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Shouting brigades in Uttar Pradesh

It is a triple whammy for the Mulayam Singh-led Government in Uttar Pradesh, with the Samajwadi Party and its leader facing fire from a hit squad comprising the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Bahujan Samaj Party. The Congress, a potential secular ally, is given to behaving like an arch enemy. The BJP, a sworn anti-secular adversary, is willing to make the occasional concession. It is the Mayawati-led BSP that is Mr. Singh's authentic adversary. Yet the Mayawati-Mulayam saga is not just about two politicians basically ill-disposed towards each other. It is a fight for power between two ambitious equals. The politically and socially interesting question is whether Ms. Mayawati will be able to forge ahead. It is a different matter that the BJP and the Congress have assumed war-like poses. No less than Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee have taken to the streets to protest against the `criminalisation' of State politics. In parallel, dire warnings fly out of the quarters of Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul. Routed successively in the Assembly and the Lok Sabha contests, the BJP was desperately searching for a cause when its MLA, Krishnanand Rai, fell to the bullets of a rival gang. Thus was born the idea of yet another roadshow, the Nyaya Yatra, touted to be as "intense as the Ayodhya and Jaya Prakash movements." U.P.'s history of gang warfare and political killings predates Samajwadi Party rule. In its time, the BJP was accused of running a lawless government, and Rai hardly epitomised Gandhian values.

The irony does not end here. In Varanasi, Mr. Advani accused Chief Minister Singh of running a "jungle raj." He thundered that the Volcker Committee findings had brought "unprecedented shame on the country." How was he to know that the `party with a difference' would bear the brunt of two scandals, that its MPs would come first by several lengths in a venality contest recorded by two independent sting camera operations? In the event, Mr. Advani compounded the folly by appearing to defend the stung MPs on the floor of the Lok Sabha. He characterised the expulsion of the MPs concerned as a punishment "disproportionate" to their crime, adding they were more "stupid" than "corrupt." The BJP's U.P. offensive is a confession of weakness, a move born of frustration as is apparent from the frequent references to Ayodhya, and the Hindu versus Muslim spin given to Rai's killing. How this desperate attempt to raise the communal temperature and benefit from a sectarian polarisation will fare with the people remains to be seen. The balance of available evidence points to an upswing in the BSP's fortunes. Today the BSP is a picture of self-assurance. The confidence comes from the knowledge that it no longer needs to berate the upper castes to win the support of Dalits. There is a lesson in all this for the shouting brigades of the BJP and the Congress.

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