Scheduled Castes.
Clearly, Mayawati’s politics is based on victimhood. The ‘Dalit messiah’ has been banking on this section of the people right from the time she started her political journey as the voice of the Scheduled Castes. lady luck favoured her when BSP founder Kanshi Ram adopted her as his disciple. It was a matter of sheer luck that she was at the right place at the right time, and the community backed her during her early years, helping her to expand her base in the State.
Interestingly, Mayawati’s support base was not due to what she as a person was, but for the future she promised to the people of her community. After having survived three small stints as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, her time came when she was assured a full term in office. Mayawati’s espousal shifted from bahujan samaj to sarvajan samaj rule. It was a sort of social engineering, but the outreach did leave her core constituents befuddled and even upset.
But along the way, she lost the upper caste support which she had gained in 2007 — and later saw her core support base dented too. Her existential struggle had begun. The present resignation must be seen as an exercise in this direction. Mayawati’s wheels of fortune have, in fact, taken a full circle. Her career graph can well be summarised as the rise, the fall, the rise and the fall of Mayawati. It is thus apparently clear that the current resignation is much about getting back the BSP's marginalised status and less about the welfare of the backward community. She has sought to not hold a parliamentary seat but to get back the relevance she had as the benefactor and mentor of the Scheduled Castes. But she has, perhaps, miscalculated. For, Parliament should have been the very forum to get back what she lost — she could have made her voice heard and raised a number of issues for the betterment of her community.
Nonethless, the BSP chief has resorted to a political gamble. If her resignation strategy works, she may capture the centre-stage of politics once again. But it’s unlikely that this will happen. If it does not, she will be left with little to look forward to — either in 2019 or later.
(The writer is senior Assistant Editor, The Pioneer)