It was a bad week for the BJP, not just in Parliament, but out of it too. Throughout the week, it has been buffeted by incidents: its governments in Gujarat and Mumbai were accused of being anti-Dalit, its leader in Uttar Pradesh insulted Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati in highly objectionable language, and the cherry on top was the desertion of Navjot Singh Sidhu, who held a Rajya Sabha chair for all of three months before quitting.
Whether or not the BJP manages to recover its position, its woes have kicked in a few interesting equations in and outside Parliament.
The first consequence of the incidents in Una, Gujarat, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh has been the foregrounding of Dalit issues, something that is likely to continue till the completion of elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, which have a significant Dalit presence.
Senior BJP leaders admit that despite its support for Swati Singh, wife of its expelled leader Dayashankar Singh, in her opposition to the BSP’s protests, the casteism vs sexism divide was not going to work.
“The Rajputs and the Thakurs, barely four per cent of the voters in Uttar Pradesh, are divided between the Samajwadi Party and us. What new constituency are we looking at?” asked a senior party leader.
“This is just bravado,” he said.
The incidents have given Ms. Mayawati a powerful issue to consolidate her support base, which the BJP and the Congress have been consistently trying to poach. Senior BSP leaders Swamy Prasad Maurya and Rajendra Chaudhary had resigned and the BSP wasn’t even sure the Dalit vote that had deserted the party after the Muzzaffarnagar riots was on its way back.
Backing from CMsMore interestingly, she received powerful support from two women Chief Ministers – Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu and Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal — consolidating her position as the only one who spoke up for the Dalits.
Ms. Jayalalithaa described her as a “peerless leader of the oppressed classes,” while Ms. Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress joined the BSP in moving a motion in the Rajya Sabha for a discussion on atrocities on the Dalits.
Problem for CongressSo where does that leave the Congress? The party appeared to be one of many in flagging this issue, and seems to have lost its position of being the fulcrum of the Opposition unity on this matter, with the BSP taking over the space.
However, the head of All-India Congress Committee Scheduled Caste cell, K. Raju, defended the party.
“It was the local unit of the Congress that helped the family in Una file an FIR and we have been at the forefront of raising awareness of the issue,” he said.
“Even in Uttar Pradesh, the new PCC chief [Raj Babbar] was one of the first to protest,” he said.
He admitted that even Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was seized of the fact that the party was yet to produce another Babu Jagvjivan Ram who could tap into Dalit assertion.
“Babu Jagjivan Ram was a great leader, but the time that he emerged was different. We have a great line-up of Dalit leadership, and indeed the Congress as a whole considers the issue of Dalit rights very important,” he said.
The party hopes that as the main Opposition party in Punjab and Gujarat, it is better placed than the BSP to tap into the anger at the BJP.
The fallout of this week in Parliament is still being counted in these States.
