Political tour de force
SURESH NAMBATH
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Trajectory of the meteoric rise of one who has become a name to reckon with in politics
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BEHENJI — A Political Biography of Mayawati; Ajoy Bose; Penguin-Viking, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi-110017. Rs.499.
Unauthorised biographies of living personalities have distinct advantages over authorised accounts. For one thing, they carry more credibility. Other than privileged access to the subject, authorised biographies offer no pluses or juicy details to the reader. At the outset Ajoy Bose makes it clear that his Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati is not an official biography.
However, the book remains a sympathetic retelling of the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader. Affectionate without being patronising and, supportive without being adulatory, the book does not seek to make most of being an unauthorised biography.
Neutral role
Bose distances himself from the first person accounts of Mayawati’s early years where she claims “feats of courage, compassion and duty.” In what he sees as his role as a neutral journalist, Bose takes the middle ground between cynics who question her feats and followers who take every childhood story as gospel truth. The biography is clearly a journalist’s account, and not a historian’s. He turns to functional explanations instead of wasting time and effort in trying to verify these stories of Mayawati’s childhood days: “… the real point is that these incidents are now like fables and their relevance lies in their contribution to the wider, unfolding Mayawati story.”
Throughout, he adopts the same methodology. There is no attempt to engage in a fruitless exercise of verification of diverse claims and accounts. Although he devotes several pages besides an entire chapter on the relationship between Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, Bose stops short of probing whether they had a physical relationship. “As to whether Kanshi Ram and Mayawati actually had a physical relationship, this to a large extent becomes irrelevant except for the purpose of salacious tittle-tattle considering what they shared was much more sweeping and had far wider implications than a mere affair. This is not least because while the personal element was no doubt a key catalyst, it was the political association between the two that acquired such huge significance. For without Mayawati’s mass charisma, Kanshi Ram could not have brought about the momentous political changes that happened with the potential of even bigger events around the corner. And we do know that without him to open up the world of politics, she would have gone on to be just one of the many scheduled caste officers in government service.”
Face of the BSP
Whether or not the personal is political, the political is surely also personal for Mayawati. Much of the BSP’s political campaign was devoted to the promotion of the persona of Mayawati. The BSP under her did not agitate for women’s issues or specific Dalit grievances, but relentlessly presented itself as a representative of the oppressed sections. Mayawati was the face of the BSP.
Bose thinks it is ironic that the “wretched of the earth, particularly those who are oppressed on the basis of race, creed or caste, have been historically prone to hero worship a dominant figure who brooks no dissent.” But it is quite natural for a party seeking to mobilise the unorganised sections through politics of identity to develop a personality cult around the leader. Ambedkar statues and parks serve the same purpose as the Mayawati cult: promoting the politics of identity to give Dalits a sense of self-esteem.
Sole representative
Mayawati seeks votes as a repository of the trust of Dalits. Her supporters back her through what others see as opportunistic political alliances. This also explains why she is deeply protective of her political constituency. Attempts by the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to take up specifically Dalit causes have been seen by Mayawati as grave political provocations.
Similarly, the absence of a second line leadership in the BSP has more to do with the very nature of the support base of the party than with the political insecurities of Mayawati. Dissent in any form is not tolerated in the BSP; but this is more a reflection of her strengths than of her weaknesses. Through defections and desertions, the party, which routinely gives the ticket to outsiders with resources to win elections, has retained its support base. Mayawati projects herself as the sole representative of her electors; legislators are intermediaries only because the political system demands it.
The book catches up with Mayawati’s triumph in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election through a social alliance with upper castes. The BSP was able to retain its core Dalit constituency even while reaching out to other social groups who were hostile to Dalits.
But as Bose points out, the BSP has been unable to replicate its success in Uttar Pradesh in other states, in part because of the absence of similarly charismatic local leaders. However, Mayawati now seriously nurses prime ministerial ambitions. The last chapter of the book is “Prime Minister Mayawati?” Although Bose is not able to chart her course to New Delhi, he still ends the book with this line: “It is perhaps just a matter of time before she does become the prime minister of this country.”
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