Behenji — A Political Biography of Mayawati by Ajoy Bose; Penguin Viking; Price: Rs.499; 277 pp
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Almost a fifth of India’s 1.2 billion strong population is constituted by the scheduled castes, formerly referred to as ‘untouchables’ and now increasingly as Dalits (‘oppressed’), at the bottom of the invidious Hindu caste hierarchy. For several millennia Dalits have been at the receiving end of perhaps the most brutal system of social discrimination ever devised by mankind — the caste system or varna vyavastha — which has religious sanction in orthodox Hinduism. According to authoritative Hindu scriptures, the servile shudra castes were born out of the feet of Manu, the first ever man, while Brahmins emanated from his head. Therefore they were considered so ‘polluting’ as to have no association with the primal man, Manu. For all practical purposes, they were perceived to be outside the pale of the caste system, and hence were — and are — branded and treated as outcastes.
The Dalit population of India is estimated at 200 million and is divided into hundreds of subcastes and groups, ranked on strict hierarchical lines. The vast majority of India’s Dalits remain desperately poor and suffer deep discrimination and oppression at the hands of the upper caste Hindu majority, as they have done for several thousand years, ever since the indigenous people of India, forebears of today’s Dalits, were enslaved by invader fair-skinned Aryans.
But even though the plight of India’s Dalits continues to be pathetic, things are beginning to change, says this remarkable book — a detailed political biography of Mayawati, known to her supporters as behenji or ‘sister’, a Dalit woman leader who has risen from the ranks of the outcastes to become the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous Hindi heartland state (pop. 166 million). It tells the story of this never-say-die Dalit icon who has managed the impossible: to rise to the top of Indian politics defying the wrath and contempt of upper caste Hindus and build a 100 million-strong vote-bank for her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which rules Uttar Pradesh with a clear majority in the state legislative assembly. “It is perhaps just a matter of time before she does become the prime minister of this country,” writes Ajoy Bose in this intensively researched biography of Mayawati, the only one available in English. A seasoned journalist, Bose interviewed his protagonist on several occasions and has put together a welter of detail from a wide range of sources, including Mayawati herself, her supporters and numerous detractors, to paint a picture of a maverick populist, who has made a stunning impact on Indian politics and has re-written the history of Dalits.
Tracing Mayawati’s political career, Bose describes the origins and development of the BSP, founded by her mentor, the charismatic Kanshi Ram, a Punjabi Dalit convert to Sikhism. In the mid-1970s, Kanshi Ram, then a middle-ranking government servant, established a powerful Dalit government employees’ federation, which after assuming several other forms, finally emerged as the Bahujan Samaj Party. Bose describes the emergence and development of the ‘Bahujan’ ideology in considerable detail.
According to Kanshi Ram, the true majority (bahujan) in India are not caste Hindus, a disparate and divided community which constitutes a mere 15 percent of India’s population. The real majority community or Bahujan Samaj of India, Kanshi Ram declared, echoing Dr. Ambedkar before him, are the oppressed castes, or all those who were excluded by the upper castes. The excluded majority includes Dalits, Adivasis or Scheduled Tribes, the Backward Castes (a major section of the shudras), as well as most Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists, whose forebears converted in search of liberation from the inflexible caste system and Hindu oppression. Kanshi Ram believed these hitherto excluded castes deserve to rule the country, and if they capture political power, they would finally be able to overthrow the socio-economic and intellectual hegemony of upper caste Hindus.
The daughter of a low-paid government servant of the Chamar caste from western Uttar Pradesh who lived in a Delhi slum, Mayawati’s rags to riches story, as Bose describes it, is as astonishing as it is inspiring. Guided by her mentor Kanshi Ram, she threw up her job as a government school teacher and aspirations of joining the Indian Administrative Service and plunged into politics, playing a key role in the growth of the BSP, first in UP, and then elsewhere in India. This, says Bose, required great personal sacrifice, for she was literally thrown out of her home by her father and for want of an alternative, had to live with Kanshi Ram, who remained a life-long bachelor and the butt of much gossip and speculation.
As an account of the phenomenal rise of a Dalit woman from a poor and oppressed background who has captured the nation’s attention, this book excels. Behenji is inspirational, but has its limitations. There is little discussion of the BSP’s socio-economic agenda. Nor does the book enlighten the reader how the Dalits and other communities of the Bahujan Samaj have actually fared during Mayawati’s terms as chief minister of India’s most populous state. The title’s chief virtue is that it serves as an overdue biography of a doggedly ambitious woman who makes no bones about her aspiration to become India’s first Dalit prime minister. If she doesn’t shoot herself in the foot first.
Yoginder Sikand