Agents of their own liberation: Why Kanshi Ram’s blueprint still disrupts India’s political status quo

He exemplified the most distinctive model of emancipatory politics in post-Independence India

By Krishna Mohan Lal

Today marks the 92nd birth anniversary of Kanshi Ram (1934-2006), known as Bahujan Nayak among his followers. With an eye on the 2027 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, political parties have begun formulating their respective strategies to capitalise on the Dalit-Bahujan vote bank.

Prominent parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, and the Congress party are organising events on his birth anniversary on March 15. This time, Congress is observing Kanshi Ram’s birth anniversary as Samajik Parivartan Diwas (Social Change Day), while the Samajwadi Party is celebrating it as Bahujan Diwas or PDA (Pichhda Dalit Alpsankhyak) Diwas; meanwhile, the BSP is organising a massive rally with its Lucknow Chalo Abhiyan. Uttar Pradesh was the experimental ground for Kanshi Ram.

Kanshi Ram exemplifies the most distinctive model of emancipatory politics in post-Independence India. He built a long-term organisational and institutional political structure aimed at transforming marginalised communities into an organised political force capable of capturing state power. Through ideological training, political education, and grassroots mobilisation, Kanshi Ram transformed the Bahujan communities from a sociological category into a conscious political subject.

While transformational leadership focuses on why change is necessary, strategic leadership informs how change can be achieved. Kanshi Ram successfully did both. Transformational leadership transforms the beliefs, identities, and aspirations of their followers through inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation, and constructs a shared identity that unites large, diverse groups to achieve a common purpose.

Kanshi Ram also formed a Bahujan identity for the marginalised sections of society. He successfully transformed crowds into cadres and later cadres into leaders. He also challenged established value systems and social hierarchies in the Indian caste-based society, and, with the help of institutions and organisations, he fostered long-term institutional change. He changed the mindset of the Bahujan masses from one of victimhood to capturing political power.

He also worked on linguistic lines by shaping the political discourse like Chamcha Yug, and from Harijan to Bahujan. By promoting self-respect, historical self-consciousness and collective identity, he created a new political agency. Previously, Dalits and Bahujans were known merely as welfare recipients or beneficiaries of development; Kanshi Ram transformed them into active political agents and rejected the old clientelist model of politics.

To make Ambedkarite ideology a successful political agency, Kanshi Ram developed a layered agency for different purposes, such as the Backwards and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) in 1978, which aimed to advance an epistemic revolution with the help of bureaucrats, civil servants, and government employees. As he was himself a bureaucrat in DRDO, he must have known that bureaucracy is a site of structural dominance, so he diplomatically and strategically mobilised government employees in the Bahujan movement at a very structural and systematic level through BAMCEF, so if his party comes to power, he will get the support of the bureaucracy.

Through this, he united the government employees of the Bahujan Samaj and trained them. According to him, the educated class can work on three levels: First, they propagate the ideology and easily understand and acquire a new vision; second, they are a part of the system, so they can change the system within it; and third, the intellectual class can donate money for the organisations to create a mass movement.

He formed Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS-4) in 1981 for mass mobilisation through cultural activism and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1984 for electoral success to capture state power, as he always used to say that “power is the master key” in Punjabi (satta guru killi), which opens all doors for the marginalised sections. Unlike moralistic and reformistic leaders, he wanted to capture state power in a democratic way.

He established a long-term, durable project to establish political agency for the Bahujan outside traditional political structures. He used to say we don’t need social justice, we want social transformation, and social justice depends upon the type of person ruling the government. Social transformation will not come unless the marginalised, whom he calls Bahujan, rule the nation-state.

Through these organisations, he built an ecosystem to establish democracy from the margins. Today’s politics is media-driven. Kanshi Ram teaches how to establish our own media to create a mass movement. He founded magazines to advance epistemic justice. He used to assert that the Constitution itself served as his party’s manifesto and that once his party formed the government, they would implement the Constitution in its entirety. This agenda stood at the very centre of the 2024 parliamentary elections — a strategy through which the Opposition successfully challenged the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Congress used slogans like jitni abaadi, utna haq in these elections. Kanshi Ram gave this slogan 50 years ago, like jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni hissedari (one’s share should be proportional to one’s population), and the Samajwadi Party, through PDA discourse, is working on Kanshi Ram’s agenda.

According to the NCRB report, caste-based atrocities are increasing. The Oxfam India Report highlights weakening institutional accountability. The Periodic Labour Force Survey data indicate that educational inequality remains high in India. Democracy in India is backsliding, according to V-Dem’s Democracy Report, and economic inequality continues to widen the gap. In this context, Kanshi Ram’s vision acts as a roadmap. He taught that the oppressed must become the agents of their own liberation, despite being dependent on others, by gaining political power.

The writer is a PhD scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai