In your 17 months in the BSP, how often did you talk to her?
Thrice
That’s it?
Yes. And that too with difficulty. In the BSP, there is no pretense of democratic functioning. She is afraid because she has faced defection in the past.
You have never had a one-on-one discussion with her?
No, I had. But it was always on an individual basis, like the one at her house in Delhi in her house where she was very nice to me, very open. We sat for hours together with her brother’s kids, they playing with her and I with them and talking to her. I must admit that she has throughout been very respectful to me. The reports that she misbehaves with her party workers are not true.
Is Mayawati worried about the Rahul Gandhi factor in UP?
Yes, she seems to be very worried. The thing is the Dalits came to the BSP with lots of aspirations. They support the party blindly thinking it will pull them out of their thousands of years of misery. But now she is giving tickets to many people from other classes, and most of them are rich. They finance election campaigns and pay the party bosses, and so they are extremely arrogant. They have no respect for the common man or the rank and file. And they want returns for their investments. They don’t give a damn about Dalits. They take them for granted thinking they will get Dalit votes anyway. Since other parties do not think they will, where is the point in spending money on them? This is causing resentment to build up not only among the Dalits, but also educated people. I find people very unhappy with BSP MLAs. But Mayawati is afraid of taking action against any legislator because she fears that if she does they will all unite to unseat her. This is why she sidelined SC Mishra. There was a rumour that he was hobnobbing with the Congress to become the CM. Legislators are minting money, using the bureaucrats. The ground situation in UP is terrible. Mayawati has reason to be worried, because if the situation is not controlled then, the BSP too could go the SP way. She may have won in the by-elections by using State power and money, but in the next elections even the Dalits may begin to move away from her.
Like her administration prevented Rahul from visiting the university…
See my take is that if people have to fight the Gandhis they need to do it politically. We must organise rallies and go and work among the Dalits, because every one is ignoring them. By stopping Rahul like this she is only strengthening the Congress.
Did you tell her this?
I did, but I had to wait for nearly six months to be able to do it. I had wanted her to support the Ganga Nath Mishra Commission report. Under the Kashinath Memorial Awaas Yojana houses are being built for the Dalits, but the Muslims, most of whom are homeless, are not included. I had pressed for a 15-20 percent housing quota for Muslims. I said do not reserve anything but tell the bureaucracy that you want these many Muslim names otherwise if the list is to be cleared. This is what Bahuguna had done in his time, but she just comes back to the single point, “Tumhare Mussalmano ne vote kyun nahin diya.” Every time you meet her she says, “Tumhare Mussalman gaddar hain.” So when I realised that I could do nothing for the Muslims, the Dalits, Indian politics or go speak to the media I quit. Some would say that you are speaking now because you are bitter about the experiment.
But that is natural because when I spoke out I was expelled. Now that I have been expelled, I can speak freely.
You spoke to the media, but did you speak to her?
Many times. I told Nasimuddin Siddqui, SC Mishra, Kushwaha and others that this was not the right way. I told her on telephone a couple of times that we must have a plan to bring together the minorities. Earlier, when I had joined the party, I gave her notes about how we should go about it and she promised that she would implement it. But she did not. Later she said that since Muslims had not voted for her, what was the point? I told her that Dalits also started voting for you only gradually. It is a fact, though, that Muslims are not attracted to the BSP. They have moved away from the SP but they are not coming to the BSP, and the Congress is trying to cash in on that.
But why aren’t they coming to the BSP?
Because they feel that the BSP has no place for Muslim leaders. They need somebody to tell their problems to and she is not ready to do anything about their development, growth and backwardness.
Where from do BSP legislators and MPs get so much money?
I don’t know if they have the capacity to pay or to win. What I do know is that they in some particular area they will give tickets to a particular caste, because in the neighbouring one another caste has benefited. This is called caste engineering and not social engineering. The media uses the wrong word. Each time you meet Mayawati you have to pay in lakh. It’s a total money game. You can’t survive in the BSP unless you make illicit money, and then don’t give it up.
How did you survive for 17 months?
I survived because I stayed away. If you tell them that you are bringing something on her birthday you will get faster appointments.
You have always been in parties where individuals have mattered more, like Amar Singh who dominates the SP.
When I joined the SP, Amar Singh was not that dominating. There were discussions. There were a lot of socialist leaders then. What I am saying is that with this anti-defection law, leaders think they can get away with anything, because defection requires two-thirds majority. Where MLAs do not have any influence they have to move like sheep. That is why people like Mulayam Singh, Lalu Prasad and Jayalalithaa are where they are these days. People saw how they became so powerful. Karunanidhi was not so powerful 6-7 years back. Today his family is. The media should study this phenomenon. I am talking about this and facing the music. I was a journalist and continue to be one and so I ask these questions, look at things differently. That is what I am doing.
What is Amar Singh’s hold on Mulayam?
That nobody has been able to figure out. Even if a senior leader makes an innocuous remark about Amar Singh, he is made to apologise publicly. If somebody says “aap bahot accha kaam karte hain par thoda sa bollywood se door rahiy,’’ it will be enough for that man to be humiliated. Mulayam Singhji has total faith in Amar Singh.
What is the reason for this?
He controls the finances and these poor people who come from regional caste-based parties don’t know how to manage their finances. They were not getting money from the big industries. If you have people like Prem Gupta or Amar Singh and they have a role to play, then… They were there in politics earlier too, but they were not party leaders then. Today money is so important in elections that no leader can survive without pots and pots of it. People who can manipulate and manage money are welcome in any party and become powerful day by day.
