Caste cauldron bubbles in Uttar Pradesh a year ahead of polls

A casual observer of statements coming out of Uttar Pradesh, cannot be blamed for assuming for a minute that he/she may have stepped back into the early 2000s.

On the one side you have Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati, endorsing the Supreme court’s stay on the University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations on equity, saying the rules would stoke social tension, reflecting general category anxieties, on the other was former Union minister Kalraj Mishra, breaking cover after retiring from a gubernatorial stint in Rajasthan, again speaking out on the UGC issue.

With regard to Ms Mayawati, her statements, first on the UGC regulations on equity and later on the title (Ghooskhor Pandat, or Corrupt pandat) of a new webseries is reminiscent of her “sarv samaj” push of the mid 2000s, when she got a full majority in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. It is being seen as a bid to go back to a playbook that had worked for her in the past, where, she went from being a Bahujan Samaj (Dalit) leader to a Sarv Samaj (a leader of all communities) one. This follows years of growing political marginalisation often accompanied by legal stresses, the emergence of the BJP as the dominant party in Uttar Pradesh, with its salami slicing of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) vote, with non Yadav OBCs, and of the Dalit support base, via non Jatav votes. This marginalization has grown to such an extent that come November 2026, the BSP’s lone MP, Rajya Sabha member Ramji Gautam’s retirement will mean that the party will not have any presence in either House of parliament. The reasons for this decline, apart from those mentioned above are many, but what is significant is what is revealed by Ms Mayawati’s attempts to go back to her “sarv samaj”.

It says more about the BJP and its internal dynamics in the run up to the Assembly polls in 2027, than the BSP. The UGC regulations on equity raised the hackles of the general category classes, the core support base of the BJP for many years now. Within that category, Brahmins, considered 10%-12% of the electorate are particularly aggrieved with the Yogi Adityanath government, there being a perception, that the chief minister’s caste identity of being a Thakur is affecting state patronage in the state. A dinner party of Brahmin legislators in December last year during the sitting of the State Assembly brought these long held anxieties of the Brahmin community to the fore. The UGC regulations were considered the last straw and there were strong protests by general category students over the matter. 

At this point, former Governor Kalraj Mishra, considered retired from active political life, entered the fray and gave words to the voices within the BJP and in the larger Brahmin community over the regulations. His surprise appearance said two things — one that there was a serious issue with regard to the UGC regulations within the BJP itself, and secondly, that the party’s cupboard was bare when it came to Brahmin leadership.

That none of the Brahmin leaders now currently in electoral politics had the influence and heft to raise the issue within the party has become obvious. Despite the presence of BJP Minister Brajesh Pathak and former Mayor of Lucknow Dinesh Sharma, it required Mr Mishra, whose electoral heyday was in the 1990s and early 2000s to speak up. In such a scenario, it isn’t any wonder that Ms Mayawati, looking for a comeback is recalling her 2007 playbook.