Indian social system is influenced by Dharamshahstras, which call for the Chaturvarnashram system created by Brahmins and Kshhatriyas.
Any social movements defines opposition classes or groups, generally
exploiter and exploited but dalit movement is based against the
classical notion of “purity and pollution” and the notion of
purity and pollution comes from the individual’s birth in a family
i.e., totally ascriptive in nature. Dalit movements challenge it as
Periyar challenged the Brahminical hegemony in cultural, social,
religious and political spheres. challenging the Brahminical notion
of hierarchy was the first step in Dalit movements through Temple
Entry Movement, social justice movement etc. These movements talked
for the enforcement of freedom, justice, liberty in the place of
ritualistic traditional system where humans are deprived of basic
rights to live decent life. Therefore, these movements were giving
the model for alternate society based on ‘modern’ and rational
values and end the oppressive social order and establish a new social
order based on libertarian values.
The movement for the emancipation of Dalits in india in the early
phase of modern India was started by social reformers like Raja
Rammohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and others but the reach of
these movements were very meager and these movements vaporized very
rapidly. Generally, dalit movements can be arranged in two paradigms;
first Ambedkar era Movement and Post Ambedkar era movement. Ambedkar
tried to bring the ‘dalit’ question at the centre stage of
freedom movements. The communal award of 1932 and subsequent revision
in it after Mahatma Gandhi’s fast paved the way for more fruitful
political actions. The main impetus in Dalit Movement came after the
independence when democratic processes took the centre stage of
Indian polity and group action became more prominent strategy to
achieve the goal.
The Bahujan Samaj Party under the leadership of Kanshiram has brought
the most significant change in the psyche of dalit masses by
providing umbrella identity, futuristic visions, myths, social
ideology and political strategy to become one of the most significant
player in the game of power politics in contemporary India (Kumar,
2002, Page 168-69). The politics of Kanshiram had deep philosophical
imprints of previous dalit movements and he understood dalits as a
community which is racially subjugated, economically exploited,
culturally marginalised and politically untouchable in the realms of
power. Therefore, his strategy was to capture power from elites to
emancipate dalits as Jaffrelot(2006) has put in his work. As a
torchbearer in Ambedkarite social struggle in the political arena of
contemporary india, he gave the idea of revolution on the basis of
social engineering. He coined the term “bahujan” and made it one
of the most imaginative political categories. Bahujan identity is the
political alliance between the politically deprived castes of Indian
history under the leadership of most deprived caste group i.e.
“dalits”. It profess through the meta narrative of “guru-killi”
that it is the master key to end all the exploitation and made
“dalitness” the core value of the party.
The victory in subsequent elections in UP have shown the reach of the
idea of Bahujan among the deprived communities of modern India and it
also showed that they are second to none of any political outfits.
The victory had a revolutionary spirit to change the political power
game in the other parts of the country. But, this movement after some
time turned into petite-bourgeois politics and these were the results
of the limitations inherent in most of the dalit movements. The BSP
was successful in providing leadership to multi-caste,
multi-religious political alliance but lacked in providing social
milieu for dalits in the state. The political socialisation of dalits
had limited impact on their social conditions. A critical examination
of Dalit movements shows that most of these movement’s are
antagonistic to each other and that is one of the reason why the
strategy was not able to convert itself to any potential outputs.The
politics of caste is carried out with the baggages of the paste and
if we create a imaginative category where multiple caste groups are
its members then the problem starts with the unequal baggage of the
history with different caste groups and give birth to conflict among
them. The notion of purity and pollution has added hierarchy in the society
in such a way that the quality and quantity of exploitation is
different for different caste groups depending on their social
position spatially and temporally.
Therefore, BSP was able to provide political leadership by displacing
political elites but it could not transform its movement in the
direction of transformation of social status of dalits. The capturing
of power in politics in India requires alliances from other caste
group based parties, which are, generally, against the whole ethos of
dalit movements. Such alliances, under the power, does not remain
under one caste group and but remains under many additional power
blocks with a capacity to bargain. Thus, Political power face strong
challenge from the “civil society” in the transformation to ideal
socio-political order.Political socialisation is the first step to
gain inputs from society about the needs of the people. Political,
social, and economic domains are interconnected public paradigm and
through political socialisation, the state can understand the needs
and aspirations of the society. These needs should be evaluated on
rational basis to provide social justice to every individual of the
society.
These political alliances in Mayawati reign destroyed the basic
question of dalit emancipation and subalternity of the dalit
movement. In order to regain power in the state, She gave a new
imaginative community of “sarvjan” where antagonistic castes came
under one umbrella and the “dalitness” of the movement lost its
imperative. The political culture in the state of UP, ridden by a
conservative, orthodox and regressive social practices, converted
leaders to ‘new’ political elites. Brahminism is not only the
attribute of certain castes; in contemporary India, it also became
the attribute of certain class. The neo-buddhist movement, therefore,
wanted to create a secular, alternative community identity so that
the antagonistic trends in Dalit movements can be discarded and
annihilation of caste becomes possible.
