The unfortunate paradox is that a preoccupation with the survival of her legacy may also be a means to diminish it. Insecurity is not the basis of humane leadership. It can get in the way. Mayawati may have started from a position of weakness. But she now routinely appears on lists of the most powerful women in the world. She is the chief minister of India’s most populous state at the head of a single-party majority government. She was, and will probably remain in the future, a viable candidate for prime minister of the world’s largest democracy. Why not lead from a position of strength and the generosity of spirit that goes along with it? That would surely produce memorials too — but those might be memorials that honour larger achievements, rather than standing as achievements in themselves.

The writer, an associate professor at New York University, has been studying identity politics in north India for more than a decade. express@expressindia.com