[Reader-list] Why i am afraid of Mayawati?

[Shivam Vij]

Thanks for posting this Rakesh. This is a very important post on the
CNN IBN website's otherwise dull blog section. It has been written by
Hindol Sengupta who covers fashion and suchlike for them. He says he
can't relate to Mayawati, finds it ironic that the "backbone of the
knowledge, entreneurial [sic] economy" should be a "non-vote bank". He
says that his class of people, his 'type' - People Like Us, to use a
cliche - "rejoice every time Manmohan Singh takes stage" but alas,
even he couldn't win a Lok Sabha election from South Delhi.

The reason why I think it is an important post is that unlike most
other PLUs, Sengupta makes no claim to 'objectivity'. When Youth for
Equality / United Students / other 'anti-reservationists' oppose
reservations, and speak about Dalits/OBCs, they claim to be doing so
with a claim to 'objectivity', that is, they do not admit that the
viewpoint(s) they are putting forward are of a certain section of
society that is influential in shaping public opinion despite being in
a minority.

Sengupta admits not only his discomfiture with a democratically
elected Mayawati but also that his discomfiture stems from his
background, from who he is. He describes himself and his ilk as
"middle-class, educated, metro-bred, Christian-education raised,
young." That would abbreviate into MEMCRY, but let's just use the word
'yuppie'.

It is quite extraordinary and laudatory for a yuppie to admit his
distance from the political rise of the 'low-class, neo-literate,
village-bred, government school-raised, middle aged'. Such an
admission is a rarity, and it is exactly what the
'anti-anti-reservationists' want the 'anti-reservationists' to admit.

Sengupta's 'realisation', though, is an incomplete one. Except for a
passing reference in the last paragraph, he does not mention that the
distance between Us and Them is in great measure that of language.
Conversations on class, social mobility and suchlike these days seem
to forget the Hindi/English divide. It has been left to Kancha Iliah
and Chandrabhan Prasad now to remind us of it.

Unfortunately the realisation of his being a PLU doesn't go too far.
But the honesty does extend to his class bias: his problem with Lalu
having a buffaloes in his backyard and on Mayawati he writes: "But
forward planning? Infrastructure ideas? Modernity? Mayawati, alas, is
the quintessential behenji."

So what about Lalu's success as railway minister? Could it be that
Mayawati hasn't been able to work on development because she's not
been in power for more than two years collectively in three terms?
Could it be that Mayawati's Ambedkar Villages scheme has made the
ceiling fan finally whirl in a few villages and allowed a few Dalits
to gather the courage to go to the police station and file an FIR
against the men who raped their daughter? Could it be that the
Dalit-Brahmin alliance by Mayawati could force a Brahmin or two to
give up untouchability and accept dalits as part of the same social
realm as theirs?

The questions don't bother Sengupta because the answers don't affect
him. In other words, another area where I would like Sengupta to
extend his realisation to is middle class self-centredness. The middle
class cares only about itself, the rest may go to hell. If this is
true even in perception, that is bad enough.

I also hope his realisation will sooner or later extend to adding the
phrase 'upper caste' to MEMCRY. After so much heat on reservations,
are the yuppies still blind to the fact that PLUs are exclusively
upper-caste? Whether its is by design or default that the middle class
is predominantly (if not exclusively) upper caste is arguable. Whether
this should be changed by improving the quality of primary schools
and/or by reservations in higher education, is debatable. But no one
can dispute that the Indian middle class is composed of the upper
castes. Yet they choose not to admit this. Sengupta honestly admits
that his convent education, metropolitan upbringing, class status are
the causes of his dismay (and 'fear'!) over Mayawati's victory. I wish
he'd extend this honesty to admitting that his caste is responsible in
the first place for his MEMCRY yuppie status.

He detests the heartland politicians because they don't speak his
idiom. But the heartland politicians are who they are largely because
of their caste.

Kumari Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Lalu Prasad
Yadav and others of their ilk are symbols, literally, of the political
assertion of those below the middle class. The logic of such political
assertion, according to Sengupta, is:

"It's the same logic that kept Lalu in power, that allowed him to
argue that development is nothing. He brought something more to his
voters - he was one of them, and for those who had been oppressed for
centuries, to see one of them in power, to see a CM who kept buffalos
in his backyard was intoxicating. It was a real sense of power. No
roads or electricity could beat that."

If Sengupta roots for Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra just because he
can relate to them, why shouldn't those not fortunate to have his
MEMCRY yuppie status not vote for leaders whom *they* can relate with?
If "those who had been oppressed for centuries" (as if they aren't
anymore) can enjoy a "real sense of power" by having one of their ilk
in the CM's chair, then should we conclude that Sengupta and the
yuppie class he represents also wants the same venal pleasure by
seeing people of their ilk in power?

Sengupta's understanding of caste politics - that the lower castes,
the 'oppressed', vote for People Like Them for a sense of power - is
to miss the wood for the trees. Indeed, if you ask Dalits in a remote
village in eastern Uttar Pradesh (as I did in the middle of February
this year) why they vote for Mayawati, they will actually say that
they do so because she brings them dignity, because she is one of
their own. In the mid-nineties Mayawati used to say in her rallies,
"Main Chamar ki beti hoon. Main Chamari hoon, main tumhari hoon."

But the reason why Dalits feel the need to have one of their own in
power is because they think that only then will they have the roads
and electricity they need - something Sengupta suggests
foreign-educated Rahul Gandhi will deliver better than someone like
Mayawati who has risen from a village and knows what it is like not to
have roads and electricity.

In one village I went to near Allahabad, there was a road going to a
Brahmin basti, one to a Srivastava basti, but not one to a Dalit
basti. The residents of that Pasi (a Dalit caste) basti told me that
this was plain discrimination because of their caste. And they voted
for Mayawati for her to change that. They voted for her again and
again in the hope that some day she'll get full five years in power.
(I thought it was quite remarkable that in a Dalit basti in a village
they knew of the five year system!) If they see Mayawati not
delivering the goods, they will stop voting for her one day. Just like
they stopped voting for the Congress that produced the Rahuls and
Priyankas but not roads and electricity in villages.

An office colleague, who despite having done his customary duties at
the JNU elections can be counted as a member of the MEMCRY yuppie
class, told me that his Brahmin parents in urban, BJP-voting Lucknow
enthusiastically voted for the BSP. Growing up in Lucknow myself, I
learnt less about the non-existent 'Lakhnavi tehzeeb' than about
Dalit-OBC politics because it was all happening before me. The day La
Martiniere College shut down to allow a Samajwadi Party rally on its
grounds was, in retrospect, a remarkable day when heartland politics
was able to interrupt a middle class factory.

But so many years of living under Maya and Mulayam has taught
Lucknow's and Uttar Pradesh's middle class to live with it. And love
it. If my colleague's parents voted for the BSP, and Brahmin lawyers
like Satish Chandra Mishra are suddenly becoming aware of their
Brahmin status and joining the BSP in large numbers, it speaks of a
convergence of interests.

Ambedkar, and his followers such as Mayawati, wanted Dalits to
"educate, organise and agitate", capture power and then use power to
open the doors of equality for Dalits. Kanshi Ram translated the idea
to the masses by showing them a pen. The cap, he said, was how much
the upper castes were. The rest of the body of the pen was
Dalits/OBCs/Muslims ("Bahujans"). Despite being together in a majority
they were being ruled by a minority o upper castes. The pen stood
vertically. He said he wanted to make it horizontal, where everyone
was equal. Brahmins, OBCs and Muslims voting for Mayawati and bringing
her to power is exactly the fulfilment of that idea, even if
politically but not yet socially.

Caste politics, Nitish Kumar in Bihar and Mayawati n UP have proved,
is not stagnant. It is rather a caste *churning*. Something's
happening here. Some thing's changing. Hindol Sengupta doesn't need to
be afraid of it. He can join it.

[apologies for a long post and for cross-posting it on Kafila.org]

best
shivam

On 5/17/07, Rakesh <rakesh at sarai.net> wrote:
> Certainly not my opinion, but an opinion from a "middle-class, educated,
> metro-bred, Christian-education raised, young" journalist...
> Salaam
> Rakesh
>
> Mayawati's historic victory has left me speechless. And scared. Her
> victory tells me once again how I, and people like me, have no voice in
> Indian politics anymore. We, the middle-class, educated, metro-bred,
> Christian-education raised, young. We, the backbone of the knowledge,
> entreneurial economy. We, who have no representation. We have no voice.
> We have no one who speaks our language, our idiom.
>
> We are the people who rejoice every time Manmohan Singh takes stage. He
> is us. He is the success of education and middle class values rising to
> the top. Only, shudder, he failed to win a poll.
>
> We, the non-vote bank. We, who must remember that Manmohan Singh rises
> because of Sonia Gandhi. Because of loyalty to the Family. We, who form
> no mass base.
>
> For more read
> http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/hindolsengupta/104/40458/why-i-am-afraid-of-mayawati.html
>
> --
> Rakesh Kumar Singh
> Sarai-CSDS
> 29, Rajpur Road
> Delhi-110054
> Ph: 91 11 23960040
> Fax: 91 11 2394 3450
> web site: www.sarai.net
> web blog: http://blog.sarai.net/users/rakesh
>
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