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135 pages

English

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Venerated as a dalit icon, Kanshiram (1934 2006) is regarded as being next only to Ambedkar today. This book illuminates his journey, from the early years in rural Punjab and with Ambedkarites in Pune, to his launching BAMCEF, an umbrella organization uniting backward castes, scheduled tribes, dalits and minorities, and eventually the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1984. Drawing on myriad oral and written sources, Badri Narayan shows how Kanshiram mobilized dalits with his homespun idiom, cycle rallies and, uniquely, the use of local folk heroes and myths, rousing their self-respect, and how he struck opportunistic alliances with higher-caste parties to seize power for dalits. Evocatively described is his extraordinary relationship with Mayawati, right until his death, and the role she has played in fulfilling his vision, during and after his lifetime. Contrasting the approach of the two men, Narayan highlights the turn Kanshiram gave to Ambedkar s ideas. Unlike Ambedkar, who sought its annihilation, he saw caste as a basis for forging a dalit identity and a source of political empowerment. Authoritative and insightful, this is a rare portrait of the man who changed the face of dalit society and, indeed, of Indian politics.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	18 avril 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789351186700
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0700€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Badri Narayan

KANSHIRAM
Leader of the Dalits
Contents
Dedication
Author s Note
1. The Early Years: Becoming Dalit
2. Seeking the Master Key : From the RPI to BAMCEF
3. The Chamcha Age: An Agenda beyond Ambedkar
4. The Elephant Rises: Kanshiram s Cultural Politics and the Formation of the BSP
5. The Bid for Power: Electoral Politics of the BSP
6. The Critics Speak: Opportunism as a Strategy
7. The Last Days: Between Party and Family
8. Long Live the Message: The Limits of Kanshiram s Politics
Illustrations
Footnotes
Preface
The Chamcha Age
The Elephant Rises
Long Live the Message
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
To Ramachandra Guha for inspiring me and giving me strength
Dalit god Kanshiram
Gives mighty speeches
That leave all speechless
And set the Dalits drums beating.
Hail, the Dalit god!
Terrified is the Centre of you
Mayawati, your disciple
Is declaring war
On Sage Vishwanath
Lord, the Centre is
Apprehensive.
Hail, the Dalit god!
-Hindi poet Nagarjun, 1998, just before his death
Daliton ko maangnewaalon ki jagah denewaali community ke roop mein tabdeel hona hoga. 1
(Dalits will have to transform themselves from a community of beggars to one of givers.)
-Kanshiram, lecture at SC/ST Parliamentary Forum, New Delhi, 17 June 1992
Ambedkar ne kitabein ikatthi keen, maine logon ko ikattha kiya. 2
(Ambedkar collected books, I gathered people.)
-Kanshiram, interview in Abhay Bharti , 27 May 1987
Author s Note
Kanshiram emerged on the political scene in the 1980s and early 1990s, when I had just started my academic career. Watching the changing face of democratic politics in Uttar Pradesh (UP), beginning with the fracas over the Mandal Commission Report , then the liberalization policies and the demolition of the Babri Masjid, I closely followed the rise and growth of Kanshiram and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). As a part of my study, I visited a large number of villages dominated by dalits, to observe the functioning of dalit politics and also to understand better the dalit psyche. In village after village, I found that dalits were no longer docile and submissive. Instead, they had metamorphosed into a group with a strong sense of confidence and identity and self-respect. All the dalits I spoke to acknowledged that it was Kanshiram who had inculcated these feelings in them. They hailed him as the messiah of the dalits after B.R. Ambedkar. He was the one who had socially, culturally and politically empowered them to fight against injustice and the everyday humiliation and oppression they faced from the upper castes and the police.
These comments only increased my admiration for Kanshiram. I was already deeply impressed by him, since I had been part of left politics in my student days and had a strong empathy for dalits, subalterns and other marginalized groups. I had closely followed his journey, whereby the dalits had been transformed into one of the most politically powerful communities of UP. The party formed by him, the BSP, represented freedom, respect and a completely new way of thinking for the dalits, who had been used to being treated as a captive constituency by the Congress for years. Kanshiram s BSP was to bring about a transformation in (mainly Hindu) society through the political empowerment of dalits.
A democrat to the core, Kanshiram believed in constitutional and democratic values. He tried to bring together the dalits, people from the scheduled tribes (STs), other backward castes (OBCs) and other minorities under the umbrella of bahujan samaj or majority community-they constituted 85 per cent of the votes in UP at that time. 1 He made them realize the value of their votes, explaining how they could change the face of democracy. He also constructed the idea of Manuvadi , that is, the follower of the Manu Samhita , the social code of the upper castes, as the other or opponent against whom he would battle.
This attempt to raise the consciousness of dalits and backward castes and to empower them was, like Ambedkar s, for sustaining the state, not to upturn it. If Ambedkar can be credited with putting in place a constitutional edifice for Indian democracy, it was Kanshiram whose organizational devices and political stratagems shored up its legitimacy, by involving many of the marginalized groups in his politics.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, a fallout of Hindu majoritarian politics, and the run-up to economic liberalization triggered a legitimacy crisis for the Indian state. This crisis saw the politics of religious identity gaining ground from the early 1990s onward. There was also an aggressive growth of caste-identity politics following the recommendations of the Mandal Commission Report , which brought reservations for the backward castes to centre stage. Political parties like the Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party (SP) were also involved in evoking the backward caste identity in electoral politics.
V.P. Singh, in a bid to stall the growing political power of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Shiv Sena, etc., implemented the Mandal Commission Report . In popular terms, it was an attempt to checkmate the kamandal , a religious symbol of the Hindus, by the use of Mandal , a symbol of backwards and dalit mobilization. The Mandal politics saw the strengthening of caste identities of dalits and OBCs. OBC leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav belonging to the Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party emerged in the Hindi-speaking region and established their stronghold in different parts of it. They gave voice to the politics of caste identity based on the idea of the upliftment of the marginalized castes. The controversy around the Babri Masjid was thus the underlying reason for the rise of this politics of backward-caste reservation in northern India-for good and for worse. Over time, the issue of reservation would create schisms in northern Indian politics between the backward castes and the mainly upper-caste and secular-minded supporters of the anti-Mandal agitation.
Kanshiram took full advantage of the situation to catapult his party to power. Together with his prot g Mayawati, who remained his most trusted sentinel since he embarked on his mission of empowering dalits socially and politically, he joined hands with the Samajwadi Party to gain control over UP. By installing thirty-seven-year-old Mayawati, a woman and that too from a dalit caste, as chief minister in 1993, he cocked a snook at the feudal and patriarchal forces, infusing the marginalized sections at the same time with a strong sense of pride and self-respect.
Kanshiram also challenged the Brahman dominance of the leaders from UP in national and state politics. Top national political leaders at that time like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi from the BJP, and even earlier, leaders like Govind Ballabh Pant and Jawaharlal Nehru belonging to the Congress, were Brahmans. The dalits were dependent on them for their political survival. It was Kanshiram who understood the contradictions of subaltern politics in UP and exhorted the dalits not to remain stooges or chamcha s of these political leaders, but to develop their own leadership through their own political party. These ideas, which had been the inspiration underlying the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) and the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS4), were subsequently theorized in his lone book The Chamcha Age: An Era of the Stooges and would ultimately form the ideological basis of the BSP.
In addition, by glorifying the cultural resources of various dalit communities-such as their proverbs, folklore, folk songs, etc.-venerating the heroes and saints of the different dalit communities and then attempting to unify dalits under one broad umbrella, Kanshiram built a sense of self-respect among them. He also popularized Ambedkar, who was largely unknown in UP, by installing his statues across the state along with those of other local dalit saints and heroes. In doing so, he succeeded in implanting and disseminating Ambedkar s ideas of dalit liberation in UP, though many people here were deeply rooted in the myths and legends of the Puranas and the Hindu mythological epics.
Kanshiram was regarded differently by different people. The Ambedkarites considered him a bahujan icon who was carrying forward Ambedkar s legacy. The Manuvadis saw him as a fanatical dalit leader. Those in power considered him to be a tough negotiator, who could stand up even to the prime minister, but a proponent of casteism. Political analysts found it difficult to understand his moves and found him totally unpredictable. Yet, in his lifetime, he had emerged as the tallest political leader of the dalits, making them a force to reckon with in electoral politics.
The people who were affected by his politics considered him crooked, but chose to ignore the new way of thinking about society and economy he brought with him. His vision of social transformation was complex, but it did bring about change. He had the capacity to turn remedial measures into long-term transformative politics. For example, his politics of opportunism , often criticized, was for the sake of acquiring power for the dalits. In the same way, the politicization of the dalit identity played a significant role in mobilizing them in north India.
Kanshiram was critical of the communists, but on several occasions he was found turning to communist ideology. He gave a new twist to socialist ideas. He maintained he would nationalize the major industries if his party came to power. He also claimed he would create conditions so that labourers could lead a good life. Natural resources should be under government control according to him. Today, when the government is selling these to private companies, his belief