Sunday, March 23, 2003		Books

BSP is no more than hope for Dalits
D. R. Chaudhry

Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution
by Sudha Pai.
Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages XIV + 266. Rs 295.

THE evolution of the traditional Brahmanical order led to the emergence of a social pyramid: its top occupied by the miniscule higher twice-born castes and the bulk, comprising Dalits, tribes and women in general, condemned to subsist at the bottom. It is novel, unique and unparalleled on the one had and the most inhuman, iniquitous and tyrannical social system ever designed in the history of mankind.

The emergence of the BSP in UP is an outcome of the gradual arousal of Dalit consciousness out of the sustained work and impassioned zeal of Dalit crusaders like Jyotiba Phule, Ramaswamy Naicker, Dr B. R. Ambedkar and others. The book under review traces the rise and growth of the BSP in UP. The largest state (erstwhile) in India has seen three major attempts at Dalit assertion. The first took place in the colonial period when Chamar-Jatavs of some districts renounced Gandhian ideals under the influence of Ambedkar. The second is marked by the formation of the Republican Party of India in Western UP in 1956 and its absorption into the Congress in the late sixties. The final phase relates to the emergence of the BSP in the mid-eighties.

BSP supremo Kanshi Ram founded the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation in 1976. It comprised educated, upwardly mobile and economically better off sections of the Dalits. This section still constitutes the inner core of the BSP and its outer layer is made up of the vast mass of the poor Dalits in UP. The phenomenal growth of the party in UP has to be traced to the flowering of Dalit consciousness in the colonial period marked by the setting up of libraries, Ravidas temples, educational institutions, launching of newspapers and magazines for the depressed classes by a string of educated Dalits.

The decay of the ‘Congress system’ in the eighties provided the space for the emergence of the BSP. The theory of the Congress system and its collapse as enunciated by Rajni Kothari and used by the author to explain the phenomenon is too simplistic to bear scrutiny. The process was much more complex. It was the growing aspirations of the intermediate and lower castes in response to the growing democratic consciousness that led to the collapse of the Congress system.

As for the BSP’s ideology, the less said the better. It is marked by Ambedkar’s slogan: "Educate, organise, agitate". However, what this onerous exercise is aimed at is made clear nowhere. The BSP’s practice in UP, which can be characterised as its laboratory, a la Gujarat (for Hindutava), only confounds the confusion.

What is concrete in the BSP’s ideology is the concept of political power. "Political power," asserts Kanshi Ram, "is the key by which any lock can be opened". However, this concreteness has a terribly opaque and impenetrable core.

Nothing lasting can be achieved without capturing political power but little of substance can be gained if the power becomes an end in itself, a fatal delusion with the BSP. The BSP tasted power in UP for the first time in alliance with the SP of Mulayam Singh. The alliance floundered too soon. Its collapse is explained by the BSP ideologues on the ground that the socio-economic interests of Dalits are different from those of upper backwards, who constitute the core of the SP. But pray, what is common between the Dalits and the upper castes represented by the BJP? The fight against "Manuvad," the Brahmanical ideology, has been the raison de’tre of the BSP’s ideological campaign. It lost its punch when the BSP came to power in alliance with a party which has been consistently denounced by it as "Manuvadi."

Sudha Pai is absolutely correct in stressing that the BSP has no emancipation programme worth the name. In her opinion, it is not a revolutionary party and believes in the parliamentary path of gradual change. However, in the opinion of this reviewer, there is no dichotomy between the revolutionary path and the parliamentary one. A party aiming at revolutionary transformation can use the parliamentary path as a tactical move.

So far the BSP has remained bogged in the realm of symbolism—Ambedkar statues and parks, Mayawati’s birthday bash being the latest example. However, it has been criticised for the wrong reasons by the media as this kind of symbolism has a great inspirational value for those who have led sub-human existence for centuries.

The BSP’s coming into power in the largest state of India is of great historical importance but its incapacity to further the agenda of societal change through political power is its Achilles’ heel.

The author is sympathetic in tracing the BSP’s evolution and growth and unsparing in her criticism for its failings, and rightly so. It is an outcome of sustained fieldwork over the years on Dalit assertion in UP and this lends an authentic ring to it.