Resumo de A Dalit Leader:- Mayawati

Mayawati

This article from the book
THE UNTOUCHABLES
Subordination, Poverty And The State In Modern India
By
Oliver Mendelsohn & Marika Vicziany
Mayawati, a Jatav (Chamar) woman, became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 1995. She is the first Dalit woman to have acceded to the highest office in an Indian state, but gender is not the most remarkable aspect of this accession. Its special importance arises from the uniqueness of a Dalit becoming Chief Minister through the vehicle of a political party centered on Untouchables themselves. The Bahujan Samaj Party, founded and still dominated by Kanshi Ram, seized its unlikely opportunity in UP after the collapse of a Government in which it was junior partner. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) backed Mayawati?s minority Government for strategic reasons, and it lasted a mere four months. But the very advent of such a Government had an electrifying effect on Untouchables across India. It was as if the world had been stood on its head, so that the bottom ruled over the top. When Mayawati again came to power in April 1997, this time in actual coalition with the BJP, the event was improbable without being unimaginable. The earlier accession had established, perhaps for the very first time, that the Dalits were a central and not merely a marginal political force.
Installation of two Mayawati Governments is not the only event of recent political significance to the Dalits. At the national level a powerful Dalit leader has emerged within the Janata Dal, the party that formed Governments after the elections of 1989 and 1996. Ram Vilas Paswan was Minister for Labour and Welfare in V. P. Singh's Government of 1989-90, and he was one of the driving forces behind the immensely controversial decision to adopt the Mandal Report and thus extend reservation of public employment to a new class of 'Backward' elements. The intention was to try to create an historic coalition of the downtrodden by joining together the Dalits, the Backward Castes and, after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, the Muslims too. While no such secure coalition is yet in sight, its very possibility continues to have political potency. So this aspiration was something of an ideological rationale for the formation of the coalition Government led by Deve Gowda after the inconclusive election of 1996. Ram Vilas Paswan was Minister for Railways in that Government - he retained the post after the Prime Ministerial changeover of 1997 - and he was widely regarded as the politician most relied upon by Prime Minister Gowda. Kanshi Ram and Ram Vilas Paswan, bitterly opposed though they are to each other, represent a new Untouchable politics that is radical and assertive but also ruthlessly pragmatic. For the first time across large parts of India the Dalits have to be taken seriously rather than viewed as a vote bank to be exploited by their social superiors.
Still another indication of the new radicalism is the so-called Naxalite activity that has persisted for a number of years in regions of Bihar and also Andhra Pradesh. We have briefly discussed the Bihar situation in chapter 2. In Andhra, the violent activity is centered in the same Telengana region that produced a major insurrection at the time of Independence. Untouchable labourers were at the center of that insurrection (Harrison 1960: 2 15-16). During the 19805 and 905 the Madigas and also the Mangs have been a key constituent of the new agrarian resistance, though the movement has tended to be led by high-caste figures. While the Naxalite activities of Andhra and Bihar cannot be portrayed as the likely future of Untouchable politics in India as a whole, nor can these movements be dismissed as phenomena relevant only to the most backward regions of India. Like the more widespread and articulate Dalit movement, the insurrectionary labourers of Bihar and Andhra reflect a deep Untouchable resistance. But for the rest of this chapter we are conced with more mainstream political life. Earlier we suggested that the attachment of Untouchables to Congress during the 1930S and 40S was far less than is sometimes assumed. In the years after Independence Untouchable support for Congress clearly strengthened. From 1952 until 1989, with the exception of the post-Emergency election of 1977, Untouchables tended to function in both national and State elections as a 'vote bank' for Congress. Their vote for Congress was a vote for the party of government, a party that had committed itself to a program of action on Untouchability and poverty. In rational terms and here their situation was similar to that of the Muslims there was little electoral choice open to Untouchables in most parts of the country. If the Left had developed more strength outside what became its strongholds in West Bengal and Kerala, the Untouchable attachment to Congress might have been less. Thus in the very first post-Independence election of 1952 the Socialists won a good part of the Scheduled Caste vote. But this was the highpoint of their electoral experience in that State. It is only in the nineties that the logic of class (albeit often dressed in the garb of caste) is again being asserted across large parts of India, particularly the north.

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