THE rhetoric over the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal acquires a new shade every day but what it has brought into focus is an old Uttar Pradesh chestnut: the fight for the Muslim vote.

UP chief minister Mayawati appears to have scored first, calling the deal anti-Muslim and withdrawing support from the UPA Government. The move has predictably put Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on the defensive. And Mayawati could well create some uncomfortable moments for the man once called Maulana Mulayam.

The SP, explaining its support to the Congress, is now busy advancing the arguments of APJ Abdul Kalam on the merits of the nuclear agreement. Since the loss of assembly elections to Mayawati last year, Mulayam’s desperation has grown so much that he had to act now to keep his jalwa kayam. His MPs are frustrated after four years of being outside the power circle. And they are chafing not only at their loss of clout but also because they are facing a crackdown.

“In Jaswantnagar alone, from where only six people went to jail during the Emergency, currently about 3,000 people have been implicated in various cases by the BSP,” said Mulayam on the 33rd anniversary of the Emergency in Delhi.

On top of all this is the broader realisation by Mulayam that isolation does not help. The SP lost to Mayawati in the assembly elections despite his party’s vote percentage going up. Mulayam then realised that isolating himself does not help much as the division of votes among the SP, Ajit Singh’s RLD and Congress will only inflict more damage on his party. No wonder, Mulayam is even ready to walk to 10 Janpath to renew ties with the Congress, a move that may not get him cabinet berths but might facilitate a future alliance in UP against Mayawati.

Meanwhile, Mayawati’s distancing from the deal, has won her some friends in the state. “The BSP stands to gain and will get a major chunk of the Muslim votes,” says Hafiz Nomania, a political analyst.

Mayawati’s overtures to the Muslims began much before the talk over the nuclear deal turned into a slanging match. Crafting coalitions, after all, has become her greatest strength. From advocating a Bahujan samaj to building bridges with Brahmins and upper castes, Mayawati’s evolving equations ended in her triumph last year.

Not only did Mayawati include Brahmins in her coalition, but she also cut into the vote bank of the secular parties in the state and cornered the Muslim vote. For the Assembly elections in 2007, the BSP fielded 61 Muslim candidates, of whom 29 won. The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, fielded 56, of whom 21 won became MLAs.

Giving tickets to a bigger number of Muslims, according to political watchers, was what won her the community’s support. Her stand on the nuclear deal could further consolidate her position. But some say talk of the impact of the nuclear deal on electoral chances is exaggerated. Says Ashutosh Mishra, a political analyst and professor of political science in Lucknow University, “This is a temporary phase and is hardly likely to impact the electoral politics of the state.”

In the end it may all boil down to numbers. The party that fields the maximum number of Muslim candidates can perhaps hope for maximum support. “Mayawati is more comfortably placed in granting tickets to any community than Mulayam as she is the leader of largest social group—Dalits—while Mulayam is the leader of a confederation where his committed vote bank is only 6-7 per cent Yadavs and few other OBC communities,” says Mishra.

But it may not be all that easy to wean away Mulayam’s supporters. Political analyst Ibne Hasan points out that Mulayam still has an edge over Mayawati in terms of the access he has to the network of madrassas and imams in villages and small towns, which wield tremendous influence on Muslim voters. But already cracks have developed in this network. But party leader Rajendra Chowdhary claims they will win at least 50 Lok Sabha seats. Senior CPI leader Ashok Mishra, however, says, “In the last assembly elections in 2007, the vote share of the BSP was 30.43 per cent while the SP polled 25.43 per cent and the Congress, 8.61 per cent. Even a marginal shift of Muslim votes in favour of the BSP will help the party.”
—with Ravish Tiwari in New Delhi