What?! Brahmins wooed for votes?! …then it must be time for UP elections

For most of independent India, Brahmins have occupied a peculiar place in our political discourse.

They have become India’s favourite sociological punching bag, routinely blamed for every historical injustice, invoked as symbols of privilege and caste oppression and rarely acknowledged as a political constituency worth courting and so everyone punches away at them. But… every five years it stops for a bit. That’s when you know it’s time for elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

As the 2027 UP Assembly elections draw near, something fascinating is happening. Political parties that have spent decades attacking ‘Brahmins’ are once again rediscovering the political usefulness of Brahmins.

It is one of Indian politics’ most enduring ironies.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) led by Akhilesh Yadav, a party that proudly claims its vote bank as Muslim-Yadav and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati, who claims their vote bank is Muslim-Dalit, are actively intensifying their outreach to the State’s Brahmin community!

The BSP, led by late Kanshi Ram, who gave voice to a leaderless Dalit in Uttar Pradesh, had slogans such as “Tilak, Taraju aur Talwar, unko maro juthe char” (‘Brahmins, Baniyas and the Thakurs, beat them with shoes four times’). But…

Almost three decades later, in 2007, Mayawati, a school teacher who became Kanshi Ram’s chosen one, gave 89 Brahmins tickets from her party and also a slogan “Brahmin shankh bajaega, haathi badhta jaega” (The Brahmin will blow the conch and the elephant, the BSP’s symbol, will march forward).

The Brahmin outreach worked and the haathi did march ahead with 202 seats out of 396 and everyone took note… Brahmins can be a vote bank?!

Even the famed New York Times had a headline that read, “Brahmin Vote Helps Party of Low Caste Win in India.”

So what was it that brought these two communities that historically can’t see eye to eye together? Simple: Power.

So much is the sway of the Brahmin community in UP that in 2012, when Congress workers rued that the party was not giving prominence to Brahmins, Rahul Gandhi retorted: “I am a Brahmin and I am the General Secretary of the party”! 

But the most important declaration that the Brahmin vote is key, is the statement that no one thought would ever slip from the lips of a Dalit leader. Mayawati said: “There must be reservation for the poor and unemployed among  upper castes!”  

As a Gen Z, the flavour of the season, would say, WTF, are you delulu?!

Think about that. A leader whose politics had been built on opposing upper-caste dominance was now advocating welfare for them!  

If there was ever proof that arithmetic eventually defeats ideology, this was it. The mathematics is simple. Brahmins constitute roughly 12 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s population and significantly influence nearly 90 Assembly Constituencies and around 25 Lok Sabha seats.

So in 2007, Mayawati’s Brahmin lawyer Satish Chandra Mishra did the election arithmetic for her.

Mishra figured that Mayawati, in spite of her unwavering 21 percent Dalit block vote and a 24.67 percent vote share in the State, could not come to power in 2002, which meant that if she could get another 12 percent of the Brahmin vote, it would seal the deal.

This worked and suddenly Brahmins were the king-makers!

Today, Mayawati is once again reviving her Brahmin outreach, while the Samajwadi Party is hardly lagging.

Akhilesh Yadav’s PDA formula, which is an abbreviation for – Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak (Backward Classes, Dalits and Minorities), is quietly undergoing a linguistic makeover.

Increasingly, party leaders now suggest that the ‘P’ also stands for Pandit! Wah..re wah! Convenient.

The Samajwadi Party has even organised Brahmin Sammelans across Uttar Pradesh, invited religious scholars and seers and has elevated senior Brahmin leader Mata Prasad Pandey as Leader of the Opposition.

As the Brahmins are wooed by political parties whose ideology is based around hating them, one is compelled to say, “Ah, politics, what strange bedfellows thou makest.”

P.S. – Watching these developments reminded me of the recent anti-Brahmin slogans heard during the CJP protests and the debate around correcting the reservation policy which is being exploited by the creamy layer within the backward communities.

It also reminded me of a heartbreaking “TRUE” story narrated by the late legendary, authentically liberal and unabashedly patriotic journalist late T.J.S. George. It deserves retelling because skewed statistics and opinions often conceal reality.

The abridged version is published here:

This is the story of an unknown Indian. A true story in every detail. It needs to be told — and heard across the land — because it exposes two of our national policies as frauds: ‘Garibi Hatao’  and reservations.

Viswanathan Namboodiri, as the name shows, could not have been born higher. That didn’t help him make a living. He tried his best to climb out of his impoverished circumstances.

After SSLC, he studied privately for B.Com. But couldn’t complete it.

He finally took up the only job for which society considered him duly qualified. As pujari of the Ganapathi Temple at Chengannur, he received Rs. 300 a month plus about Rs. 1,000 a month in offerings from devotees.

With this, he managed his home of a wife, Saradamony, a daughter, Sreedevi and a son, Sreejit. He grew particularly devoted to the children after they proved to be extra-brilliant in school.

The trouble with such minimalist bliss of the middle class is that everything collapses if and when a contingency hits.

When Viswanathan Namboodiri was knocked down in a road accident, it proved a double disaster. The medical treatment led to substantial debts and still left him incapacitated in one leg. Worse, at the time of the accident he was found to be carrying prasadam made at home.

The priest is expected to have a ritual bath in the temple and then prepare the prasadam at the temple, not bring it ready-made from home. Viswanathan had resorted to the shortcut to spare him of the inconvenience. But the devotees were offended. He lost his job.

From then on, everything began collapsing around him. They sold a teak tree in the compound and cleared some debts as honour demanded. Then they managed to get a loan and put up a provision store on the road-front of their house. But the shop didn’t click.

The family was now at the end of its tether. None of the facilities the benevolent State provided for the underprivileged was available to them. They were born high, so they had no Constitutional right to be underprivileged.

In a desperate move, Viswanathan tried to persuade Saradamony to sell the little house. She naturally resisted, fearing destitution on the streets.

Viswanathan grew morose. Now, the high marks his daughter Sreedevi and son Sreejit brought home from school, instead of lifting his spirits, frightened him for he could not see how the children, brilliant as they were, could go on.

The family was already in the grip of starvation. The hopelessness of the situation finally got Viswanathan. He went berserk.

Early one morning he grabbed a carpenter’s chisel and a handless knife and attacked his wife and children, shouting that it was better to end it all.

Soon Saradamony, Sreedevi and Sreejit slipped into rivers of their own blood, then went still, even as horrified neighbours watched. Viswanathan threatened them with his knives and shouted: “They are starving. I won’t let them beg.”

He then poured kerosene and set himself on fire. In a few minutes all his agonies were over.

Indira Gandhi drummed up ‘Garibi Hatao’ and latter-day opportunists swore by reservations, an exercise of plain deception.

The horror of poverty has continued and backwardness has merely become a fashionable vested interest. Hypocrisy continues to lead us from fraud to fraud.

e-mail: vikram@starofmysore.com