Not at all. The government at least tacitly encourages it and often actively supports it, which wax not the case with the ban on blacks that you cited.
It's Not Just Maya
It has taken 60 years for Dalits to gain political power. By crafting a caste-community coalition, Mayawati has forged ahead in Uttar Pradesh, leaving others well behind the BSP. If she is equally successful in other States, the BJP and the Congress could be in trouble
Long years ago BR Ambedkar, who chaired the committee that drafted India’s Constitution, had warned that our democracy would be in peril if it failed to ensure the political empowerment of the downtrodden classes. Summing up the work of the Constituent Assembly during the final reading of the Constitution in November 1949, he said, “There can be no gainsaying that political power in this country has too long been the monopoly of a few and the many are not only beasts of burden, but also beasts of prey. This monopoly has not merely deprived them of their chance of betterment, it has sapped them of what may be called the significance of life.”
Though the Dalits have had reservations in democratic bodies, Government jobs and educational institutions, the reins of political power have never been in their hands. Every political party pays lip sympathy to the cause of Scheduled Castes but the levers of power have invariably been with the Hindu upper castes and dominant middle castes. Therefore, a clear majority in the recent Uttar Pradesh Assembly election for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which was launched to meet the political aspirations of the Dalits, symbolises the first-ever clear transfer of power from the Hindu upper crust to one of the most oppressed and disadvantaged social groups in the world. However belated this development may seem, it is certainly a significant milestone in India’s democratic journey over the last six decades and will hopefully minimise the bitterness among Dalits over the tardy efforts of the state to equalise opportunities.
Ironically, though Ambedkar made the first attempt to politically mobilise the Dalits, he met with little success, whether it was the Labour Party that he launched in the 1930s or the Republican Party which he founded much later. The idea eventually took off in the mid-1980s, a good 30 years after Ambedkar’s death, when Kanshi Ram decided to try it out. Kanshi Ram, who founded the BSP, prepared the ground for a Dalit political party through the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) that was established about three decades ago. As this organisation grew in strength, Kanshi Ram took the first step towards formation of a political party when he established the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangarsh Samithi (DS-4) in the early-1980s.
The DS-4 became a code for Dalit political empowerment and it made its presence felt for the first time in Uttar Pradesh prior to the Lok Sabha election in 1984. During that election, as the Congress rode a massive sympathy wave consequent to the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi, Dalit youth painted the walls in eastern and central Uttar Pradesh with this secret code that stood for Dalit political aspirations and bonding. The DS-4 metamorphosed into a full-fledged political party in 1985.
Initially, the party focussed on consolidation of Dalit votes. Once this was achieved, it angled for Muslim support and secured 14 seats and 22.08 per cent of the vote in the State in the 1999 Lok Sabha election. But, while the BSP had a firm grip on the Dalit vote, it found that it had to share the Muslim vote with the Samajwadi Party. This deprived the BSP of the clear lead it was looking for over the other parties. Its share of the popular vote in the state remained in the 22-24 per cent band, which was inadequate for it to gain a clear majority in the Assembly elections.
Over the last two decades, the political scene has got crowded with the emergence of several regional and caste-based parties with vote-banks big enough to take on the Congress and the BJP. This has led to triangular and quadrangular contests and lowered the threshold for a party or coalition to secure a clear majority. Aware of this new relationship between votes and seats, the BSP decided over a year ago to enlarge its social base just enough to cross this threshold.
Though the party was built on a ‘hate-upper castes’ slogan, Ms Mayawati offered the olive branch to Brahmins because she perceived the newly-empowered Other Backward Castes as the bigger evil. The party held several Brahmin Sammelans and laid the ground for the Dalit-Muslim-Brahmin vote base that eventually helped it in Uttar Pradesh. It also took the BSP’s vote share from the 22-24 per cent band to just over 30 per cent - enough in a quadrangular electoral battle to obtain a clear majority.
We are indeed lucky to see the transfer of political power in the country’s largest State to the Dalits with our democratic system and Constitution still intact because Maoists and other radical Left groups have been tempting Dalits for a long time to join them in wrecking the democratic system. Despite this, the commitment of a majority of the Dalits to the democratic process speaks volumes of the patience and resilience among a people who have put up with some of the worst humiliations that man can inflict on man. Their endurance is indeed remarkable because even in 1949 Ambedkar had declared that the downtrodden classes were “tired of being governed” and were, therefore, “impatient to govern themselves”. He had warned: “This urge for self-realisation in the downtrodden classes must not be allowed to devolve into a class struggle or class war.”
It has taken the Dalits 60 years to get the opportunity “to govern themselves”, at least in one State. Fortunately, the Dalit party has come to power riding on a rainbow coalition. It has achieved the impossible by building a political flyover to link communities at two ends of the Hindu caste system. It can now extend this experiment to other States. Apart from Uttar Pradesh, the BSP has been making its presence felt in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Haryana.
As we go along, it could set its sights on other States like Rajasthan, Bihar and Karnataka. If this happens, the BSP could become the first “regional” party to acquire a national footprint and unsettle the Congress and the BJP. These so-called national parties are yet to take stock of the electoral damage that the BSP has inflicted on them. If they underestimate the threat or consider it to be illusory (maya), they will soon have another contender for the pan-Indian vote.
India had President (K. R. Narayanan) and Prime Minister (Deve Gowda) belonging to what was supposed to be “untouchable” casts. When was the last time US had a “non-Christian”, “non-white” .... or woman President?