This essay is an exercise in speculation. Such an act is necessary because sometimes one needs to dream beyond the empirical because an empiricist view of politics is often limiting. It is a strict kind of accountancy which tells you little about alternative possibilities. Consider the political narrative in Gujarat. It is a poor Punch and Judy show between Chief Minister Narendra Modi and a weak Congress. The fight is boring, predictable and repetitive not just because Modi has little that is new to offer but because both parties constrain the possibilities of politics. We need a new term to alter relationships, and create new possibilities. Enter Mayawati. Let us look at Mayawati as a person and as a collection of possibilities, some of which may be unintended. What happens in the long run if Mayawati or a rainbow coalition under her enters Gujarat? What does she offer and what can she change?

Consider her as a person contra Modi or the lesser figures in the Congress. She is as shrewd as Modi, not morally a more convincing figure but socially a more powerful myth. Both offer visions of politics, both offer a packaged vision of modernity. What Modi offers is a vindication of the history of nationalism that is powerfully official. What Mayawati offers is a vision of justice and a collection of opportunities for the marginal and victimised. Hers is a more powerful view of history, of justice in lieu of Modi’s promise of mobility. She offers a better theory of citizenship. The dalit imagination is more modern, more cosmopolitan and more global than anything the BJP can offer. Mayawati’s Gujarat will have more to offer than Modi’s Vibrant Gujarat, which is a magnification, of himself. Both are colossal egos but Modi’s does not have a place for dissent or even for the sibling VHP. Mayawati can build a brahmin-dalit coalition in UP which shows her vision of politics is not frozen by her vision of history. Mayawati’s politics can offer some new possibilities for Gujarat. Firstly, it could offer a stronger vision of secularism than the Congress’ cowardly politics. Her vision of justice embraces the marginal and the minority. Dalit, Muslim, Christian and tribal might find a voice, a frame denied to them by the Modi regime. Mayawati offers dalits dignity while Modi’s is a carrot-stick approach to the lower castes. Beyond secularism and affirmative action, Mayawati’s rainbow coalition might challenge the power of the dominant castes and the dominance of religious sects. It can open up silences of state politics and loosen up its current middle class pomposities. Gujarat might realise that it needs two visions of change, one of the diaspora and the second based on the redemption and mobility of marginal groups.

... contd.