How political parties in UP are seeking to appropriate Kanshi Ram as BSP weakens

SP, Congress, BJP & ASP plan outreach programmes for Dalit community. BSP chief Mayawati calls them ‘new well-wishers’ of party founder, says 'posing for sake of votes' ahead of 2024.

Political parties in Uttar Pradesh (UP) are scrambling to woo the Scheduled Castes (SC) or Dalits — a key vote-bank that reportedly  21 per cent of the state’s population — with a declining Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) seemingly leaving a void.

The death anniversary of BSP founder Kanshi Ram on 9 October became another occasion for these parties — mainly Samajwadi Party (SP), BJP and Congress — to launch campaigns to reach out to the Dalits, prompting BSP chief Mayawati to take a jibe at political rivals, “new well-wishers” of Kanshi Ram.

UP Congress chief Ajay Rai offered floral tributes to the BSP founder Monday and launched ‘Dalit Gaurav Samvad’, or dialogue, on Dalit pride in Lucknow — an ambitious campaign to hold 4,000 night chaupals (small meetings) in the state’s 80 Lok Sabha constituencies.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, after putting a garland on a portrait of Kanshi Ram Monday at the party headquarters in Lucknow said that the leader had taken the “transformational step of arousing self-confidence and political consciousness among Dalits”.

The party’s wing ‘Samajwadi Ambedkar Vahini’, constituted in June this year as part of efforts to reach out to the Dalit community, is also leading an outreach campaign.

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary also paid tributes to the BSP stalwart.

On 26 September, the BJP had started a week-long ‘Dalit Sampark aur Samvad Abhiyan’ to reach out to the Dalits in SC-dominated villages.

“The party also plans to hold SC/ST mahasammelans, starting in Lucknow’s Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan on 2 November, where it expects five lakh people to gather,” The Aazad Samaj Party (ASP), founded by Chandrashekhar Azad, which has launched a ‘Samvidhan Bachao Yatra’ across UP, held a rally in Bijnor Monday as part of several events planned across the state ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

These campaigns by political parties, in what’s being seen as an attempt to appropriate Kanshi Ram’s political legacy, come at a time when the BSP is witnessing an erosion in its support base.

Having  22 percent vote-share and 19 seats in the 2017 UP election, the party was reduced to a single seat in the assembly with its vote-share down to around 13 per cent in the 2022 state election.

Mirza Asmer Beg, professor of political science at Aligarh Muslim University, said a competition is going on among parties to appropriate the legacy of many icons, including Dalit icons like Babasaheb Ambedkar.

“By appropriating the legacy of icons, it becomes easier to reach out to the community as the latter identifies with them. With the weakening of the BSP, all political parties are finding an opportunity to carve out a slice from the Dalit vote-share and the caste census demand, too, is linked to that,” he said.

“The target is to get support from the marginalised sections of Dalits and Other Backward Castes (OBCs). Even if they (the parties) are able to get a small vote-share, it adds to their own and helps gain seats,” he added.

Shashi Kant Pandey, head of department of political science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, said the performance of the BSP in the 2022 election seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for the party.

“If one party which has been in power four times (in UP) comes down to one seat, it reflects the downfall of the party. And this is happening not only within UP but in other states too,” he added.

“The BSP’s decimation is due to Mayawati’s style of politics. While other parties have changed their ways to reach out to voters, Mayawati has deviated from the Kanshi Ram style of work. He would take Dalits and backwards together, but today, no old leader is left in the party and a void has been created. Obviously, other parties will try to capitalise on that,” he explained.

According to Pandey, while earlier BSP would get the Dalit vote enbloc, the situation has changed now and the BJP has made deep inroads among the non-Jatav voters, and the Valmikis and Pasis among the Dalits.

“The BJP and SP got votes from even Jatavs (a Dalit caste to which Mayawati belongs) in the 2022 election. The SP has formed an organisation called the Ambedkar Vahini and is already in alliance with Chandrashekhar’s ASP in west UP. This is a good effort as the Dalit vote comprises around 20 per cent in UP. With Mayawati’s vote-share dwindling, the Congress, SP and BJP are working hard to make inroads,” said Pandey. “With elections around the corner, they are reaching out to Dalits and remembering Dalit icons like Kanshi Ram.