New Delhi: Exactly 44 days after she sacked Akash Anand as the party’s national coordinator in the middle of the Lok Sabha elections, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati Sunday reinstated her nephew in that position and declared him as her “only successor”.
The move came at the party’s first review meeting after the drubbing in the recently concluded elections, which saw its vote share dip to 9.39 percent. Drifting away from both the BSP and the BJP, the Dalit vote moved significantly towards the INDIA coalition. In fact, the moving away of the Dalit vote from the BJP is considered one of the biggest factors for the party’s underwhelming performance in Uttar Pradesh.
But in what could potentially be an even bigger setback and grave existential threat for the BSP, and undermine the BJP’s long-drawn attempts to win over Dalits, Chandrashekhar Azad of Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram)won his first election from Nagina, thereby possibly emerging as a new pole in UP’s Dalit politics.
In a post-victory interview with ThePrint, Azad virtually declared the end of Mayawati and the BSP by stating that while she contributed significantly to the Bahujan movement, it is now time for his party to take the baton from her, and carry forward the movement.
But, 29-year-old Anand’s comeback could shake things up for the BSP.
Vivek Kumar, a professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, who was present at the review meeting held Sunday, said the party’s cadres enthusiasm over Anand’s nomination as the successor, “knew no bounds.”
“From the party’s post-holders to the workers who were outside the meeting, everyone was overjoyed,” he said. “Akash Anand is seen as a panacea for all the problems that the BSP has been dealing with.”
There are three immediate questions that emerge in the context of the London-returned MBA graduate’s re-anointment as Mayawati’s successor. Could he help the BJP by disintegrating the Dalit vote? Could he thwart Samajwadi Party’s attempted makeover from being a Muslim-Yadav (MY) party to a PDA (Pichre, Dalit and Alpashankhak) party? And could he arrest Azad’s march to emerging as the sole Dalit icon in UP, even north India?
Anand’s dismissal from the position of national coordinator in May was dramatic. It came at a time when he was seemingly mobilising the youth with his aggressive attacks on the ruling BJP, which he termed as “aantankwadiyon ki Sarkar (govt of terrorists)”. Though an FIR was filed against him, from the looks of it, the BSP’s beleaguered cadres were enthused by the young energy he brought to them.
Shocked by his unceremonious, even embarrassing dismissal, several political commentators were led to believe that he was sacked at the behest of the BJP, which was rattled by his stinging attacks on it. Back then, Mayawati had stated that Anand needs to reach “maturity” before assuming important roles.
“There is no doubt that he was removed from this position under pressure because it was felt that he was harming the BJP for sure…unke bhashan BJP ko bechain kar rahe the (his speeches were making the BJP restless),” Ravi Kant, associate professor of Hindi at Lucknow University, said.
Now, that the Dalit vote moved towards the SP and Azad, it is “quite likely” that Anand’s comeback will benefit the BJP by drifting away the Dalit vote from the SP, and mounting a challenge to Azad, who is attracting the Jatavs, the core voters of the BSP, in a big way, he added.
“The Jatav vote moved to the SP because of anger against his removal,” Kant said. “Now, sections of it could come back to it (BSP).”
Arvind Kumar, assistant professor, sociology and criminology at Royal Holloway, University of London, however, is more sceptical of the theory that Anand was removed to benefit the BJP.
“It was Mayawati’s realist politics that made her take that decision,” he said. “Midway into the election, she knew her party was losing. She possibly even knew that he was not making that much of an impact on the ground…So, it was actually to protect him from the moral responsibility of the BSP’s impending rout that she sacked him. It was actually to protect his internal legitimacy.”
“Now, he can sort of start afresh.”
The road ahead
Could Azad and Anand emerge as the two poles of Dalit politics in UP now? Experts are tentative in their conclusions at the moment.
“A lot has changed since the election,” Kant says. “If he (Anand) would have fought and won the election, his stature would have been different…Now, the Jatavs are all looking towards Chandrashekhar.”
However, if Anand can be as acerbic against the BJP as he was during the elections, he could manage to resurrect the party, Kant said. “If he softens his attacks on the BJP, his comeback would make little difference to his party’s own fortunes.”
Both Anand and Kumar have different advantages and disadvantages, argued Kumar, who does not see Azad’s politics as backed by organisational weight.
Azad does not quite have the organisational strength to emerge as an independent pole in Dalit politics, he said.
“He has not mobilised the elite within the Dalit society to rally behind him…There are so many former leaders of the BSP who he could have brought with him, but he has not,” Kumar said, arguing that this makes his politics inherently a bit weaker. “The truth is that the boys he has with him are people who anyway didn’t have any work.”
His big shortcoming is that he doesn’t have the infrastructure, organisation, and finance behind him, Kumar added.
Yet, according to Kumar, what works in Azad’s favour is that he is in Parliament now, and can raise the issues of the youth and the Dalits on a national stage. “His stature has increased in a big way by the virtue of being an MP…He can make the noise nationally now.”
Anand, on the other hand, does not have that stature. “Without being in Parliament or his party having any seats, he has little to offer to people,” he said. “But he has the strength of the BSP’s organisation behind him with which he can galvanise the youth.”
Between the two of them, it all depends on what the two can offer to people, Kumar averred.
As of the INDIA bloc, experts have been uncertain of whether the coalition can continue as the favoured choice of Dalits irrespective of Anand’s new innings.
Several argue that the alliance, especially the SP, traditionally perceived to be antagonistic to Dalits, especially in western UP, was able to garner a significant Dalit vote due to the “moral panic” created among the Dalits over the threat to the Constitution. Whether or not they will vote for it as the panic subsides, depends on its political signalling to the community from hereon, they contend.
Yet, with Anand’s comeback, Dalit politics, which has been rapidly evolving with the decline of the BSP, the emergence of the BJP as a significant preference for Dalits over the last decade or so, and the most recent emergence of the SP as a potential option for the Dalits and the arrival of Azad in Parliament, is certain to undergo more churning.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: Jai Bhim or Jai Shri Ram? UP Dalits at a political crossroads post BSP decline