The Politics Of Blue: Why Akhilesh Yadav-vs-Mayawati Over A Colour Is Just One Shade Of History

The scene lasts a shade over three minutes. A politician in spotless whites arrives in a slum to claim the land he has finally won. The slum's hero, who stood in his way, is gone. The villain grabs a handful of earth. It's a conqueror's gesture.

A fistful of black first, thrown by a girl right at him. Then red. A lot of blue. In great clouds. Until the white is not recoverable. A boy covered in blue is thrown up in joy. A crescendo builds. Credits roll.

This is the climax of Pa Ranjith's 2018 Tamil movie ' Kaala ', starring Rajinikanth as the titular hero and Nana Patekar as the villain in white. Ranjith, among the most prominent Dalit voices in Indian cinema, has spelt out the cinematic statement he made: "Ambedkarism (blue) and the ideologies of both [Tamil social reformer] Periyaar (black) and the Left (red) need to converge to defeat oppressive regimes."

This month in Lucknow, blue is at the centre of a more direct political argument, as the Samajwadi Party picked blue t-shirts and jeans as the new uniform of its student wing , alongside its red cap. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav reasoned that denim or jeans fabric is a symbol of resistance, first worn by workers, and the colour blue belongs to democracy, the Constitution, and BR Ambedkar.

Colour isn't just colour here. "A uniform is not just a uniform. It is ideology too," Yadav said .

Akhilesh Yadav with members of his party's student wing in Lucknow. ( Photo: Facebook/@yadavakhilesh)

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) boss Mayawati clapped back in an eight-part post on X, claiming blue as her party's colour "since the very beginning". Wearing it, she wrote, would not make her rivals "Ambedkarite at heart". She jibed at the SP, Congress, and other parties that are lately more amenable to blue: "They keep changing colours like a chameleon."

Blue has been associated with the oppressed castes' political mobilisation for decades, just as red signifies communists and socialists, and saffron signals Hindutva.

The Yadav-Mayawati exchange comes barely six months before elections in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the 'saffron party' BJP is in power, as it is at the Centre. The SP is the main Opposition, Congress in tow, and the BSP at its lowest ebb as Mayawati releases new episodes of her succession saga every other day.

At a party meeting on August 31, Akhilesh Yadav and other leaders wore blue scarves with the SP's bicycle symbol in red. They reportedly said blue symbolises the sky under which everyone is equal. That's a philosophical definition offered over the years by Dalit activists.

In realpolitik, the uniform is part of the SP's 'PDA' pitch for the Pichhda (backward classes), Dalit (Scheduled Castes) and Alpsankhyak (minorities) sections. Akhilesh Yadav, a leader from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) -- often estimated at over half of UP's population -- has in recent elections given non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits a larger share of tickets.

Dalits make up just over a fifth of Uttar Pradesh's electorate, and that vote is no longer a BSP monolith .