"Es ist schwindelerregend"

-"It is dizzying", Lenin right after the Bolshevik takeover.

The UP elections are nearing their completion. Isn't it strange that elections are becoming long drawn out processes rather than short events? Stretched to the comical extreme, one can imagine when elections would turn out to be a 6 months affair or even year long tamasha. But that is beside the point. Every seasoned observer of UP agree on one basic thing: that it is undergoing tremendous social churning where the various caste components are trying to configure and reconfigure themselves in alliances and formations to seek social and political power. This extremely fluid and dynamic situation started with the decay of the 'massive mandate' of Rajiv in late 80s. The double whammy of Mandal and Mandir accentuated this process. Mandir originally was a vector directly counteracting the Mandal vector, the collision did create some internal schisms inside the Mandir array. But later on Mandir's returns started to diminish and as of now it is deprived of a major portion of its potency in state elections at least. That leaves the Mandal factor in the arena.

UP is a microcosm of India in terms of the social structure, though the word micro is ironic in UP's context because of its geographical size, population and political importance. It can also be said that nowhere the differences and attitudes among the social groups are as stark and as accentuated. In early 90s Kanshi Ram in an interview to Cho.Ramaswamy told that UP is the head of the Snake that is Brahminism. The best strategy would be to cut off the head first. With that purpose, he plunged headlong into UP, forfeiting his limited successes in Punjab, Delhi and elsewhere. The BSP strategy later finetuned and adjusted by Mayawati is to sell the idea of political power to dalits and mobilise them as committed voters and combine anybody who wishes to join this project accepting the dalit leadership. During the hey deys of Mandir, BJP had a firm grip over UP with support from overwhelming numbers of upper castes, a smatter of OBCs and benefited from the fragmentation in its opposition. This made the OBCs formations who were helpless on the face of the BJP onslaught to link up with BSP in 93-94. The Mandal logic seemed to provide the ideological ballast to the alliance. However on the ground level deep suspicions of one another's motives and counteracting forces did not let the alliance to live long. The main reason I believe was the OBC formation's wrong assumption that the BSP would be content to play a supporting role in the Mandal revolution. However the BSP would have none of it and it formed expedient alliances with Congress and even with BJP later.

If we do some fuzzy math one end of the spectrum we have BJP that relies on Brahmins + Thakurs + Vaishyas + non-dominant OBC castes + few dalits. And then we have the OBC behemoth of Yadav + Kurmi + some Jats and Thakurs + landed Muslims. We have the BSP 's dalits + some OBCs + some brahmins. Finally we have the pariah, the Congress party which mops the remains left over by these formations. The pertinent question is how far the traditional Brahmin and Kayasth groups would be accomodative(ed) in the BSP agenda. If BJP engages in a post-poll alliance with BSP, then its Thakur vote would evaporate and solidify into Mulayam's kitty. On the other hand if BJP joins hands with SP, then the combo of 2 prima donnas will not last even months. I would not put too much money on that. It would not make sense, near term or long term. I can see them co-operating on specific agendas in the Center against Congress, but a direct alliance is highly unlikely. How about BSP + Congress alliance, a fervent wish of some Central Congress leadership ? If the seats that Congress can get closer to catapult Mayawati over 200+, it will materialise. Otherwise BSP would prefer to dine with the BJP than Congress.

People who observe BSP say that it is devoid of any principles and its electoral strategy seems inconsistent. They however miss the fundamental nature of this movement. BSP has made a strategic choice to capture politcal power with a dalit core at the head of the pyramid; whoever wishes to join the bandwagon may do so. It puts a premium on capturing political power over anything else and then using the administrative power to implement its agenda.Thats why we see Mayawati remaining near silent on the quota issue. Once Kanshi Ram said, he is not interested in fighting for quota. His aim was to capture power and then reward reservation to the savarnas according to their meager numbers in the population. Now going back to the caste equations and the rearrangement of the variables, the interesting phenomenon in this round seems to be BSP's major foray into courting Brahmin votes. The precursor to this arrangement was the 96 alliance between Congress and BSP and further post-poll arrangements with BJP. The fact that these experiments failed has not made the BSP give up on the project. But it also depends as how one defines failure? In this context does it mean a durable and stable power sharing arrangement? If so one can say it was a failure. But BSP is a lot smarter than that. Their purpose is to bring down the edifice of the savarna power structures in this long drawn out process. All these experiments provided them a wonderful opportunity to learn lessons in how these groups can be accommodated in a dalit centric power structure.

All of this brings me back an essential paradox. The snake analogy of Kanshi Ram was also used by his hero Mr. EV Ramasamy Naicker. His disciples still talk about the snake of Brahminism. The EVR revolution successfully eliminated the Brahmins out of TN power structure, but retained the facets of 'brahminism'. The personalities have changed (even this is arguable) but the attitudes have not changed towards dalits in the South. We see that the Thirumavalavans and Krishnaswamys beg for single digit seats before Poes Garden and Gopalapuram Towers. If BSP succeeds in its long term project in UP, it would have succeeded in breaking the 'brahminism' but retaining the Brahmins albeit in a subsidiary role. Now, that would be a true revolution!