To label him a ‘Dalit leader’, as the media has, does injustice to him. No doubt, he never pretended to court the entire Indian society. After all, he coined the infamous “Tilak, Taraju aur Talwar” slogan. At the same time he never set out to be only the leader of the Dalits. None of the three organisations he founded was meant exclusively for the Scheduled Castes. Their names tell you the story: All India Backward (SC, ST, OBC) and Minorities Communities Employees Federation or BAMCEF as it came to known later, Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti or DS-4 and finally the Bahujan Samaj Party. For him bahujan never meant Dalit; his political project always included SC, ST, OBC and the ‘converted minorities’ that account for nearly 80 per cent of the Indian population. That his project had limited success outside of the Dalit community must not take away from the grand historic project of bringing all the victims of the caste system together as a unified political community.

Kanshi Ram was not your run-of-the-mill political leader who simply follows a given political line. Boldly, if subtly, he rejected the standard line available to Dalit politics. He was one of the few political thinkers of our time in that he created political possibilities by the power of ideas. He did not care much for erudition or for the abstract language of high political theory. But through a series of apparently strategic manoeuvres he worked out a new grammar of power for the dispossessed. He saw political power as the master key to social transformation and tried hard to decipher its logic. His understanding of the logic of macro politics allowed him to undertake unconventional experiments like putting up candidates for all the seats without waiting to build the party organisation. He had the courage to stand up to political correctness and declare that he wanted political instability, that he saw nothing wrong in political opportunism. His belief in this new understanding enabled him to defy Ambedkarite progressives and secular orthodoxies and go for many risky and controversial alliances. But all this was guided by a larger goal or mission as he called it. Let us not forget that here was a man who broke his engagement, decided not to get married and severed all family attachments for the sake of his mission.

... contd.