The myth of Mayawati's success by Francois Gautier, May 16, 2007

Sacrificer           Francois Gautier
Sacrifice code       wfor0331
Sacrifice date       May 16, 2007

It has been made out that Mayawati won the Uttar
Pradesh elections because she fielded a number of
Brahmin and upper caste candidates. But the Bahujan
Samaj Party had given 86 tickets to Brahmins and only
34 won; a mere 39 per cent rate of success.

The media is also praising Mayawati for having
reconciled Brahmins and Dalits. But hers is only an
electoral cold calculation: how to get the votes of
the Dalits, the Muslims and the upper castes in one
shot.

It worked, and she has now entered her fourth term as
Uttar Pradesh chief minister.

But will it be better than her previous three terms?
Will she work for the welfare of the people who
elected her? Probably not.

Already, she has transferred hundreds of bureaucrats
and police officials and stopped all projects
implemented by Mulayam Singh Yadav. Can you imagine
the hundreds of crores wasted by these shelved
projects and the chaos in the administration which
will take months to straighten out?

Is this the way to start a new government and be a
chief minister for all, including those defeated?

Will Mayawati again enrich her party or herself at the
cost of good governance? Then next time Mulayam Singh
will be re-elected because of the law and order situation in the state and we will be back to square
one!

Every political columnist wants to make UP a study
case. But is it a good case?

Firstly, UP is the worst example of how an Indian
state can be mismanaged year after year and how the
most populous state of India is also the poorest, the
most unlawful -- bar Bihar, maybe.

Second, UP has shown India and the world how caste and
religion can be manipulated to the maximum cynical
extent to get elected -- as Mayawati just did.

But then, she only borrowed from the Congress book of
politics and only improved upon it.

It is true that the Congress in turn only took over
from the British the art of divisive politics --
to
polarise India on castes and religions: 'I am a Muslim
first and then an Indian'; 'I am a Dalit first and
then an Indian'; 'I am a Christian first and then and
Indian.'

Now Mayawati wants Brahmins, who have, whatever their
faults, shown patriotism throughout Indian history
(hello, Mangal Pandey), to say: 'I am a Brahmin first
and then an Indian.'

Today the Congress wants us to believe all these caste
reservations and pandering to the Muslims is done to
elevate minorities; but in truth it is just a cynical
arithmetic computation: with the votes of the Dalits
and the Muslims, anybody can be elected.

It is true that the Congress got bashed up in UP, but
is equally true that Mayawati upped them with the same
calculation, adding a peppering of upper castes for
good effect.

There is also a perversion of statistics and facts.

Yes, there are still terrible inequalities in India,
extremely rich people and the poorest of the poor.
Yes, there are Dalits who are oppressed. But no
country in the world has done so much for its
underprivileged since 1947.

Today, many government, academic, bureaucratic and
even medical posts in India are held by Dalits and
Other Backward Castes. A Harijan made it to the
highest post of President. Today India has another
Muslim as President, a Sikh as prime minister and a
Christian as 'eminence grise'.

Did the United States ever have a black President? Did
France ever boast of a Muslim prime minister, or a
Hindu President? No way -- and it will take a long
time to happen.

In fact, today it is the Brahmins who have become the
Dalits of India.

Brahmins are in minority in most of UP's villages,
where Dalits constitute 60 to 65 per cent.
Most of the intellectual Brahmin Tamil class has
emigrated outside Tamil Nadu.
The average income of Brahmins is less than that of
non-Brahmins.
A high percentage of Brahmin students drop out at the
intermediate level.
75 percent of domestic help and cooks in Andhra
Pradesh are Brahmins.
And most of Delhi's public toilets are cleaned by
Brahmins.
Yet, contrary to the West, where Christian priests and
popes constantly meddled in politics and acquired huge
health and land, which led to the separation of the
Church and the State under the French Revolution, the
much maligned Brahmins never interfered in the affairs
of State throughout Indian history, restraining
themselves to advising kings and maharajas on
spiritual matters.

Dalits should never forget that the caste system,
which once upon a time was just an arrangement for the
distribution of functions in society, just as much as
class in Europe, has been the stick that all invaders
have used to put down India.

And it is today still skillfully employed by
missionaries, Marxists and the millions of parasite
non-governmental organisations who make money out of
India's misery, without really uplifting anything but
their own bank accounts -- one of the greatest scams
today.

On top of that, nowadays, it is not the Brahmins who
oppress the Dalits, but the OBC. See any village
in Tamil Nadu: Dalits are parked in one corner and cannot
enter the area devoted to Vanniars, who are just one
rung above them.

Is the caste-isation of politics in India, as embodied
in UP, here to stay? We hope not, as it may lead to
the balkanisation of India.

What is the key to stem this rot? Education.

Many Indians do not feel nationalistic enough (except
for cricket, the lowest and most worthless
denomination of nationalism) and put their castes and
religions forward, because they are not groomed in
school to be proud to be Indians first.

As a Frenchman, I am taught about the greatness of my
culture, my religion, my roots. Here in India,
children know all about Shakespeare and Shelley, or
the latest Time bestseller, but have never read
Kalidas, have no idea who Sri Aurobindo was and have
no idea that pranayam is the science of breath unique
to India.

As a result, later, the IIMs and IITs just produce
brilliant clones, without any root in their culture,
who export themselves to the West to stay there, the
greatest brain drain in the world.

It also produces generation after generation of
Indians who scorn on their own culture and look up to
the West and some of the values like materialism and
Marxism, which have failed there.

But if right after kindergarten you would teach
children about the greatness of their culture, a
little bit of the good of each religion, great poets,
saints and epics like the Mahabharat, which is a
universal scripture, one would produce generation
after generation of true Indians.

Ultimately, Brahmins are fools if they think they will
reap benefits by allying themselves with the likes of
Mayawati. The hate against Brahmins first shown by the
Muslim invaders, then by the British and today
espoused by Christian missionaries, Indian Marxists
and much of the Indian intelligentsia, is too strongly
imbedded in the collective psyche.

They should remember Mayawati and her mentor Kanshi
Ram's early war cry: Tilak, taraju aur talwar, unkomaro jute char (Brahmins, traders and the warrior caste should be kicked).

Already BSP leaders feel that the Brahmin overdrive
could alienate them from other upper castes,
particularly Thakurs. Thus, some backpedaling may
happen soon.

Look also at what happened to the 400,000 Brahmins of
Kashmir who fled though terror their homeland without
raising a little finger in defence.

Today no political party gives a damn about them and
many of them are still languishing in refugee camps --
in their own country -- a first in the sad history of
humanity.

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