Why Is BSP’s Revival Difficult? Among Many Reasons-The Absolute Lack Of Sub-Nationalism In Uttar Pradesh

The BSP is looking for a revival in Uttar Pradesh.

When you think about the scenarios that can end up in a potential resurgence of the BSP in UP, you realise that they are relatively limited as compared to what a BJP or a Congress might enjoy in a hypothetical case where they find themselves in place of the Mayawati-led outfit. And when you ask ‘why’, you eventually come to the realisation—or at least this writer did—that Uttar Pradesh does not influence national politics as much as Uttar Pradesh itself is influenced by what is going on in the rest of the country. 

In the remainder of this article, I will try and convince you why this hypothesis deserves serious consideration. 

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) organised a mammoth rally in Lucknow on 9 October. Reports from the venue say that the event saw participation of lakhs of BSP supporters from not just Uttar Pradesh but also Bihar, Punjab, Haryana. 

The scale of the event and the participation it witnessed is both surprising and not. 

Surprising because the BSP has been marginalised almost to the extent of irrelevance in both the Parliament and Uttar Pradesh assembly. In the UP Vidhan Sabha, it has one MLA. It has no MPs in the Lok Sabha and one MP in the Upper House. For a party that has not been in government for over 13 years, and is not even looked at as the main party of Opposition in the state, to draw a crowd of a few lakhs is surprising. 

It is not surprising because BSP’s ground level organisation, especially its ability to get its supporters to a Mayawati rally or to the polling booth, has always been strong. Traditionally, the BSP is seen as lacking in creating narratives (mahaul) but adept at the sweat and toil of politics. 

This was the first noteworthy event the BSP organised since the campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But in all earnest, the BSP hardly turned up for that contest. For all practical purposes, this was its first outing since the 2022 Vidhan Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh. 

The fact that the 9 October rally was ‘successful’ across various parameters led many commentators to write/observe that the BSP is finally getting serious about a revival in UP. 

But the path is more difficult than you may think at first. 

Its leader, Kumari Mayawati, is almost 70 and has visibly slowed down since the years she was the chief minister between 2007-12. It is widely believed that her nephew Aakash Anand is her successor in the BSP but at last count, he had been removed from his posts in the party at least twice in the last year itself. 

On the social support front—its progressively dwindling. At its peak, the BSP claimed to have ‘social engineered’ a coalition of the Scheduled Castes (SC) community, the ‘upper castes’, and the minorities. Not to forget the anti-incumbency vote it got from those not happy with Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government.

Over the years, the ‘upper caste’ vote appears to have shifted to the BJP and the minority community vote to the SP. Even in the SC community vote, the non-Jatav votes have been reported to have shifted entirely away from the BSP (Mayawati belongs to the Jatav community). Worse, the last Assembly and Parliamentary election results suggest that even the Jatav community of Uttar Pradesh may be looking for a new political home apart from the BSP. 

But there’s another problem with a BSP revival plan and this is the one we need to concern ourselves with. To highlight that problem, let us go back to 2014. 

The SP is in power in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP is at the margins with a mere 47 seats in an Assembly of 403. It has barely bettered the Congress’ vote share of 11.6 per cent with its own 15 per cent in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha election. 

But by the summer of 2014, a change is palpable in the air. Narendra Modi is on the prime ministerial ticket of the BJP and he is taking the country by storm. He contests the Lok Sabha poll from Vadodara in Gujarat but also chooses Varanasi as the other constituency. ‘Maa Ganga ne mujhe bulaaya hai’ (I have called by Mother Ganga). In the election, the BJP breaks records, assumptions, and political articles of faith when the party, along with its allies, wins 73 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh. Till the next Assembly poll, the BJP would awkwardly have more MPs from UP in the Lok Sabha than it would have MLAs in the UP Assembly. 

When the Vidhan Sabha poll for UP did come around in 2017, Narendra Modi had been the Prime Minister for three years, and on his name and face the BJP had won states like Maharashtra and Haryana. He had initiated many of the welfare schemes he would be identified with and the armed forces had already carried out one surgical strike operation inside Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. His popularity was yet to peak and was rising across the country. 

Now let’s go back to the hypothesis this piece claims to defend: that Uttar Pradesh does not influence national politics as much as Uttar Pradesh itself is influenced by it. 

Translated for the BJP’s case in 2014 and 2017, it would read something like this: the Modi phenomenon germinates in Gujarat→it helps the party sweep the Assembly elections of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in the winter of 2023→it develops into a wave across India, including UP in 2014→in 2017, the BJP is in power at the Centre with its popularity rising even higher across India; this momentum takes the party to a gargantuan majority in Uttar Pradesh Assembly with more than 320 seats out of 403. 

The hypothesis is that both in the ‘14LS and ‘17VS, it was its popularity in the rest of India that helped BJP triumph in Uttar Pradesh rather than its popularity in Uttar Pradesh overflowing into the rest of India. 

It is this potential source of momentum which a genuine national party has that the BSP does not. In a state apparently vulnerable to non-native momentum, the BSP does not have the machinery or even the presence to create any. 

One can also argue that even the Congress was banking upon UP’s sensitivity to non-native political momentum when, unofficially of course, it set a target of winning a 100 seats in 2012 UP Assembly election after the party had surprisingly won 21 seats from Uttar Pradesh in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and 206 seats overall. 

Now why is this so? Why does Uttar Pradesh not influence national politics as much as it gets affected by it itself?

My proposition is that it is due to the utter and absolute absence of any sub-nationalism in Uttar Pradesh. 

But let's pause for a moment here. One can make a case that this has nothing to do with lack of sub-nationalism in UP and everything to do with UP being a ‘pro-incumbent’ state, with the incumbent in this case being the party in power at the Centre. 

Look at the last 30-35 years, for example. The last time a Congressman was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (ND Tiwari, 1989) was also the last time that the party was in power in the Centre on its own strength. When the era of coalition governments began at the Centre, no chief minister of Uttar Pradesh completed a full term in office until Kumari Mayawati served 2007-12. Cut to 2017, and with BJP in power at the Centre on its own, it sure enough secured a majority in the UP Vidhan Sabha as well. 

Going by this example, it does look like UP is ‘pro-incumbent’. 

But allow me to argue that while this is true, it is true only at the surface. It is a symptom, not the cause. The deeper truth, the cause, is the absence of sub-nationalism in Uttar Pradesh. 

Allow me to qualify even that. What gets identified as absence of a sub-national/state identity, is the conflation of the UP identity completely with the India identity. In our heads, we don’t represent the culture of a part of India, we represent the culture of India. 

While objectively there is much to protest there, you cannot also lay all the blame on the door of the UP-ite for thinking that way. Outside India, what would be the answers you are most likely to get to the following questions:

1. What language is spoken in India?

2. What language does Bollywood make its movies in?

3. What is the staple dish eaten in India?

4. What are the most popular festivals of India?

5. What is the indigenous dress of India? 

The answer to the first two questions would most often be ‘Hindi’. It is the language spoken in Uttar Pradesh. 

The answer to the second question would most likely involve the word ‘roti’. Staple food across UP. 

Answer to the third question would likely be Deepavali and in some cases, include even Holi. Both the most popular festivals in Uttar Pradesh. 

Fourth. Dhoti-kurta? You will still see old timers wearing it on a daily basis. 

Uttar Pradesh did not develop a sub-national identity partly because its voice and identity was more than adequately represented in the identity of India. 

Even on the cultural front, both Mathura and Ayodhya are in the state and so is Prayagraj. 

If tomorrow the Centre government decides to divide Uttar Pradesh into smaller states, it is difficult to imagine anyone protesting the decision for the sake of unity of the ‘UP people’, like was seen in the case of the Telugus when it came to the division of Andhra Pradesh. 

In fact, it was Mayawati herself who, as chief minister, had sent a proposal to divide UP to then PM, Dr Manmohan Singh. 

It is this conflation of UP identity with that of India which translates on the ground as the absence of sub-nationalism. This, in turn, means that Uttar Pradesh is arguably the most sensitive state to non-native political momentum. 

If you are unable to win an election in Uttar Pradesh, don’t worry. Focus on the rest of India, win a handful of other states, get to power in the Centre, Uttar Pradesh will likely come to you on its own. 

Hence the hypothesis: UP does not influence national politics as much as UP itself is influenced by what is going on in the rest of the country. 

But hang on. There’s a part of the hypothesis that’s still unquestioned. Fair, we know by now that UP is vulnerable to narratives from outside, but what about other states being vulnerable to the narrative of UP? If the magnitude of the influence in both the directions is equal, the hypothesis doesn’t really stand, does it?

To answer, permit me to recap a few facts and numbers from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. 

The BJP did worse than expected in Uttar Pradesh with its tally crashing from 64 to 34. Of the drop of 63 seats in the BJP’s national tally, UP alone accounted for 30. 50 per cent. Observers noted that the ground narrative in Uttar Pradesh had turned significantly against the BJP and by the time Modi could realise it, it was too late. 

So did UP’s displeasure with the BJP influence other states? This writer is not exactly sure. The NDA still won 30/40 in Bihar. The BJP 5/5 in Uttarakhand and 29/29 in Madhya Pradesh. All three states bordering UP. 

If UP had an outsized influence on the politics of other states, or even of its Hindi-speaking neighbours, we likely would NOT have a Modi 3.0 government. 

When the results of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections were declared, Omar Abdullah had famously posted on ‘Twitter’ that the Opposition should forget about ‘2019’ and instead start preparing for ‘2024’, implying that Uttar Pradesh was the barometer for the political mood of India. Based on the above, it looks like the rest of India might be the political barometer for Uttar Pradesh.