The dalit in India - caste and social class

Social Research, Spring, 2003 by Sagarika Ghose

BAMCEF failed at intellectual awakening and dalit leaders like Kanshi Ram and Mayawati broke away to set up the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1984 because of the futility, they declared, of BAMCEF-style campaigns to awaken the class of dalit government servants who had sunk into the torpor of protective legislation.

The emergence of the BSP has been an important milestone toward the goal of achieving an autonomous dalit political identity. The swearing in of Mayawati, a dalit woman, as chief minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh--India's most politically important state, supplying the largest number of legislators to the national assembly--is an event whose importance cannot be exaggerated. In a political dispensation controlled until recently almost entirely by hereditary landlords or westernized upper castes, the rise of India's plebian politicians is nothing short of revolutionary. The consistent rise in the vote share of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh is indicative of the rising awareness of political autonomy, although this electoral phenomenon remains largely limited to north India. (22)

The BSP revolution, however, suffers from several contradictions. The party has often been accused of creating a new "power elite" and patronage networks among dalits. The most significant criticism made of the BSP is that it has on many occasions allied with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); indeed, it rules the state of Uttar Pradesh today in partnership with the BJP. Since the BJP's identity is that of a party of high-caste Hindus, this alliance stands in direct contravention of Ambedkar's searing rejection of Hinduism and upper castes.

Nonetheless, the BSP remains the single most successful dalit political formation at the national level. Its success is in contrast to the history of the Dalit Panthers. The Panthers--who borrowed their name from the Black Panthers in the United States--emerged in 1972, comprised mainly of poets and writers. While the Panthers contributed a great deal of revolutionary literature and campaigned against several crimes against dalits, within a few years the movement splintered and became co-opted, joining various government committees and panels. The BSP, on the other hand, has built strong grassroots links with rural areas. BSP politicians prefer to use the term "bahujan samaj" or "society of the backward" rather than dalit in the attempt to build broader based electoral alliances with other backward castes.

However, the "society of the backward" has failed to materialize primarily because of the nature of agrarian relations, which pits backward castes against each other and thus divides the society of the backward. Since brahmins have become urbanized, it is the intermediate backward castes (those just above the "pollution line") who have become owners of the land on which the dalit is a laborer. This has led several dalit intellectuals to argue that the greater enemy of the dalit is no longer the brahmin but the intermediate castes, which are often placed in a directly competitive position with dalits. Debates on the dalit's main enemy have divided the community and a united dalit movement remains unlikely.