By expelling Dayashankar Singh, BJP is getting better at nurturing votebanks

Thank god for votebank politics. Middle-class distaste notwithstanding, it is this compulsion that sees the poor, the deprived of the nation, ignored voters or repressed most of the time, getting cheap rice, bicycles, mixer-grinders, and all sorts of largess at election time. At times, it also gets a “woman leader” a humble apology from male chauvinist pigs.

But for votebank politics, BJP’s number two leader in Uttar Pradesh, the inaptly named Dayashankar Singh, would not have had to eat crow and lose all party posts for six years – no mean deprivation in a state which is going to polls in six months’ time – for using the P-word against Dalit leader Mayawati, more importantly, Dalit leader Mayawati from Uttar Pradesh.

Nor would Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, or any BJP head honcho for that matter, have rushed to denounce his fellow partyman’s “slip of tongue” and sounded so contrite, going to the extent of telling the Rajya Sabha, “I regret the use of such words and will ensure the matter is taken up,” and “I personally express regret to Mayawatiji. I associate our dignity with yours and stand with you.”

The battle for Uttar Pradesh is truly joined-up. All those meticulously planned Dalit outreach programmes by the BJP in UP, signalled to coincide with the birth centenary of late RSS chief Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras a few months ago, exhorting party members to adopt a Dalit family as one’s own, all those holy dips with Dalit seers on the occasion of the Sihansth Kumbh, duly renamed Samrasta snan (social harmony bath), and sharing of meals with the lowest of the lower-castes by party president Amit Shah; all those posters of Babasaheb Ambedkdar strung at all the party functions whatever the occasion, could not be allowed to be squandered away by motormouth functionaries. Not when the UP elections are beckoning.

So far so very good. Whatever the motive, the ruling party at the Centre, many of whose leaders have openly proclaimed that a woman’s place is at home and her only task is to procreate for the continuance of the Hindu race, have learnt to display respect for women; learnt to be sensitive about Dalit sentiments – or at least appear to be so. Hypocritical you say, don’t knock hypocrisy. At least it reveals your priorities and what you are hypocritical about. And appearances do matter. One day they’ll become, if not part of the culture, a habit at least.

Especially if our leaders can take the next big step forward and not limit their consternation to “a political leader using such words against a prominent woman leader,” to go by Arun Jaitley’s words, but venture beyond and encompass all women, all Dalits, and all minorities. High hopes indeed, but vote bank politics may make them so.

The country’s oppressed and browbeaten, it seems, have long memories. Mayawati hasn’t forgotten former army boss but current junior External Affairs Minister VK Singh’s remarks likening Dalit children burnt alive in Haryana to dogs and facing no opprobrium for such heartless insensitivity. Probably because the elections in Haryana had been over by then. But the pain of Dalits in Haryana is felt by Dalits everywhere, including in UP. (VK Singh had used a variation of the P-word for the country’s press too but then the press is no votebank – they never won anyone in any elections nor prevented anyone from winning one, the latest being the example of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.)

Nor has any BJP leader expressed any real sorrow for the cruel, bestial beating of Dalits by cow vigilantes (a whole new breed that the BJP has gifted the nation since coming to power at the Centre) on camera, in Gujarat. Rather, it is being seen as just a law and order problem with Home Minister Rajnath Singh dishing out kudos to the Gujarat government for its “prompt and fitting” handling of the situation.

But votebank politics demands the nurturing of votebanks throughout the year, every year, or they may start unravelling at the crucial moment, as they appear to be headed in Uttar Pradesh. As they did in Bihar, when one inadvertent comment by the RSS supremo about reconsidering caste-based reservations reverberated throughout the state to the disadvantage of the BJP.

They may learn a lesson or two from Mayawati herself. This is how she manages to keep her flock intact even at the worst of times, retaining 20 percent of the votes in Uttar Pradesh even in the face of the Narendra Modi wave in 2014, even if she did not win a single seat in that Lok Sabha election.

The BJP does seem to have a lot to learn but maybe they’ll get better at nurturing votebanks and achhe din will lie ahead for the cowed and wretched of India. One can always hope.