As
the humiliating treatment of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh by the Samajwadi
Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the matter of seat distribution
for the parliamentary polls, and the party’s defiant response show, the
134-year political patriarch is currently battling both the ghosts of its past and
apprehensions about its freshly kindled hopes of the future among its
opponents.
The
discourtesy towards the Congress was evident not only in the allocation of two
seats out of 80 to it in the state by the SP-BSP alliance, which has set itself
up as the arbiter of electoral arrangements in U.P., but also in the cutting
comments by the BSP czarina Mayawati about the Congress’s unreliability in the
matter of the exchange of votes between the allies.
The
eagerness of SP’s Akhilesh Yadav to fall over backwards to accommodate
Mayawati’s wishes, even claiming that he will be happy to see her become the
prime minister, has evidently prevented him from ensuring, probably against his
best intentions, that the others such as the Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal
(RLD) are not treated shabbily.
Akhilesh
is so focussed at present on repairing the SP’s longstanding fraught relations
with the BSP that he has become seemingly oblivious of the damaging effect of
his kowtowing to Mayawati on the proposed gathbandhans (alliances) inside and
outside U.P. to the BJP’s delight.
While
the RLD is likely to be placated at a future date, the possibility of the
breach between the Congress and the SP-BSP combine being healed looks dim.
The
probable reason is that the relatively new parties like the SP, which emerged
in the early 1990s in the wake of the Janata Party’s disintegration, and the
BSP, which was formed in 1984, still recall with unease the period of the
Congress’s dominance in the post-Independence years when the predecessors of
these parties were at their wit’s end about ways counter the political behemoth
Although
the Congress is no longer what it was, the apprehensions about its capabilities
remain, mainly in the BSP, if only because at one time the Dalits (or Harijans,
as they were called then) formed a substantial chunk of the Congress’s base of
support along with the Muslims and the upper castes.
Her
fear apparently is that if and when the Congress recovers from its 2014
drubbing, it may gradually win back some of the support which it used to
receive from the Dalits earlier since they may gravitate towards the shelter of
a national party instead of depending only on a one-person party like the BSP
with a leader who has had alliances with the “Manuvadi” BJP in the past.
Little
wonder that Mayawati used to mock Rahul Gandhi for the nights he used to spend
in Dalit villages by saying that he had to soap himself on going home.
Although
she appeared to have mellowed recently as when she attended H.D. Kumaraswamy’s
swearing-in ceremony as the Karnataka chief minister along with Sonia and Rahul
Gandhi and other non-BJP leaders, she made a sudden u-turn by walking out of
the seat-sharing negotiations with the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh and fighting on her own or with a state-based ally with less than
satisfactory results.
The
reason for her volte-face has never been clear. Congress leader Digvijay Singh
attributed it to the pressure exerted on her by the Narendra government via the
different investigative agencies while others said that the Congress found her
demand for seats too high.
Whatever
the reason, Mayawati’s attitude towards the Congress has suddenly become
exceptionally critical with her equating the Congress with the BJP. There is
little doubt that a diffident Akhilesh Yadav is going along with her for the
moment.
But
the Congress has to be far more circumspect in its response if only because it
has to keep the broad perspective of building up a credible anti-BJP alliance
at the national level in mind rather than be preoccupied only with one state
like the SP and the BSP.
It was intemperate, therefore, of the
Congress to say that it would contest all the 80 seats in U.P. – a huffy tactic
which would only benefit the BJP. Instead, the Congress should first try to
rebuild its ties with the SP and BSP with the help of intermediaries if need
be.
If
that endeavour fails, the Congress should concentrate on a fewer number of
seats in U.P. and describe its opposition to the SP and the BSP in those seats
as friendly fights.
As
a national party which is on the path of recovery and reclaiming its place as a
force to reckon with, the conduct of the Congress must be far more restrained
and responsible than of any regional party. It must be careful not to validate
the BJP’s charge of an opposition gathbandhan as majboor (weak and helpless). (IPA Service)
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