Back in 2007, it came with all the accumulated joy of an old dream being realized. Mayawati was taking oath for the fourth time as Chief Minister of India’s most populous and political state of Uttar Pradesh – this time with a majority unprecedented for any Dalit party. It seemed like Dr B R Ambedkar’s dream of self-sustaining Dalit politics, initiated in 1936 by founding the Independent Labour Party (ILP), was finally bearing fruit. Mayawati’s rise was ascribed to BSP’s ideology and its founder Kanshi Ram’s vision.
Mayawati’s victory seemed like a decisive point in Indian politics—it filled Dalits across the country with great pride and elation, and created a great reverence for Mayawati among them.
She was called “Iron Lady; some saw Prime Ministerial potential in her. In 2007, she was on Time Magazine’s list of 15 most influential persons of India and among Newsweek’s woman achievers. In 2008, she joined the likes of Angela Merkel and Sonia Gandhi in the Forbes list of world’s 100 most powerful women. The Independent, London, called her “unstoppable”.
Independent Dalit politics which Mayawati nurtured, started with Ambedkar’s idea of electoral representation for untouchable, based on the population percentage as early as 1919. For next 17 years, Ambedkar worked on making untouchable, a political force.
Kanshi Ram was an organizer and sought to realize, in practical ways, the aims of an ideological movement encompassing the whole Dalit-- Bahujan Samaj canvas. He saw this umbrella covering 85 per cent of India’ population, including Dalits, backward and minorities, against 15 per cent of elite castes who ruled over them.
Kanshi Ram built BAMCEF, later started DSSSS (Dalir Soshit Samaj Sangarsh Samiti) and then moved into formal politics by launching the BSP in 1984. Such a political outfit was a challenge to all traditional parties which could be defined as institutions of power based on caste hierarchies. Shattering this, the BSP made Mayawati the first Dalit Chief Minister in UP in 1995 when Kanshi Ram was just 61 and she only 39. In a critical tactical move, the BSP ditched the socialist SP and took the BJP’s support, and repeated the experiment thrice.
Kanshi Ram, with his band of dedicated, tireless workers, took the BSP from 9.4 per cent votes in 1989 to a high of 23 percent of votes in 2002. The party made a sustained campaign for the implementation of Mandal Commission throughout India, aiming at a pan India following. Some backward castes had remained under represented since Independence in every sphere. The BSP gained their confidence and overtime pushed out Dalits and MBCs from Congress mosaic, which was already weakened as the SP took away Yadavs and minorities.
The Mandal Commission became a decisive tool of mobilization for the BSP against the BJP’s mandir wave in 1991. When Mayawati won a simple majority with 206 seats with 30.43 per cent votes in 2007, a year after Kanshi Ram’s death in 2006, it was a logical conclusion of the long campaign that Kanshi Ram had spent his life on.
The BSP’s arrival generated hope for Dalits and backwards — at least they would finally realize their political credentials. . But an election victory on its own instilled a different spirit — it brought about a new behavior in the rank and file of the BSP, including the leadership. After Kanshi Ram’s death, this means and end switched places. Gradually, the Dalit movement turned into an instrument for Mayawati to purely seek and retain power. Kanshi Ram was a Dalit Bahujan movement person who used the tactics of electoral politics for the larger purpose; Mayawati became a pure vote aggressor. Her politics gradually ceased to create the emancipatory atmosphere of Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram.
As Mayawati retreats into her solitary splendour to wait for the next general elections, she must ponder over some wrong steps. Electoral politics is not an end but a means to seek equality in an unequal society. We don’t know whether Mayawati, 61 will now revert to Kanshi Ram model of mass movement? (IPA Service)
INDIA
MAYAWATI’S DECLINE AND FALL IN UTTAR PRADESH IS SHOCKING
SHE HAS TO RETURN TO MASS MOVEMENT TO GET BACK DALITS
Harihar Swarup - 2017-03-26 11:31
Is decline and fall of Mayawati also the end of a Dalit dream? Does she have it in her to rebuild the movement and the party? In last ten years, BSP has gradually declined. Her party drew a blank in 2014 Lok Sabha election. And now, the BSP plummeted to a mere 19 seats in 403—member Uttar Pradesh assembly. Juxtapose that number with the 206 seats she won in 2007 to see how steep the fall has been.