Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati’s overt attempt to woo Brahmins in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls next year, appears to be a desperate bid to turn back the clock. The Dalit leader is seeking to recreate the political ambience of the 2007 state elections wherein a series of Brahmin bhaichara (brotherhood) meetings across Uttar Pradesh before the polls helped her forge an unlikely alliance between the top layer of the caste hierarchy and its lowest, scoring a spectacular electoral victory. ‘Behenji’s’ closest aide, Satish Chandra Mishra, a Brahmin, who one-and-a-half decades ago was the chief architect of this political move, is once again her main strategist today.
The BSP, whose electoral fortunes have nosedived over the past decade, has stepped up in recent months its efforts to play the Brahmin card by holding a series of ‘Prabuddh Sammelans’, which means enlightened rallies, a latter-day version of the old Brahmin bhaichara meetings. Spearheaded by…