By this time a respected leader named Kanshi Ram had set up an organisation of government employees who are dalits or members of religious minorities He knew very well that dalits must be aware of their rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution. I was already going into various localities to educate poor dalits; Kanshi Ram heard me addressing some meetings and perhaps got impressed. My parents had big dreams of my becoming a top government administrator. But Kanshi Ram told them their daughter had leadership qualities and they should let her join politics so that top bureaucrats would one day take orders from her.

That is when I had to make a big decision. In 1984, I plunged full time into politics. Kanshi Ram, leader of the new Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), or Majority Society Party, took me under his tutelage. My parents were apprehensive, because there were clear dangers to my safety; we were shaking up an old, entrenched social and political order that fattened some and impoverished large masses.

What steeled me in those trying days was the ill-treatment of dalits. I knew that for this condition to change, we had to launch a social revolution — to organise those on the bottom rungs of society to stand up for their rights. As a single woman and a dalit I faced slurs, neglect, insults, even physical threats. Unlike many Indian leaders, I was not handed down political privileges. I had to struggle very hard for every inch of political space I occupy today.

... contd.