Mayawati reverts to upper caste bashing

LUCKNOW: Stung by electoral setbacks, BSP chief Mayawati, addressing her party workers on Sunday, fell back on castigating the upper castes for their alleged anti-dalit agenda. She said the upper castes have historically tried to mislead the dalits into believing that Ambedkar gave them a " backward identity" while treating them as their slaves. This pernicious upper caste attitude, she said, was adopted to deny dalits the benefits of quota.

Mayawati, who after her 2007 electoral victory had advocated upper caste entry into the BSP, said the dalits were not only enslaved by the British but also by the upper caste. "Ambedkar used to visit the colonies of dalits to get them enlisted in the scheduled caste list so that they could avail of the benefits of reservation. Around the same time, the upper caste people too came to dalits and tried to convince them that Ambedkar was fooling them in the name of reservation," she said.

"The Brahmins and upper caste people used to tell the dalits that by getting reservation, they would always be categorized as lower caste. This was a big conspiracy," she told BSP workers. According to a reliable source at the meeting, those present included senior Brahmin leaders of the party like Satish Chandra Mishra, Ramveer Upadhayay and Brajesh Pathak.

Subsequently, Mayawati said, the dalits were converted into "fake Brahmins, Thakur and Baniyas". Mayawati asserted the BSP cadres needed to work among dalits who were once again being fooled by the upper castes. Her comment was directed at the BJP which took away her dalit votes in the Lok Sabha elections.

The BSP chief exhorted her cadre to be aware of the "malicious design" of the BJP "which was hell-bent on fanning communalism in the country". Mayawati admitted that the performance of BSP was "not up to the mark" and the cadre needed to be better prepared for the assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir.