To the chants of Buddhist priests, Mayawati placed the urn first on her head, a symbolic rite of passage of accepting her bequest of leadership, and then at the feet of the life-size statues of the BSP troika — Dr Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram and herself. Hundreds of BSP workers hailed the ceremonial act in a burst of unconventional applause and party cries: “Kanshi Ramji ka mission hai adhura, behenji karengi usko poora.’’

The spectacle was also a display of Dalit radicalism — Kanshi Ram’s contempt for Hindu rituals was pushed further by Mayawati’s act of defiance. “Tradition demands that a son light the pyre of the father,” she thundered, “a girl who unfailingly served her father when he is alive, has to step back when he is dead?”

“I have looked after Kanshi Ramji all these years, why should some male do his last rites? I am his family, and therefore, I broke tradition and lit his pyre,” she said to resounding applause. She informed the audience that Kanshi Ram’s remains would be buried in the ground and a peepul tree planted at the spot.

Mayawati told her attentive audience that Kanshi Ram had asked her parents permission to allow her ashes to be kept at the party HQ. “No one lives forever, one day I will go too. But Kanshi Ramji has willed that my ashes be kept by his side, and my family respects his wishes.”

She used the occasion to clear the air about the intrigue surrounding Kanshi Ram’s last years, and his death. “I had to pay the price for being the chosen one,” she said. “I have been accused by Kanshi Ram’s family of abduction and murder. His brothers have joined hands with my political rivals to bring me down, but I have always had my leader’s support and blessings, and that has given me the strength to carry on.”