Kanshiram: Leader of the Dalits

199 Pages·2014·3.547 MB·English

by  Badri Narayan

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