Queen Maya had not become pregnant despite 20 years of being married to King Suddhodana, the ruler of the Sakya clan of Kapilavastu (in modern Bihar), till she dreamed of a white elephant, interpreted by the court astrologers as heralding the birth of an enlightened being.
In time, Queen Maya gave birth to Siddharth, who would later become the Buddha, the enlightened one who would introduce the subcontinent to Buddhism. Two-and-a-half thousand years later, it’s difficult to escape the irony of that story. Not too far from Kapilavastu, in modern-day Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, a different Maya is in charge.
Her party symbol is the elephant, and the Dalits who were responsible for her spectacular seizure of the coveted chief ministership of the state have converted to Buddhism in large numbers to escape the karma of untouchability, and Mayawati has rechristened the sprawling suburb of Noida, adjoining Delhi, Gautam Budh Nagar.
It is another matter that in Sanskrit, maya means illusion, and in a sleight of Mayawati’s treasury accounts, development projects across the state are taking Ozymandian shape as parks and museums and memorials, cenotaphs and statuary, in possibly India’s largest infrastructure-building exercise as thousands of stone carvers and masons, tonnes of dholpur and mirzapur stone and hundreds of statue makers have found employment to build, in an extremely short time, shrines to commemorate centuries of Dalit oppression.
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