The Dalit movement in India, which started nearly 100 years ago, is
going through a crisis today. This crisis is at both the ideological and
political levels. Although nothing like a pan-Indian Dalit movement
probably exists today, scattered Dalit movements are found in some form
or the other at various State and regional levels. The common factor in
all these movements is that they are all based on Babasaheb Ambedkar's
ideas and have evolved directly from them.
The emergence of Kanshi Ram — and his success in politically empowering
Dalits in Uttar Pradesh — is undoubtedly the second-biggest event in the
history of Dalit movement since Ambedkar. The Dalit movement in U.P was
inspired by Ambedkar and was born of the womb of Ambedkarism. However,
while the U.P. movement has helped to empower Dalits in the State, it
has also created tensions within the Dalit movement because of the
conflict between Ambedkar's values and ideals-based ideology and Kanshi
Ram's practical and pragmatic politics. The Dalit movement in
Maharashtra which followed the path shown by Ambedkar has not yet been
able to fulfil his dreams.
Kanshi Ram organised the Dalits of U.P into a wider category called
Bahujan Samaj. Mayawati brought them under the bigger umbrella of
‘Sarvajan'. The experiment failed in the last U.P. Assembly elections.
To understand today's Dalit movement in U.P., it is important to study
the ideological differences between Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram, since a lot
has already been said about their similarities.
The ideological differences between Kanshi Ram and Ambedkar arose mainly
from their education and backgrounds. While Ambedkar studied at
Columbia University and was trained in Western knowledge tradition,
Kanshi Ram was born in a small village in Punjab and trained in the
school of Pune's Dalit politics. Because of Ambedkar's western training,
his ideological ingredients were derived by seeing Dalits in the
context of history. Kanshi Ram's political arguments in favour of Dalits
on the other hand merged historical and mythological contexts. This is
because he understood the mythology and folk-based culture and society
of U.P. Kanshi Ram initially tried to follow Ambedkar's path that had
been adopted in Maharashtra. However, he changed course and asserted
that although Dalit politics got its grounding in Maharashtra, it grew
and was nurtured on the soil of U.P. Ambedkar called the politics of
emancipation of marginalised groups the ‘Dalit movement' while Kanshi
Ram preferred to term it the ‘Bahujan movement', avoiding the use of the
word ‘Dalit'.
Ethicality vs. pragmatism
Ambedkar provided an ethical context to the politics of Dalit liberation
since morality was very important to him. Kanshi Ram chose to be
pragmatic in his attempt to politically empower Dalits. He was unmindful
of the means of acquiring political power, emphasising the end, i.e.,
attainment of political power. If he was criticised for his
‘opportunism' he used to immediately reply that if Brahmins can become
influential by being opportunistic then Dalits too could use opportunism
to empower themselves. Kanshi Ram believed that until a casteless
society was formed it was necessary for Dalits to strategically use
their caste as a tool in their own emancipation and to dethrone
Brahminism. While Ambedkar saw the abolition of the caste system as
vital for Dalit emancipation, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati favoured the
awakening of Dalit and backward identities in order to link these with
the Bahujan movement. Kanshii Ram and Mayawati transformed Ambedkar's
‘slogan, ‘abolish the caste system' — propagated in his book, Annihilation of Caste — into ‘promote the caste system' to mobilise Dalits towards the restoration of their caste identity and self-esteem.
Kanshi Ram viewed caste as a double-edged sword and he wanted to use it
in a way that benefited the Bahujans but destroyed Brahminical hegemony.
He wanted to rouse the consciousness of the Dalit and backward classes
and believed in associating them with Bahujan society. However, he
disagreed with Ambedkar's demand for a separate electorate for Dalits
even though, like Ambedkar, he too wanted Dalits to attain
respectability and glory in mainstream society. Kanshi Ram's idea was to
transform society into a samta muluk (equal) society with all castes seen as equal and each having its own caste identity. This dream of a samta muluk society was the philosophical underpinning of the BSP.
Kanshi Ram's and — by consequence, the BSP's — ideology was based on
Ambedkar's theory of the ‘origin of the Dalits' (arising from a
Aryan-non-Aryan difference). But crucially, Ambedkar had refused to
accept Manu as the founder of the caste system in India while Kanshi Ram
gave Indian politics the new concept of ‘Manuvad'. Kanshi Ram always
kept in mind Ambedkar's motto that political power was the master-key
for Dalit liberation and that acquiring this master-key should be the
Dalit war-strategy. But he used to say that Ambedkar learnt from books
while he had learnt from his own life and people. He further said, ‘He
used to gather books; I tried to collect people.'
If the Dalit movement in India is to succeed, it is important to analyse
both the similarities and differences between Kanshi Ram and Ambedkar
so that a new strategy can be developed for the movement. The
Bahujan-Sarvajan movement in Uttar Pradesh may want to borrow from
Ambedkarite values in its U.P. experiment while the Dalit movement in
other parts of India may learn from Kanshi Ram on how to mobilise new
Dalit Politics.
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