Everybody’s political icon

All political parties want a slice of Kanshi Ram’s political constituency

The Kanshi Ram birth anniversary on Sunday saw all major political parties paying homage to the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi went a step further to echo a long-standing demand of Mayawati, Kanshi Ram’s close associate and multiple times UP chief minister, that her mentor be awarded the Bharat Ratna. On Monday, the Punjab legislative assembly unanimously passed a resolution demanding the same.

The political resurrection of Kanshi Ram, who died in 2006, and his eulogisation as a trans party icon have to do with the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), due next year. (Deepak Gupta/HT Photo)

The political resurrection of Kanshi Ram, who died in 2006, and his eulogisation as a trans party icon have to do with the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), due next year. His iconic status among Dalits, who constitute about 20% of the population in UP, makes it necessary to endorse his memory. Political parties in UP also recognise that the BSP, the main political platform of Dalits since the 1980s, is on the decline. They expect that BSP voters may be willing to back other political outfits if patronised in the right manner. This explains why the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BJP, major political and ideological adversaries of the BSP when Kanshi Ram was alive, are now celebrating his legacy. The SP has been advancing a pichhda, Dalit, alpsankhyak (backward, Dalit, minorities) narrative to widen its OBC support base, while the BJP has been working to bring Dalits under the Hindutva umbrella. The Congress thinks it too could be a claimant to the Dalit vote that backed the party until the advent of the BSP in 1984. The fact is that Kanshi Ram saw these parties as inimical to the cause of Dalits, though he would negotiate hard with them to win office for the BSP on his terms.

In many ways, the recent rise in pro-Kanshi Ram sentiment mirrors the political mainstream’s approach to Babasaheb Ambedkar. Ambedkar too was politically isolated and vilified in his lifetime, but was embraced later as a pan-Indian icon who gave the nation its Constitution. Just like Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram was a political philosopher who envisaged a radical overhaul of Indian society by advocating power to the bahujan samaj (an alliance of non-upper caste communities). The big question is whether any of the political parties chasing Kanshi Ram’s legacy will embrace this provocative but anti-caste vision of democracy. Or, will it be like in the case of Ambedkar — more of a symbolic embrace than an endorsement of the person’s radical political agendas?