In the north and west, a churn in Dalit politics

Three separate developments over the past fortnight indicate the state of play in Dalit politics in north and west India. One, the Lok Janashakti Party of the late Ram Vilas Paswan has fractured. Two, a set of legislators of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh (UP) appear to be moving to the Samajwadi Party. This comes in the backdrop of four successive electoral defeats for the party. And third, Union minister Ramdas Athawale has termed Prime Minister Narendra

Modi a “real Ambedkarite”, and predicted his return to power in 2024.

These developments point to the challenge of sustaining autonomous Dalit political formations in India. In the best academic work on the subject, Mobilising the Marginalised: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements, political scientist Amit Ahuja provides a powerful explanation for where Dalit parties succeed and where they don’t. Counterintuitively, it is in states which have witnessed strong Dalit social movements — Mr Ahuja cites Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra — that Dalit parties struggle to carve out their niche since there is a pre-existing level of mobilisation and co-option by major forces. In states where Dalit social movements have been weak — UP and Bihar — the book argues that Dalit parties have done better, mobilising newer political constituencies.

An additional challenge for Dalit parties is the expansion of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is, in some ways, India’s biggest Dalit party, with the highest number of Dalit parliamentarians in both 2014 and 2019 and a strong vote base among Dalit sub-castes. This has created an almost existential crisis for Dalit parties in the north and west — and they are either weakening or fragmenting or allying with the BJP, overtly or covertly. How they respond to the BJP’s Dalit outreach will shape the future of Dalit politics in India.