Mayawati is by now a very familiar name in India. An outspoken politician, her claim to celebrity came more from a refreshing disregard for sophistication than anything else.

The abrasive Mayawati has been appointed the chief minister of the 140 million-strong mip-istate and to prove that the weight of that onerous office would not mellow her performance, while she is there, has already, sacked the state police chief. Hers was an uneasy going with Mu-layam Singh Jadav, the outgoing chief minister, from the very beginning of the coalition. She had to bide time before committing her party BSP to an inconceivable marriage with BJP — the political outfit of Hindu orthodoxy and champion of caste Hindu aspfration for reinforcing social power with the political. Mayawati's party so far wholly represented the interests of the deprived and suppressed lower castes. Whatever posture Mayawati may put on this is a sell-out that is going to influence all-India politics if she can stay at the helm for some time. But Jadav, by far the more dependable fighter for the social underdogs' cause, would not be sitting idle.

Mayawati's rise, however, has a lasting symbolic value, whatever her performance. She is a woman and from the lowliest in the society. Uttar Pradesh — the core of Indian political and cultural power — has been the bastion so long of communal bigotry that has for long been pushing out the liberal bourgeois Congress from power and something that found a diabolical expression in the razing of the Babri Mosque. For Mayawati to become UP Chief Minister is a historical sociological milestone that will leave a mark on both Indian polity and society.