Still, isn’t this an awkward time to be away from home? “The dates were fixed at the last conference organised in New Delhi two years ago,” he points out. “Anyway, I don’t have to be physically present. I have communicated to Soniaji that as a constituent of the UPA, my party will abide by the collective decision.”
The LJP’s position, he says, is that the nuclear deal is in the national interest. But, the Left has been an ally, so Left parties’ reservations must also be addressed. “I don't think the Left parties are adamant on this issue. If they wanted to pull the Government down, they could have done so two years ago. Talks will go on, both sides will bend a little, and a way out will be found,” he says. "The Left knows that even after fresh elections, it may have to do business with the Congress again.”
What does he make of UPA efforts to rope in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s support? “I have always believed that the distance between Mulayam Singh’s SP and the UPA, partic-ularly the Congress, must be covered.”
Why? “Because Mulayam Singh Yadav is political. Unlike Mayawati.”
And why is Mayawati “non-political”? “She doesn’t have a stand. She only blackmails,” he says of his more successful rival for the “Dalit vote”.
In the course of his career, Paswan has also sought to fashion himself as a leader of Muslims. He attributed his resignation from the NDA ministry to the Gujarat riots of 2002; he famously proffered LJP support for a Muslim chief minister of Bihar in 2005. He cites both instances in “my reflections” in the “New York Vision Document”.
What does he make of the attempt, first made and later refuted by the Left and then by Mayawati, to draw the spectre of a monolithic Muslim opinion that is against the Indo-US nuclear deal? “Muslims are not anti-progress and development. In any case, 90 per cent of the people don’t even understand the deal. It is true that there are reservations in the community about America’s policies, particularly in Iraq and Iran. But even secular people like us have misgivings on that score,” he says. “This is only Mayawati’s opportunism speaking. Had Mulayam
Singh Yadav remained opposed to the deal, she would have spoken in favour of it. As for the Muslim clerics who reportedly turned out to thank her for her stand, on occasion you will find some of them lining up outside the BJP's door."
Finally, given the history of separation and fragmentation of the discourses of “secularism” and “social justice”, what is the basis of this conference? “Both groups have common problems. The Sachar Committee Report has only confirmed this. But no one has seriously tried to join their agendas, bring them together. I did it as an experiment in Gujarat, after the 2002 riots in which the Dalits were said to have come out against Muslims. They are natural allies. They constitute 40 per cent of the vote.”
The “New York Vision Document” cites the growing numbers of international delegates in the Dalit and Minority Conference —from one-two in the first conference in 1994, to 25 in the third and so on — as a measure of its growing success. It describes at length the diversity programmes in US Corporates and universities. It poses the question of “what globalisation means to the Dalits of India" and dwells on the need for "redefining the role of Dalit NRIs in shaping the future of Dalits in India”.
