There are many factors that are helping her. Other Dalit parties across the country are on the decline—factions of the RPI in Maharashtra, Puthiya Tamizhagam in Tamil Nadu and various factions of the Dalit Panthers could not grow despite the growing awareness in their potential catchment areas. “All these parties have been reduced to appendages of other parties. Like the Congress runs a Scheduled Caste cell, the RPI (Athawle faction) has become a cell of Sharad Pawar’s NCP, while in Tamil Nadu, Puthiya Tamizhagam and Dalit Panthers act as cells for either of the Dravidian parties,” says Ambeth Rajan, a BSP Rajya Sabha member.

Rajan, a Tamil and a follower of Periyar Ramasamy Naicker’s reformist agenda, was converted to Kanshi Ram’s philosophy of empowerment through political power in the early 1980s. Rajan travelled with Kanshi Ram to every nook and corner of the country—a strategy that the BSP founder relentlessly pursued for building the organisation.

“In Tamil Nadu, leaders of Dravidian parties keep pictures of Rama and Periyar side by side. The spirit of Periyar has been compromised and the BSP will revive it,” he says.

Then, there is an evident leadership vacuum in Dalit politics in different parts of the country. “The Khailarji violence in Maharashtra proved how toothless the Republican Party has become as a vehicle of Dalit aspiration,” points out Sudha Pai, author of Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: BSP in UP. The clashes in Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh between Dalits and backward castes in September 2007 made a similar point. “The Dalits of the area were eagerly waiting for Mayawati to arrive, which she did subsequently,” recalls Pai, who had visited the area then.

... contd.