http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1057641
The voice of Dalits exits Monday, October 09, 2006 19:47 IST Giving a voice to the voiceless may be cliché but it defines precisely what Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Samaj Party he founded achieved. While the Dalit movement had already made huge strides in the south, in the north, political power for Dalits was an alien notion. The BSP stood all logic on its head when within 11 years of founding, it managed to install Mayawati, a Dalit schoolteacher and protégé of Kanshi Ram, as chief minister of India's most populous and caste-ridden state. It was perhaps a defining moment for Dalit politics. Critics have argued that the rise of the BSP came about because of the vacuum left by the marginalisation of the Congress. Possibly. But that alone does not explain the rise of the BSP. The party spoke directly to the aspirations of the Dalits and its mixture of aggressive Ambedkarite ideology and vote bank savviness paid rich electoral dividends. It enabled Dalits, long oppressed by upper castes, to hope that they could actually aspire to positions of influence. The partnership of the intellectual and patrician civil servant that Kanshi Ram was, and the sharp-witted schoolteacher was unbeatable. It greatly expanded the reach and power of the BSP. More than anything, they were able to remove the stigma attached to Dalit politics. She seized the political high ground and began to negotiate a space for Dalits in the firmament on her own terms. But what should have been an enduring and progressive legacy seems to have lost direction. The insidious and avaricious political culture of the Hindi heartland with its elaborate system of patronage and corruption proved too much for Mayawati to resist. The movement has slowly metamorphosed from one of social upliftment to that of run-of-the-mill political chicanery. Kanshi Ram's illness has had something to do with the loss of direction of the BSP, which, despite being a strong political force in UP and elsewhere, has failed to live up to its early promise. The Muslims who saw the BSP as a bedrock against communal politics were soon put off by the manner in which the BSP's top brass conducted itself. Mayawati's flashy lifestyle contrasts poorly with the wretched conditions her followers live in. With Kanshi Ram's exit, the movement is in danger of losing further momentum, when it should have been gathering steam to become an all-India force. A pity because it was an idea whose time had come. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
