by
Girish Nikam
�
From mouthing slogans like “Brahmin, Bania, Thakur Chor, Baki sab hum DS-4″� to ” Tilak, Taraazu aur talwar, maaro unko joothe char ” to the present day, “Brahma, vishnu aur mahesh, haathi nahin hain� yeh ganesh”, the Bahujan Samaj Party and its precursor, Dalit Soshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti(DS-4) has come a very long way in its evolution as a political force in some major parts of the country.

Thanks to Kanshi Ram and his vision, this has been possible. So when he died last week, after virtually being in a coma for more than a year, he left behind a party, which can well, claim to be the first political party of, for and by the downtrodden. Just to think that some thing like this could have been done, when Kanshi Ram became a full time politician only in 1986, would have been scoffed at. But it did not take him even a decade to put his favourite follower and now a leader in her own right, Mayawati on the seat of the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

This achievement becomes so much more remarkable simply because of the fact that he was able to create a political party with neither any political background nor support of any major leader or party.
When one looks at the background of Kanshi Ram, it is as unremarkable as that of any minor Government servant. Coming from a family of Raedesi Sikh, essentially Punjabi Chamars who had converted into Sikhism, in Punjab, he was the only graduate in a family of seven siblings.

After completing his B.Sc, he joined the Survey of India as a junior assistant in the reserved quota and in 1958, as a 24year old, moved to the Department of Defence Production as a scientific assistant in a Munitions Factory in Pune. For the future champion of the untouchables and the other oppressed communities, untouchability or any of its damaging effects was never an issue. This was largely because of the conversion of his family into Sikhism, which does not encourage the abhorrent practices.

However, Pune was a different experience. It was here that he encountered the hostility and bias in the form of his upper caste co-workers and colleagues. This was a shocking revealation to him. Even as he started devouring books by Dr.B.R.Ambedkar to understand this phenomenon, he got into dalit activism for the first time in 1965, protesting against the move to abolish the holiday on Dr.Ambedkar’s birthday.

Starting off from there, he along with his colleague in the Munitions factory, D.K.Khaparde, who was the one to induct him into Dr.Ambedkar’s philosophy, started thinking of forming an organization of educated government employees, which finally culminated in the formation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Minorties and Backward Class Employees Welfare Association in 1971.

This was the precursor to the All India Backward and minority Employees Federation in 1976, which started creating some impact, which led to Kanshi Ram launching an “Ambedkar Mela on Wheels”, in 1980. By then he had started thinking of struggle for the poorest and the most oppressed beyond the confines of the government employees. In fact he had started feeling frustrated with these reserved category Government employees, about whom he even developed cynicism. This is reflected in the BAMCEF Bulletin as early as 1974, where he said about these government employees, “—their inherent timidity, cowardice, selfishness and lack of desire for Social Service to their own creed have made them exceptionally useless to the general mass of the oppressed Indians “.

Later as he started becoming more and politically aware, he started DS-4, the central proposition of which was that: “Indian society is characterised by the self-interested rule of 10 per cent over the other 90 per cent (the bahujan samaj or common people). Although the ruling 10 per cent is composed of several castes, they derive their legitimacy and ruling ideology from Brahminism. All the institutions of society reflect this ruling ideology and distortion, including the press. These institutions can therefore be termed Manuwadi (after the great Brahmin-inspired text) or Brahminwadi.” A slogan coined after the formation of DS-4 was, ‘Brahmin, Bania, Thakur Chor, Baki Sab Hum DS-Four’. Loosely translated, this rhyme states that Brahmins, Banias and Rajputs are thieves, while the rest of society are their victims.

From DS-4 to the formation of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), it was a logical step, which Kanshi Ram took by 1986. As the supreme leader of the BSP, his ruthless pragmatism and opportunistic exploitation of the other political parties and caste groups came as a shock to the politicians, media and also the common people unused to such plain speak by a politician. The most notorious slogan in the UP elections in the late eighties and early nineties was “tilak, taraazu aur talwar, maaro unko joote char”. This slogan woke up the untouchables and the most oppressed who had suffered centuries of oppression and humiliation and they all joined the BSP in hordes in Uttar Pradesh.

His opportunistic alliances with the Congress first and the BJP in 1995 and 1997, which had catapulted Mayawati to power needs no repetition here. Over the last decade, the party has grown from strength to strength, even as the media and political parties took it for granted. It has spread its wings from UP to other States in the north, especially Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, and is now slowly making inroads in Maharashtra, and even in Southern States like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

What is interesting is that the party has now become confident about its own strengths and having created a solid base, has now started reaching out to those among the upper castes, whom it had abused to develop that base. As the UP elections near, the same Brahmins, banias and thakurs are lining up outside Mayawati’s house to get party tickets. And therefore the new slogan, “Brahma, Vishnu aur Mahesh, Haathi nahin hain yeh Ganesh”, signaling that his creation the BSP, is now heading to be an inclusive party.

For Kanshi Ram it must have been his most glorious moment when he found the upper castes heading towards his party, as that is what he had envisaged all along. The numerically smaller upper castes, being ruled by the numerically higher “bahujan samaj”.

For the man who created a new paradigm in Indian politics, and was far more successful politically than his idol, Dr.Ambedkar, it was a hugely eventful 72 years he spent in this world, and continues to be equally hugely unnerving for the traditional political parties.
16-10-2006