I remembered that election rally as I heard the news of Kanshi Ram’s passing away. It was ten years ago, somewhere in eastern UP, just before the assembly elections. I can still see thousands of faces of the visibly poor and hundreds of bicycles that dotted the rally venue. I remember speaking to this man who had cycled — with two children on the bar, wife on the carrier — for nearly 40 km to have a ‘darshan’ of ‘saheb’. This, I learnt, was not uncommon. Kanshi Ram spoke for a few minutes and did not say anything I remember now. No rabble rousing, no outlandish promises. He did what he often used to do: he took out his pen, held it vertically and said this is what our society was like. Then he turned it horizontal and said this is what he wants society to be like. These simple words empowered the audience. Like all great political leaders in our country, his charisma did not depend upon his speech. He communicated before he spoke.

If the stature of political leaders is measured by their popularity rating in the latest polls, several leaders will be ahead of Kanshi Ram. But if political leaders are judged by their capacity to create and sustain a mass following, Kanshi Ram was the tallest national leader of our time. Unlike other national leaders, he did not inherit a political legacy. He did what no political leader has done in post-Independence India: he created a national political party that did not have any roots in the parties that existed at beginning of electoral democracy in 1952. That he did it among the most marginalised sections of our society makes his achievement all the more enviable. Those of us who take pride in the inclusive character of our democracy must learn to see Kanshi Ram as one of its architects — now, rather than after the four decades it took us to recognise Dr Ambedkar as a national hero.

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