Six months ago the BJP used the BSP to checkmate its rivals in UP. Now it is confronted by its unlikely ally's remorseless pursuit of power and unabashed opportunism that defy conventional politics.

By Farzand Ahmed, Saba Naqvi Bhaumik and Subhash Mishra

It is surprising how the most anticipated of events leaves politicians in a state of utter bewilderment. It happened to the BJP last week. With less than a fortnight to go for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati to relinquish office in favour of a BJP nominee, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) started throwing tantrums. BSP supremo Kanshi Ram put forward the demand that the BJP must relinquish the office of Speaker before its candidate Kalyan Singh could assume the chief minister's mantle. It left the BJP angry because its revolving door deal with the BSP on March 18 clearly stipulated that the chief ministership would rotate after six months and that the BJP -- as the largest single party in the Assembly -- would occupy the Speaker's chair.

Yet, there was an eerie inevitability to the crisis that almost left the grand experiment in "social engineering" in a shambles. It was conventional wisdom in political circles that the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo would not relinquish power without kicking and screaming. A month earlier, Kanshi Ram had prepared the ground by describing the BJP as "vultures" and ruling out a national alliance with the party, for the moment at least. Then, as if on cue, he began raising newer and newer demands, each one calculated to reinforce his image as the master of brinkmanship, the artiste of doublespeak and the high priest of political opportunism.

It is an image that the Kanshi-Mayawati duo absolutely revels in. Where other politicians mask their deviousness and unprincipled deals in a cloak of ideological sophistry, the BSP sees itself above conventional accountability. Kanshi Ram teamed up with Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP) in 1993 to check the post-Ayodhya saffron "fascism" in Uttar Pradesh. Within 18 months that coalition broke up in disarray amid vitriolic charges of SP workers leading an assault on Mayawati at the state guest house in Lucknow. Before Mulayam could blink, the BSP entered into an arrangement with the BJP, Mayawati cementing the deal by being photographed alongside a beaming party President L.K. Advani. Four months later, on October 17, 1995, that unstable arrangement collapsed. "I am not surprised that the votaries of Brahminism have betrayed us," said an unfazed Kanshi Ram.

In the BSP's scheme of things, there are no permanent friends or enemies. On June 23, 1996, Kanshi Ram sat next to former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao at a press conference in New Delhi to announce a BSP-Congress tie-up for the forthcoming assembly election in Uttar Pradesh. The alliance was centred on one crucial principle: that Mayawati would be made the chief minister. Of course, the BSP-Congress alliance did not win the election. It secured a total of 100 seats in a House of 425, the BSP's share being 67. But this did not prevent the party from persisting with its claim to the chief ministership in a hung Assembly. When Mulayam refused to relent, Kanshi Ram demanded that the Congress withdraw its support to the H.D. Deve Gowda government at the Centre as a measure of retribution.

At that juncture, new Congress President Sitaram Kesri was unwilling to do so but Kanshi Ram was not prepared to wait. In March, even as the United Front government was delighting in Governor Romesh Bhandari's constitutional subterfuge to keep the BJP out of power, Kanshi Ram struck a deal with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani to put Mayawati in power for six months. Only a month before, on February 13, Vajpayee had dismissed speculation of an alliance with the BSP: "All doors have been closed for the BSP after its tie-up with the Akali Dal (Mann) in Punjab." Eager to avoid another repeat of the 1995 experience, this time the BJP insisted on a written agreement, but even that has not deterred the BSP from throwing a spanner in the works and upping the ante. "Political activity," wrote Kanshi Ram in his party organ in October 1993, "has become a game where rich men's notes manipulate poor men's votes. Now we must no longer beg for our rights but snatch them."

The brazenness of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati does not stem from a failure to acknowledge conventional niceties. It is born of method and hard calculation. Unlike other Dalit movements of the past -- Babasaheb Ambedkar is a good example -- that combined involvement in competitive politics with social activism, the BSP's world revolves around one goal: the relentless pursuit of political power, using short cuts wherever necessary. For Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, the triumph of the Bahujan Samaj over the Manuwadi order will not come as a consequence of a gradual shift in social attitudes; it will be forced by the naked use of political power. For the duo, power is not the end. It is the means. Jiski laathi uski bhains (he who wields the stick, gets the buffalo).

Mayawati is quite forthright in espousing the BSP philosophy: "My single aim is to ensure that work meant for Dalits gets done. Everything else is towards that goal." The duo has a simple formula for reversing the "historical injustice done to our people". Control the bureaucracy, the levers of power and pass on the benefits to the Dalits, thereby building a vote bank that can be traded for yet more gains. Mayawati did not blink while apportioning Rs 700 crore of the state's rural development budget for the Ambedkar Village Development Scheme which would benefit just 22 per cent of the population. Nor was she inhibited by simple economics when she forced a near-bankrupt State Electricity Board to spend over Rs 150 crore for the electrification of Ambedkar villages. Mayawati doggedly pursued, what Giri Institute of Social and Development Studies Director G.P. Mishra calls the "Brahmo-Ambedkar approach" to create a psychological rather than an ideological impact on the state.

The approach has started yielding handsome dividends. The BSP has come a long way since its days as the Dalit Soshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS-4) when it concentrated on building a network of those who benefited from the post-Independence reservation of government jobs for Scheduled Castes. The reach among government servants has enabled the BSP to strike roots in all areas of Uttar Pradesh and enjoy a stable source of funding. At a time when national parties such as the Congress, the Left and the Janata Dal (JD) are in decline, the BSP has increased its share of votes in Uttar Pradesh from 11 per cent in 1993 to 20 per cent last year. In the event of a snap election, it is likely to go up further. Even Vajpayee concedes: "As things stand today, only the BSP has gained."

What is more, Kanshi Ram has conclusively demonstrated that the BSP's vote bank is not merely increasing but is eminently transferable. Mulayam benefited from this en masse transfer in 1993, as did the beleaguered Congress in 1996 when it increased its tally in the Assembly from 29 to 33. The BJP got a taste of the delights of teaming up with the BSP in this year's Farrukhabad assembly by-election when it regained the seat with a sharply increased majority, thanks to the BSP support. In fact, it is the BSP's ability to transfer its vote at the snap of a finger to the ally of its choice that explains why national parties such as the Congress and the BJP are willing to stomach insults and woo Kanshi Ram. For the BJP, a national alliance with the BSP may be good for the ideal of a Hindu society united in social harmony -- what Murli Manohar Joshi calls "our effort to fix the post-Mandal fractured polity of India". However, it is secondary to the temptations of an electoral sweep in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Likewise, for Sitaram Kesri, who has shied away from abusing Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, the key to checking Vajpayee's return as prime minister is a deal with the BSP supremo. Even V.P. Singh's grand scheme of a popular front against the BJP in Uttar Pradesh envisages Kanshi Ram as a key player. "There are many who will be disappointed if this alliance does not break," admits Advani candidly.

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