A centrifuge of uncertainty seems to be in motion in the Bahujan Samaj Party, with Mayawati’s own family at its centre. Once anointed successor, Akash Anand, elder son of Mayawati’s brother, has been stripped of his post and from the party. Party chatter is that he was paying too much heed to the directions of his father-in-law Ashok Siddharth, also an expelled BSP man, despite Mayawati’s explicit instructions to the contrary.
But Anand is not new to being stripped of posts. He was removed as party’s national coordinator in the middle of the Lok Sabha elections, ostensibly because of his ‘lack of political maturity’. Some months later, he had gained that maturity and the post, only to be now booted out of the party.
To those who have followed the politics of Mayawati closely, this is nothing new. She is just being faithful to her nature. At the slightest hint of anyone trying to gain prominence in the party, she pronounces banishment.
Remember Naseemuddin Siddiqui, who among many other roles was also custodian of the party’s coffers? He was shown the door for “anti-party activities”―the same charge that was levelled against Siddharth. It is as broad a charge as can be. And no one dare question Mayawati on its specifics.
To the casual observer, Mayawati, and thus by extension her party, might seem to be a mess, but she holds a unique place in dalit politics. And as of now, there is no one even close to the orbit she inhabits.
During the last Lok Sabha elections, a ground-level study on the responses of dalits to the emerging hindutva narrative was conducted under the aegis of the Giri Institute of Development Studies (GIDS), Lucknow. Focused on Uttar Pradesh’s Awadh region, it revealed that for dalits―particularly for the Chamars―voting for the BSP was non-negotiable.
Shilp Shikha Singh, an assistant professor of political science at GIDS, said, “Voting for the BSP is something of a debt that the community repays because of the honour, symbolism and material gains that it got under the BSP rule.”
That was a time when the implementation of The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was so stringent that complaints about its misuse were rampant. However, Mayawati’s own instructions that the Act not be misused are cited by her critics as the reason why atrocities continued with impunity. And when in 2007 she issued guidelines that FIRs be registered only after proper investigation, the number of cases filed under the Act fell. This is however more perception, less fact―according to the National Crimes Record Bureau, from 2009 to 2014, the number of reported cases of atrocities against dalits in Uttar Pradesh were 7,522; 6,272; 7,702; 6,202; 7,078 and 8,075, respectively.
Also, the dalits credit Mayawati’s rule for giving them civic amenities, houses, toilets, government services and respect like never before. Hence the ‘debt’ that Singh talks about.
Though the GIDS study indicted a huge groundswell of support for the BSP, it also noted that the dalit voter―who is far savvier on the importance of the Constitution as the font from which the rights for the community flow―weighed in on which party could actually stop the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has talked about changing this text it holds sacred. Thus, when it came down to actual voting, the Samajwadi Party-Congress combine gained.
Vidya Bhushan Rawat, an activist for the most marginalised communities, said that if Mayawati were to put in a tiny fraction of the effort that a Rahul Gandhi was putting in to take on the mantle of the defender of the Constitution, the BSP support base would coalesce in no time.
Rawat was in a village in Kanshi Ram’s home state―Punjab―during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where the BSP’s blue flag fluttered atop many houses. “It does not matter if the party is in power or out of it, the BSP symbolises dalit autonomy like no other outfit,” he said. The BSP, which fought in all of Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats on its own, drew a blank and its vote share also fell by over 1 per cent.
Rawat said that there was no leader of stature who could take on Mayawati directly without earning the ire of the dalits. Her untiring struggle to build the Bahujan Movement alongside Kanshi Ram put her on a pedestal. Thus, even Chandra Shekhar Aazad, president of the Azad Samaj Party and now MP from Nagina, never dares to say anything against her.
Aazad could well be a younger embodiment of Kanshi Ram―protesting against the government, accessible to those in need, dashing off letters to officials and being permanently visible. He is also a direct contrast to the foreign educated Anand, who many believe will not be acceptable to the BSP’s ground level supporter. He had once called upon Anand to join the Bhim Army so that they could together fulfil Behenji’s mission.
Ajay Kumar, a professor of political science at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University said, “Only someone who has risen from the ground like Mayawati will be an identifiable leader to her supporters.”
But Aazad, despite his on-ground struggles, is no Mayawati. And Mayawati, unlike Aazad, is making no effort to emerge from her self-imposed confines to electrify her supporters.
Meanwhile, Anand is stuck somewhere in no man’s land―needing to prove himself but not exactly sure how.
The only person who knows what is really happening with the party is Mayawati. She alone controls the centrifuge.