Uttar Pradesh Elections 2017: In Mayawati vs BJP, This Group Of Supporters Could Make Huge Difference

Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh: For one of her earliest and showiest rallies in Uttar Pradesh, four-time Chief Minister Mayawati chose Saharanpur, a constituency which perfectly snapshots her strategy for the election that hits its second phase on Wednesday. Saharanpur's population is 42% Muslims, 22% Dalits - the former is getting more attention from the 61-year-old than ever before, while the latter she hopes to tug back to her side after their significant desertion in the general election.

Saharanpur votes on Wednesday, when Western Uttar Pradesh will pick 67 of the state's 403 legislators. Last week, 73 were elected.

For Mayawati, iconic Dalit leader, these are relatively easier rounds than the remaining five because she has traditionally been popular in the western part of the state, with its concentration of Dalits and Muslims. Saharanpur, a district with wood carving as its main stock-in-trade, cogently illustrates that: in the last state election, when Akhilesh Yadav scored a giant win, Mayawati won four of the seven constituencies here.

To its south, Saharanpur borders Muzaffarnagar, which was relentlessly traversed by Muslim-Jat violence in 2013. Nearly 60 people were killed, most of them Muslim, thousands were forced to abandon their villages. The government of Akhilesh Yadav, the country's youngest Chief Minister, 37 years old at the time, was denounced for being unable to quickly check the violence, which lasted longer than 20 days. The army was brought in to restore calm.

Most of those who were killed were Muslims, and among them, the majority were Pasmanda - Dalit or Other Backward Caste. Uttar Pradesh's population has 18% Muslim; among them, 85% are Pasmanda - Dalit or Other Backward Caste - and over the years, they have been turning increasingly to Mayawati. In the Muzaffarnagar riots, most of those who died were Pasmanda, and the numerically large but impoverished caste has expressed its anger with Akhilesh Yadav, who is seeking re-election along with his Samajwadi Party.

In rally after rally, starting with the one in Saharanpur, Mayawati, whose party colour is blue and whose symbol is the elephant, has assured the Pasmanda Muslims that their outrage is shared by Dalits as a whole.

Together, Dalits and Muslims make up around 40 percent of UP's population of 20 crore. Mayawati is hoping that their common sense of victimhood, reinforced by communal and caste violence since she was voted out in 2012, will now give her the advantage. It is her only strategy for political survival. The Muslims are being lobbied to vote for  Akhilesh Yadav, who has teamed with the Congress. And in the last state and general election, sizeable chunks of the Dalits broke away from Mayawati to support the BJP. 
 "In 2014, the Dalit vote reflected a larger economic aspiration. In 2017, it will revolve around local issues of Bijli, Sadak, Paani (electricity, roads, water) and above all, law and order," said  Ashok Singh, a high school teacher in the town of Rampur in Western UP who voted for the BJP for the first time in the general election. "Dalit girls are molested and raped every day, but we are prevented from filing FIRs (police cases), because police stations are manned by Non-Dalits. But if an upper caste girl is so much as teased, there are riots," he said. "Modi-ji is doing good work as the Prime Minister, but he is of no use to us in the state. "Behen-ji (Mayawati referred to as "sister") will make a better Chief Minister."

In the general election in 2014, so effective was (then presumptive) Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal of Acche Din or development and economic progress that Mayawati did not win a single of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP got a prize catch of 72. Mayawati's own sub-caste of Jatav Dalits (traditionally leather workers), who form 55% of the total Dalit population are therefore crucial to her power, spurned their best-known leader. (Mayawati lost 16% of the Jatav vote in 2014, nearly entirely to the BJP).

"But this time will be different," asserted Dipak, a college student. "The Jatavs have made up their minds to defeat the BJP, because it is Anti-Dalit." Like many of his friends, Dipak is active on social media and maintains outrage over last year's suicide of Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad University, who claimed caste-based persecution. Along with Mr Vemula's death, the public flogging of four Dalit men by cow vigilantes in Una in Gujarat a few months later created thumping WhatsApp campaigns that travelled from state to state, urging the community to bond quickly against further atrocities.

"They did not even spare Mayawati," said Dipak, referring to BJP leader Dayashankar Singh's atrocious likening of Mayawati to a sex worker, accusing her of choosing candidates based on whether they paid her (his comments violate laws to protect the weakest castes from discrimination). In several speeches, Mayawati has reminded her audience about the insult, asking supporters to avenge her. 

Then, just weeks ago, a senior leader of the BJP's ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or RSS stated that reservation or affirmative action policies merit a phasing out. Mayawati quickly declared this an example of the BJP's inherent upper-caste arrogance and anti-Dalit disdain. The RSS issued a clarification reversing the controversial remark, but Mayawati's criticism has stuck. 
 "The need (for reservation) is still there. We can't afford to study in non-government institutions and don't get jobs in the private sector. So why is the Sangh Parivar constantly raising this issue?" asked Dipak. 

It is a combination of controversies like this that could unlace the BJP's efforts to consolidate its gains among lower castes in the 2014 election through a series of well-publicized outreach programmes which include party president Amit Shah's lunch stop-overs at Dalit homes.

With markers of the Jatavs returning to Mayawati, the BJP is betting big on the non-Jatavs, 45% of whom supported the party in 2014. That's why, of the 85 reserved seats, the party has given just 21 seats to the Jatavs, who are more than half the Dalit population in the state.

Unlike the slide in the Dalit vote, Mayawati's Muslim support has been rising steadily - she scored 20 per cent in 2012. And it's the economically weaker sections of the community, the Pasmandas, who have been driving this support. Richer Muslims prefer Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP).

"The upper caste Muslims would prefer to vote for a Hindu OBC candidate put up by the SP rather than a Pasmanda Muslim," says Khalid Anis Ansari, a senior professor at the Glocal University in Saharnpur. "For instance the BSP candidate from Behat, Haji Iqbal belongs to the most backward Bandukchi caste (traditionally bird trappers). Of the 1.4 lakh Muslim voters in his constituency, barely 15,000 are upper caste Pathans and Pirzadas, yet they are unlikely to vote for him, even if the rest of the community does." This may not have much impact in Behat, but in other parts of the state, the differing choices of richer and poorer Muslims could split the community's vote, benefiting the BJP. 

In appealing to Dalits and the poorer but larger swathes of Muslims, Mayawati has to breach the large gap between the two. In the months following the Muzaffarnagar riots, several districts of Western UP, including Saharanpur, Badaun, Bijnor and Bareilly, which vote this week, witnessed follow-on communal violence which often pitted the Dalits against Muslims.

Where some of them seem to agree is in a disappointment with a lack of agenda for their economic empowerment, particularly at a time when both Akhilesh Yadav and the BJP are aggressively pushing parivartan (change) and vikas (progress) as their main promise.

"Mayawati has to to talk development. And at the same time expose the hollowness of her political adversaries. For instance, the Prime Minister has named a mobile phone application for cashless transactions, BHIM, after  Dr BR Ambedkar. But how many Dalits have cash in the banks? He could have put any national leader's name on it. If politicians must associate Ambedkar with any scheme, it should be linked to education and job creation," says Rampur-based Dalit writer Kanwal Bharti.