Commentary/Janardan Thakur

Kanshi Ram rebuffed Deve Gowda's emissary, saying the
prime minister's chair was the only one he
would ever agree to take

The Cassandras are already predicting another election in Uttar Pradesh in twelve months and such is the impasse in the state that they could well be proved right. In fact, the situation could turn out to be much worse that what the Cassandras fear: After another election, yet another impasse.

So fractured is the polity in Uttar Pradesh and so irreconcilable are the ambitions of its political warlords that it would take a radical shake-up of the vote banks and a new awareness in the electorate to achieve a stable government in the state. Both are tall orders, given the present leaders and their hold on the state's fragmented society.

There are the starry-eyed politicians who hope to refashion the vote banks after their own heart's desire. Congress stalwarts like Narain Dutt Tiwari still dream of regaining their lost bastions. They hark back to the good old days when the Congress ruled the state without any let or hindrance, solidly ensconced in their support base which gave them jolts now and then but never let them down wholly.

That base was built around the solid base of the Muslims, the harijans (the dalits as they are now called), and a good sprinkling of the upper castes, mostly the twice-born brahmins who had still not got a taste of the Nagpur ethos.

The trouble with these who think they can recapture their past glory is that they are totally outdated, totally out of sync with the times.

Indeed, one Congress leader who is far more realistic is the weather-beaten, Bapu-swearing party chief, Sitaram Kesri. He seems quite sincere in his concern for the minorities, the dalits and the backwards for he has been drumming their cause for quite some time now. He even appropriated the credit for officialising the Mandal recommendations. But sadly, he happens to be in quite the wrong milieu, and sadly again, he seems to be running against time.

If only he had greater dynamism and were assured of a longer spell in his position, Kesri could perhaps work towards a more effective realignment of forces in the Congress, and even towards a new joint front of secular forces in the country. One doubts if the unthinking sharks around him would let him get anywhere.

As of today, the Congress is a burnt-out case and the only reason why it deserves to be talked about in the context of Uttar Pradesh, its one time bastion, is that it hangs by the apron strings of the Queen Bee who has become the Maypole of the state's merry-go-round. Mayawati is still quite a shock for the old-timers in politics.

To them, she seems to have sprung out of nowhere, but then it is the fault of their own myopic vision; all the years when the larva was turning into a butterfly they took no notice of it. Even ten years ago they could not have imagined someone like Mayawati becoming the prima donna of the country's heartland. They have awoken from a Rip Van Winkle sleep as it were, and find nothing recognisable.

While Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav set the pace of politics in the state, the pandits and the thakurs can play only peripheral roles. This was bound to happen sooner or later, for in a democracy you cannot hold back numbers indefinitely. These are new kinds of politicians, the ones who have come to be fore now. Old values and ideologies have little place in their grammar of politics. Power is all that they understand, for they say it is only through power that they can put down the old oppressors and bring up the oppressed.

The most unabashed and ruthless player of the new politics is Mayawati's guru, Kanshi Ram. He does not hedge his primary objective, which is to demolish all the Manuvadis one by one, and if Mulayam does not belong to any of the Manuvadi teams he is seen as an oppressor of the dalits all the same. The attack of the yadavs on Mayawati is hard to erase from the dalit psyche, and the lady will certainly not rest until she has had her vendetta.

This then is the heart of the matter, the cut throat battle of the protagonists. The wily Kanshi Ram excels at playing on against the other. Without batting an eye he would join the yadavs to beat the Manuvadis and then embrace one of the Manuvadi teams to put the yadavs in their places. No principles, no ideologies ever hold his hand.

He cares two hoots if his party is nowhere near a majority; he knows it will never be in a majority in a long time. But power he is set on having. He has once crowned his mate in Uttar Pradesh and is set on doing it again, come what may. ''It will be Mayawati or nobody else,'' he declared soon after the election. He was delighted with Sitaram Kesri's forceful advocacy of Mayawati's case, but he was thorougly disappointed when the Congress failed to deliver an ultimatum to the United Front government.

Kanshi Ram would have been happy if the Congress had withdrawn support to H D Deve Gowda for that would have given him another quick chance for another assault on the Centre. The BSP supremo laughed contemptuously whe he heard the proposal that he should himself become chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which was obviously a ploy to appease Mulayam Singh who had been brought round to accepting anyone but Mayawati.

Kanshi Ram rebuffed an emissary of Deve Gowda, saying the prime minister's chair was the only one he would ever agree to take. With Deve Gowda installed there the chair was actually not worth striving for, Kanshi Ram is said to have added snidely.

Mulayam is actually far less ambitious: He had set his heart on becoming the chief minister again, and since that has eluded him he would be happy to keep Mayawati out. Under pressure from his friends in the UF government, Mulayam has relinquished his assembly seat, but that everyone knows means very little. Given the chance he would grab the chief ministership and get elected to the assembly within the next six months.

He is often likened to a wounded hyena whose predatory instincts remain intact. Knowing what Mulayam and his musclemen can do, Mayawati has put her flock under virtual house arrest, but she also knows how slippery her own men are. Many of her non-dalit legislators would jump to a greener side at the first opportunity, and Mulayam is doing all he can to lure them away, by hook or by crook.

The UP cauldron is on the boil and nobody can predict the sort of broth that might emerge. So far, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati have insisted that they would not have any truck with the Bharatiya Janata Party, but, of course, they would change their posture the moment the BJP is willing to have Mayawati as the chief minister again. To give Kanshi Ram his due, he accepts no untouchability in politics. He would be more than happy to sup with any Manuvadi on his terms.

The man most anxious to resolve the crisis in Uttar Pradesh is Deve Gowda. He has to do it before the Lok Sabha meets or he would be in hot water. It is difficult but not impossible to break the impasse, but to imagine that it would give UP any stability is to live in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.