Behenji a political biography of mayawati actress

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However exceptional her political rise to the top of the BSP and Uttar Pradesh politics, her trajectory, which first took her into employment as a primary teacher and then pointed her in the direction of the higher echelons of civil service (after meeting Kanshi Ram, she opted instead for fulltime activism), could make use of the educational efforts of previous generations.

This does not begin to explain how her authoritarianism could be a political method or even a strategy for leading a party in an exclusively male political world, full of violence, bullying, factionalism and other scurvy ways.

Explaining Mayawati’s Popularity

Once in office, Mayawati’s strong command over administrative power has made it possible to overcome much of the inertia related to the dominant castes’ control of the local state apparatus.

At first glance this book could be a sign that the Indian intelligentsia has at last decided to recognize an emancipation movement, which has been treated with contempt and suspicion ever since the conflict between the Dalit leader Ambedkar and Gandhi took place in the 1930s (and ended in the compromise of positive discrimination). When examined critically, this journalistic work clearly displays the ambiguities of India’s progressive intelligentsia, who are rather uncomfortable when it comes to the subject of caste and the dalits.

One of the main problems of this book comes from the lack of first-hand investigation into the dalit community, and the BSP itself.

But it is rather her belonging to the movement for dalit emancipation that makes this event unprecedented. 18). Nevertheless, people’s loyalty to Mayawati should not – as unfortunately it does in this book – prevent us from taking seriously the criticism of her that is harboured by these same people – including many of the grassroots activists who account for the early electoral success of the BSP and who have not failed to notice how authoritarianism and venality have marginalized them within the party.

235), that is to say, of other high and middle castes claiming the martial legacy of kshatryas, and to whom anti-dalit violence is attributed (notwithstanding the fact that the worst massacres of dalits were committed in Biharin the 1990s by the Ranvir Sena, a militia of landowners who claim to be brahmins).

The electoral alliance between dalits and brahmins advocated by the BSP during the 2007 elections offers a happy ending to the narrative, that is to say, the end of anti-brahmanism.

This book sadly demonstrates that what should have been a lesson to political experts did not produce any real change in the way that they perceive the politicization of the subaltern classes.

Ignorance of these ground realities is also reflected in the way the dalits are caricatured as “living like animals” (p. Journalistic authority too often becomes a substitute for understanding from the bottom, so the reader misses the context needed to understand the Mayawati political phenomenon, apart from some psychological reflections that feed into, without ever trying to surpass, the stereotype of a paranoid personality.

244). Beyond the electoral impact, the politicization of caste from below created a political upheaval in the widest sense. Instead, he speaks of “the childlike faith that dalits, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, have shown in Mayawati,” [1] and “the dalits’ tendency to place their faith in their revered icon,” thus emphasizing the emotional aspect and dalits’ sentimental identification with their “Behenji” (respected sister).

Although this emotional attachment certainly exists, this account fails to explain its underlying rationality.

Mayawati herself is depicted as having had a “meteoric rise almost out of nowhere,” [2] following a pathway of miracles from which she could pick up certain “survival skills, sharpened in the inner recesses of Delhi’s urban jungle, [which] were to serve her well in her political career” (p. The so-called tolerance of these two castes, is created at the expense of “the depredations of thakurs, yadavs, and other marauding castes” (p.

After having dropped the Congress party for whom they traditionally voted since independence, dalit voters provoked the downfall of the Hindu nationalists thanks to their political alliance with the Muslims and the Other Backward Castes. (In India one speaks of electoral clienteles, or “vote banks.”)

Ajoy Bose notes the incomprehension that his project met within his own intellectual circles: “there were those who were appalled that I had chosen to dignify with a biography ‘such a crude, corrupt and completely unscrupulous politician’ – a perception of the dalit firebrand shared by a very large section of the chattering classes till very recently” (pp.

The leader of this party, Miss Mayawati, currently embodies this new dalit power with an acute sense of political strategy and effectiveness.

Of course this is not the first time – as a matter of fact, it is the fourth time – that an office of Chief Minister has been held by a dalit in India. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Is Mayawati being thus packaged for the urban middle class as an acceptable dalit leader precisely because her faults and her renunciation to ideals make it possible to bring her in line with social stereotypes? They are just grateful.” (p. Not Only Has She Been The Chief Minister Four Times, But She Has Done So By Overturning The Established Electoral Traditions Of A State That Virtually Invented Modern Indian Politics.

With Her In-Your-Face Political Style, Unabashed Display Of Accumulated Wealth And Mercurial Nature, She Is, Perhaps, The Most Enigmatic Indian Politician For Decades.

By failing to take these arguments seriously, the author seems insensitive to the idealism on which dalits have based their new pride, rooted in the assumption that they have a historic role to play in the creation of a more democratic society. It also represents (along with the electoral victories of the ANC in South Africa and Evio Morales in Bolivia) one of the world’s rare instances where a political party that openly champions the claims of stigmatized and excluded groups achieves power by playing the game of representative democracy.

The “untouchables’” (dalits’) rise to power in December 1993 was interpreted by all commentators, foreign as well as Indian, as a significant event, especially since observers had ignored the relatively discreet and subterranean growth of this movement, and had underestimated its magnitude.