Akhilesh-Mayawati Victory Teaches Opposition: ‘United We Rise’

The SP-BSP alliance just stormed a BJP bastion, which goes to show that a united Opposition can achieve anything.

Too caught up to read? Listen to the story instead

There is an old slogan — ‘Mile Mulayam Kanshiram, hawa mein ud gaye Jai Shree Ram.’ This slogan did the rounds in 1993, when Uttar Pradesh was due for Assembly Elections. At the time, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshiram had reached an understanding, and had decided to contest the elections together.

This was a time when communal tension was at its peak. Provocative hate-filled anti-Muslim slogans were being raised at every second corner. There were attempts to recreate the Partition-era tension.

The Babri Masjid had been pulled down. LK Advani was at the helm in BJP. In UP, Kalyan Singh was the “Hindu Hriday Samrat” (emperor of Hindu hearts) and wielded a significant amount of influence. After the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the BJP government had been shown the door.

Elections were going on and the BJP was confident about its victory. But the Mulayam-Kanshiram alliance changed the equation – just like today, when the Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati alliance changed the game in the UP by-elections for Gorakhpur and Phulpur, by winning both seats. In 1993 too, BJP had lost the election. The slogan proved to be true. Mandal politics got the upper hand over Kamandal politics. Even the war cry of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ couldn’t save the BJP.

Storming Yogi’s Bastion

The election results of Gorakhpur and Phulpur are interesting in many ways. BJP’s UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has won the Gorakhpur seat the last five times. Before him, Mahant Adityanath had won thrice from that seat. Meaning, since the ‘Ram Mandir’ issue came up, the BJP has never lost the seat.

In 2014, Yogi won the seat by about three lakh votes. Then in 2017, after BJP’s strong win in UP Assembly elections, he became chief minister. At that, everyone was stunned. Yogi’s image was of a communal leader, one against whom there were ongoing cases of provocative hate speech against Muslims. Because of his being an extremist leader, questions were raised about whether the administration in UP would even be able to function.

But a senior BJP member had told me that he (Yogi) was leader of the future. I did not agree with him. At the very least, this was a shock for the people of UP. At the beginning, TV news channels focused so much on Yogi, that for a while even Modi was pushed off the screen.

The Sangh Pariwar and BJP always thought that after Kalyan Singh, they had no other leader in the region of his stature who could secure a win for the party on his own. Rajnath Singh is a big leader but the party wants him at the Centre. He also doesn’t want to get caught up in regional politics. The Sangh’s assessment was that without winning UP, Delhi can’t be won, and the Hindu Rashtra cannot be created.

This is the reason why Modi was made to contest the election from Benaras. After the UP Assembly victory, the dream to make Yogi into the next Kalyan Singh was visualised. Just like Kalyan Singh, Yogi is also immersed in the Sangh’s ‘Hindutva colours’.

Yogi started showing his true colours soon after becoming chief minister. Meat sellers began to be terrorised by gau rakshaks. Everyone knew that gau raksha was just an excuse, and the real target was the Muslim community. Then began the ‘love jihad’ attacks and the formation of the ‘Romeo Squad’. Soon, encounter killings started to take place; around 40 such killings took place on Yogi’s watch.

Now, if a leader like that is unable to deliver a victory from his home base, how will he ever fulfill the Sangh’s dreams? This question will definitely be asked now.

What Changed in Favour of Mayawati-Akhilesh?

The Phulpur seat was Keshav Prasad Maurya’s. He has been state party chief and is currently the Deputy Chief Minister. Being quite active in the Vishva Hindu Parishad, he has no qualms about being identified as a ‘Hindutvavadi’. But Maurya also failed.

This is just one angle to the UP results. The real picture is much deeper, the source of which can be traced back to 1993.

The question is – when Hindutva is on the ascent, when it is believed that ever since Modi became Prime Minister, a large section of Hindus have become BJP and Sangh followers, why did the BJP lose both seats?

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Mayawati didn’t win anything. Samajwadi Party managed to get five seats with difficulty. The BJP coalition won 73 seats.

In 2017, Mayawati’s position became even weaker and she only managed to get 18 MLAs in the Assembly. Samajwadi Party also shrunk to 48 seats. So, what happened in just a year that the BJP couldn’t save the base of two of its senior leaders? Actually, this story is more about Indian society than Indian politics.

Rise of the Oppressed

The upper castes have dominated for thousands of years, to the detriment of Dalit and other backward castes. After the Mandal Commission came into effect, the fight of the backward castes became stronger. Along with equality before the law, they also began participating in power politics in proportion to their population.

This is where the Sangh Parivar got stuck. Because the Sangh’s social consciousness is of the upper castes, what Ambedkar called ‘Brahmanvad’ or ‘Brahmanism’, an ideology which has a longstanding feud with ‘Dalitvad’.

Yogi didn’t merely describe the Akhilesh Yadav-Mayawati alliance as a ‘saanp-chuchunder’ (snake-shrew) merger for the sake of it. It points to a deeply entrenched ideology.

In numbers, the Dalit and Backward Castes form 80 percent of Hindu society, while the Upper Castes form 20 percent. Democracy is a numbers game. The one who has more people, has more power. Whenever there is a fight between 80 and 20, 20 will have to lose. But this will only happen when the 80 come together.

With SP and BSP coming together as a united front, the BJP’s head was left spinning. A one-time senior BJP leader Govindacharya calls it ‘social engineering.’ This time, this social engineering worked.

This ‘social engineering’ will prove to be the biggest obstacle in Modi’s path. If Mayawati and Akhilesh stay together, then irrespective of what Modi does, the BJP collation won’t be able to get 73 seats as they did in 2014. And if that happens, then it will be near impossible for the BJP to reach the required majority in the Lok Sabha.

Takes Two to Tango

So, the story comes back to the point, ‘Mile Mulayam Kanshiram, hawa mein ud gaye Jai Shree Ram.’ The Akhilesh-Mayawati alliance has the power to change the country’s politics. It can eclipse Modi’s second term. This alliance also sends a message to the Opposition that if everyone unites, then Modi can be stopped and the RSS dream of making India a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ can also be prevented.

But the million dollar question is: will the Opposition accept and realise this, and will Modi refrain from using government machinery to break this understanding? Will the Opposition have the capacity and mental strength to counter Modi’s tactics?

The game has just begun.

(The writer is an author and spokesperson of AAP. He can be reached at @ashutosh83B. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)