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Behenji: A Political
Biography of Mayawati
She would not only refuse to play the power game by the established rules of the well-entrenched political elite, but would also show the courage to throw the political rule book out of the window. Thinking ‘out of box’ she forced her political foes, so-called political pundits and a stunned, what she loves to call "manuvadi" media, to sit up and take her more seriously after her Bahujan Samaj Party swept the 2007 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and broke the 15-year-long jinx of unstable coalition governments in the state. As very less is known about this enigmatic personality, any nugget of information, even if it comes through an unofficial political biography (as claimed by Bose), is welcome. The book is divided into two sections. The first traces her journey from a child with exceptional sense of responsibility to her indoctrination in politics by her mentor and Dalit visionary Kanshi Ram. And then from her phenomenal rise in the party to achieving the remarkable feat of four-time ascendance to power in Lucknow. The second section examines her multi-dimensional personality as the ‘Iron Lady’, the social engineer, the Dalit icon, protagonist of a rags-to- riches fairy tale, and a possible future prime minister. As Mayawati has been an intensely private person, next to nothing is known about her formative years, familial relationships, friends, lovers and leisure activities except for what she has allowed through her official biography, My Life of Struggle and the Path of the Bahujan Movement, on which this book heavily depends to cull out information about her early years. Still there are some glimpses of her emotional make-up, including the gender and caste discrimination that she experienced at home and in her immediate environment. Guided by her father, she wanted to become an IAS officer to climb up the social ladder and fight for the rights of her community. But fate had other designs. A 21-year-old Mayawati caught the eye of Kanshi Ram while giving a public dressing down to the then Union Health Minister, the irrepressible Raj Narain. The news of this Dalit girl reached Kanshi Ram, who literally came knocking at her door. It was certainly a defining moment in Mayawati’s life when her future mentor told her, "I can make you such a big leader that one day not one but several Collectors will line up with files in front of you and will wait for your orders." A prophecy that took just 15 years to come true. After that there was no looking back for Mayawati. As the book notes this was the beginning of an "amazing relationship" and the subject of much speculation. "Their association was fundamentally political in nature, giving birth to the BSP and helping it to grow into a formidable force that it is today. But there is no denying that the two shared a strong emotional bond as well. And they did live in close physical proximity from the day Mayawati moved into Kanshi Ram’s room in Karol Bagh." More than being a book on behenji, it is a document that traces the rise of the party of Dalits, the contribution of the visionary Kanshi Ram, the unstable political scenario at the state and national level that made rapid progress for such a focused party possible. The book goes to great lengths to empathise with Mayawati’s brand of politics that bestows a ‘sense of dignity’ to her core constituency that was traumatised by a lack of official history by constructing Dalit iconic monuments and memorial. In what may sound like going a bit overboard, the journalist — author mentions her ‘transfer industry’ to underline that it is not as bad as it appears. He is fairly non-judgmental about the vast amount of wealth that she and her family have amassed in a short period of time. What graphically emerges as Mayawati’s strongest point, where she even surpasses her mentor, is her ability to crack the Indian election system and her vastly superior organisational skills. She and her aides spend hours day after day poring over the demographic profile of constituencies, electoral statistics and the caste and community distribution in the region to devise the best election strategy. Finally, one can’t agree more with the author when he observes that "Mayawati’s meteoric rise, almost out of nowhere, is a great tribute to the democratic process...where a woman belonging to the most crushed (the literal meaning of word Dalit) community has risen through the heat and dust of elections to rule 200 million people."
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