There is an interplay of three sociopolitical narratives in Uttar Pradesh. The first is the ‘80 versus 20’ formulation given by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, which is a coded call for communal polarisation. The second is the re-emergence of the ‘85 vs 15’ narrative, the Kanshi Ram-era social justice project of uniting the Bahujans (Dalits, Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes) against the dominant ‘upper castes’. The BJP rebel, Swami Prasad Maurya, who defected to the Samajwadi Party (SP) along with a dozen-odd legislators, mostly OBC, has provided an impetus and credible face to this strategy, which was already taking shape through SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s success in roping in OBC leaders and parties into an anti-BJP front. Since the dilution of the Bahujan project by Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, which coincided with the rise of the BJP to power in 2014, the ‘85 vs 15’ formulation had lost its sting. Amid this theoretical tension, the BJP offered a more practical formula (narrative 3), which combines the elements of both to polarise various Hindu communities against Muslims, Yadavs and Jatavs (Dalits), who together constitute about 40% of the population. BJP leader Keshav Prasad Maurya has explained this strategy thus: “Sau mein 60 hamara, 40 mein batwara hain and batware mein bhi hamara hain (We have 60% votes, the remaining 40% are divided and even there we have a share).”
It is in this context that we must view the well-orchestrated exodus of OBC legislators from the BJP. These exits reek of opportunism, but they also indicate suffocation with the centralised bureaucracy-dominated BJP government, inherent contradictions between the BJP’s OBC project and aspirations of some of those who came on board and, to some extent, the acceptance of Mr. Yadav as a more accommodative alternative to Mr. Adityanath. The allegations levelled by these leaders while quitting the BJP, which they helped come to power at the cost of the interests of the ‘Bahujan’ five years ago, reflects the diminishing value of their transactional relationship with the BJP’s ‘60 vs 40’ game plan.
