Messiah Of The Few

But one is not sure that the message is sinking into the small crowd gathered in this 30,000-strong town of Tumsar, Maha-rashtra. They've been waiting over three hours. And as his blue and white helicopter (on loan from MESCO) lands, the BSP president looks fatigued, favouring his right foot, if not limping altogether. And his tones are flat as he begins to address the people, in what is the first leg of his tour in the state. Almost 85 per cent of the population is bahujan, he says—they are the ones with votes, which the Aryans buy with notes: "They use the money of the rich to buy up the votes of the poor and call it democracy." His sharp attacks on Vajpayee and Advani reveal that for the BSP the saffron party is again enemy number one, and they are out to seek revenge. The description is evocative. Vajpayee's nuclear blasts were five patakhas answered with six by Pakistan which made the the BJP turn tail and run (dum daba ke bhage). And while Vajpayee was strolling through the Anarkali bazaar in Lahore, Pakistan was sending its troops into Kargil.

The words are strong, if a bit tired. But, as Kanshi Ram tells Outlook at the end of the day, he's not being unrealistic in stating that "note-walon ki sarkar nahin rahegi" (the government of the moneybags will not last). He is confident of bagging 40 seats out of 85 in Uttar Pradesh this time round—all at the cost of the BJP and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party. And he's clear that whether or not they have a poll alliance with the Congress, the BSP will not be 'hostile' to Sonia Gandhi. The BJP, he scoffs, "has managed the media, the money and the mafia. They win because of them. We win in spite of them." But now the BJP is actually running scared, he insists. That is why they now call themselves the National Democratic Alliance.

There is time yet for the BSP's big bid for New Delhi. But before that he must render former friend, the BJP, vulnerable in its fortresses in the Hindi heartland of northern India. "I will restrict them to less than half the seats in UP this time. And they will not cross 150 in the Lok Sabha. It will be a slap in the face of all our critics and those who support the BJP."

It is both a threat and a promise.