Uma seeks return to NDA

Uma Bharti is trying hard to return to the National Democratic Alliance to revive her sagging political career.

Uma Bharti is trying hard to return to the National Democratic Alliance to revive her sagging political career.

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Her agenda now: To wed Hindutva and social justice and create a fresh mass base.

She is camping in Nasik to meet Sadhvi Pragya, lodged in jail as an accused in the Malegaon blasts case. “I have come to meet Sadhvi Pragya because she is unwell,” Uma said.

Uma said she would never rejoin the BJP. “The media should stop asking me this question. I am not an aaya Ram gaya Ram like Kalyan Singh.” However, she added that Singh was like an elder brother to her.

“I won’t rejoin the BJP because my social base — Dalits and the most backward castes — will not vote for the BJP, or for that matter the Congress or the Left,” Uma said. “I can do good work if I am an NDA ally.”

She is awaiting L.K. Advani’s reply to a letter she sent him weeks ago. He had promised to consider it after the change of guard in the BJP, she said.

Uma said she had no problem working with Nitin Gadkari at the BJP’s helm, unless there was an ideological shift in the party under him.

She dismisses the idea of a generational transition in the BJP: “Advaniji is still the mentor of the BJP. All this youth-in-politics talk is a Congress design to hide Rahul Gandhi’s inexperience.”

Uma said she was as passionate about OBC quotas within women’s quotas as she was about the Ram temple.

She stressed that Hindutva was incomplete without social justice for backward castes, and social justice could not be divorced from cultural questions, as the Left believed.

She dismisses the idea of reservation for Muslims. “Such quotas are not permissible in a secular state,” she said.