BSP haathi turns into Ganesh

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal" style="" text-align:="" justify="">LUCKNOW: It is time to reinvent the magic mantra -''Tilak taraju aur talwar, inko maaro joote chaar'', which helped the Bahujan Samaj Party in emerging as an aggressive dalit outfit. ''Taraju'', which denotes the trader community and ''talwar'', which represents the thakurs have been dropped for the time being to bring cheer to ''tilak'', obviously meant for the brahmins.The new version is far too friendly going by the BSP standards. It claims: "Haathi nahin Ganesh hai, Brahma Vishnu Mahesh hai".<br /><br />Bahujan Samaj Party is surely bracing up to role out a red-carpet for its sworn enemy - the Brahmins. Shedding its traditional image in its endeavour to win over the new friend, the BSP is going full-steam with its brahmin sammellans. The party has held what are being referred to as ''highly successful'' brahmin sammellans in nearly a dozen venues including Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Gonda, Sultanpur and Pratapgarh known as the strongholds of this caste. The grand finale at the state level will be held in mid April in Lucknow and will be addressed by the BSP chief Mayawati herself. BSP''s general secretary SC Misra, MP is ''Behenji''s'' man''Friday for the current mission.<br /><br />The party which had entered the political spectrum of Uttar Pradesh on an exclusive dalit plank, has realised that its fate depends not merely on support it enjoys amongst them but on the party''s acceptability by other socially mobile groups.<br /><br />The Samajwadi Party, acknowledged BSP''s enemy number one, always thrived on Yadavs and the other backward community. Beyond that, said a political analyst, it wooed Thakurs with some success. That left Brahmins to be won over by a strong political group. The eclipse of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh by the end of 1980 and the unsteady march of the BJP on the political road has made this community look for a "permanent political" home.<br /><br />The BSP has been toying with the idea of wooing brahmins. In the 2004 parliamentary polls, BSP gave five tickets to Brahmins, though only one of them won. In the Vidhan Sabha polls it fielded as many as 26 Brahmins though only half-a-dozen could win. The decision to grant such a large number of tickets may not have helped the party win many seats but it certainly made the community shed some of its antipathy to the BSP.<br /><br />With the support of around 13.82 per cent Brahmin votes, the BSP hopes to gain much more acceptability which would help it bargain for a higher political slot even without the required arithmetic. </div> </div>