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Kanshi Ram death anniv: SP to continue practice of remembering Dalit icon
The party introduced the custom of observing the birth and death anniversaries of Dalit icons since 2019 Lok Sabha polls when it had tied up with long-standing rival Bahujan Samaj Party.
Samajwadi Party (SP) will continue its new practice of observing Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) founder and Dalit icon Kanshi Ram’s death anniversary.
The party introduced the custom of observing the birth and death anniversaries of Dalit icons - the father of the Constitution, BR Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram - since 2019 Lok Sabha polls when it had tied up with long-standing rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The alliance sank and disintegrated within weeks of the not-so-favourable poll outcome, but the SP used the alliance to initiate and consolidate its Dalit outreach.
Ahead of the 2019 poll, the SP had installed a bronze bust of BR Ambedkar at its Lucknow headquarters, with a pride of a place among SP icons Ram Manohar Lohia, Janeshwar Mishra, and others. Since then, the SP had been regularly holding Ambedkar’s birth anniversary, death anniversary, and Constitution Day events statewide.
In 2021, ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly polls, the SP first observed the birth anniversary of Kanshi Ram and surprised political circles in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere just the way the Congress has done now. Last week, the Congress announced launching a ‘Dalit Gaurav Samvad’ throughout Uttar Pradesh on October 9, the death anniversary of Kanshi Ram in its attempt to wrest back the support of Dalits and most backward classes (MBC) in the state.
“Of course, the SP will observe, Kanshi Ram’s death anniversary across the state with the main event in Lucknow”, said Mithai Lal Bharati, the president of Samajwadi Ambedkar Vahini. The Ambedkar Vahini in itself is the party’s newest frontal organisation that was founded in 2021 ahead of the UP assembly elections for Dalit and MBC outreach. Bharati is its first president.
Then, early this year, Akhilesh Yadav, for the first time, on April 3, had unveiled a statue of Kanshi Ram in Rae Bareli at a school run by an SP senior leader and at the event said: “We are the people who follow the path shown by Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and Manyavar Kanshi Ram. We are not the ones who are out to make a dent in the ‘Bahujan samaj’, but those who bind them. ‘Netaji’ Mulayam Singh Yadav and Manyavar Kanshi Ram had started a new kind of politics in the country”.
The SP secretary and spokesperson, Rajendra Chaudhary said: “He (Kanshi Ram) was associated with us. Netaji (the SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav) had got him elected as the MP from Etawah 1991.”
This time, Kanshi Ram’s death anniversary is set to be observed by the Samajwadi Party, Congress, and Bahujan Samaj Party among the big political players in the state.
