If Uma wins UP, BJP will be the loser

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It was nice to see a confident and animated Uma Bharti on TV, again. There was a time when Uma ruled the roost, but soon she ran out of luck. First she lost the Chief Ministership in Madhya Pradesh, then she was chucked out of the party. She formed a new party, but it didn't work. People started forgetting her. The firebrand BJP leader, who once made headlines with her vitriolic speeches on Ayodhya started making news for slapping her party worker. The Sanyasin of the BJP seemed to have taken a real political 'sanyas'.

Well, she is back in the party as well as in the news, thanks to party president Nitin Gadkari. When the Ram Temple movement was at its peak, a young Uma was the face of the party, loved by both L K Advani as well as the RSS. Both saw the future of BJP in her. But the party became a victim of its inherent limitations and contradictions, and it was visible even during Ayodhya controversy.

The Mandal commission had given a new direction to India's polity. Mandal stood in opposition to the Hindutva plank of the Sangh Parivar. However, the Sangh had a man called K Govindacharya, who tried to accommodate the Mandal logic into the Hindutva ideology and in Govindacharya's bigger scheme of things backward leaders like Kalyan Singh in Uttar Pradesh and Uma Bharti in Madhya Pradesh were to play pivotal role.

Govindacharya was convinced that the only way the BJP could become a pan-India party was by broadening its social base, getting rid of its upper-caste Hindu party image and embrace the backward castes within its fold. It was the time when backward leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP and Lalu Yadav in Bihar had already succeeded in bringing the Hindu backward castes and Muslims together. It wasn't surprising that the BJP was losing in such a competitive scenario.

Govindacharya was right and far ahead of his times. But the BJP and the RSS was caught in its own time warp. They continued to live in Brahmanical mind set and party was in the grip of upper caste leaders and in this context following Govindacharya meant a radical realignment of the Hindutva forces. The upper castes were not ready for such a sacrifice and finally Govindacharya had to pay the price for thinking ahead and thinking out of the box for the betterment of the party. He had to leave BJP for no solid reason

He wasn't the only one to go. His removal was a part of the Brahmanical assertion in the BJP and triggered a series of ousters. Kalyan Singh, who once was in the league of Atal behari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, left the party. Babulal Marandi in Jharkhand met a similar fate. So did Gopinath Munde in Maharashtra, who enjoyed the party's favours as long as Pramod Mahajan was alive. But once Mahajan gone he was no longer the same leader and he had to resign in disgust too. Though he is still in the party but Does not weild the same authority, his junior from Maharashtra, Nitin Gadkari, who hardly has any mass base, is today the president of his party.

Even Uma, who was instrumental in BJP winning MP, was forced to quit after the flags-in-Idgah controversy. Uma thought once the Idgah case gets over, she might get the Chief Ministership back, but that never happened. Uma's anger was understandable.

Elections reminded the BJP of the backward castes in UP. Despite the presence of Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra, Gadkari has suddenly realised the value of Govindacharya's social engineering. Suddenly the same party sees a promise in Uma Bharti, even pitching her as a potential CM candidate. That explains why even a tainted leader like Babulal Khushwaha was also admitted to the fold. UP has four per cent of Khushwaha vote.

It's the same state where, under Kalyan Singh, BJP saw its best days. Today, it has been reduced to a minor player. It's a shame that the party is trying to practice now what Govindacharya proposed years ago. If the party wants to revive itself in UP, it has to come out of the Brahmin-Thakur shackle what Govindacharya preached long ago and due respect has to be accorded to backward castes. It's not simply a question of giving respect to Uma but even the internal power equation has to change. Is BJP ready for that? If yes, that probably can change its fortune in UP and also in other north Indian states. If not, then the great BJP tragedy will turn into a farce.