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

[gouri]

This is a very moving response to a yuppy view of
politics. Ordinarily such responses tend to be
self-righteous and have a very angry tone. It is
difficult not to be.
best,
Gouri
--- Shivam Vij <mail at shivamvij.com> wrote:

> 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 
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