File photo of the late Ram Vilas Paswan. (PTI)
Despite his national ambitions, Ram Vilas Paswan could, from the days of Janata Dal and after, never really get out of Bihar politics. The closest he came to becoming the state’s CM was in February 2005 when his LJP party won more than two dozen seats in fractured politics. The stagnation continued for a month and more had to be called and finally early elections.
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Sumit Pande
Ram Vilas Paswan had friends at all parties. He remained on the right side of the power structure during his five decades in public life. Only once did he fail to catch the chaff in the winds: the 2009 general election when the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Lalu Yadav ignored Congressional plan to fight in alliance against the Lok Sabha polls.
But within the paradigm of Dalits and subaltern politics, Paswan’s influence was divided into a particular state and subcaste. Although the Dalit leader of Hajipur burst onto the national scene with a record victory far ahead of his contemporaries.
Two Lok Sabha farewell polls, disputed in the mid-1980s, in fact determined the course of Dalit politics in the heart of the country and limited Paswan to Bihar.
In 1985, the deputy of the Congress of Bijnor in Western UP, Chowdhry Girdhari Lal passed away. By-elections were called. Seeking to rejuvenate the match, Charan Singh’s Lok Dal decided to remove Ram Vilas Paswan from the seat.
Congress decided to up the ante. Babu Jagjivan Ram’s daughter, Meira Kumar, a career diplomat and foreign service officer, with only 12 years of service under her belt, quit her job. She was nominated to face Paswan by Rajiv Gandhi.
Bijnor has a high concentration of Dalit Muslim population and, as such, has been the laboratory of many political experiments. Paswan relied on a Jat-Dalit combination in an attempt to record his first victory outside of Bihar.
In a highly contested election, Kumar defeated Paswan by just 3,000 votes.
Interestingly, the two candidates in one of the highest-profile electoral battles in the heart of UP were outsiders, from Bihar. Laster Paswan and Kumar would serve as ministers in the Manmohan Singh government between 2004 and 2009.
A couple of years later, in 1987, by-elections were called for Haridwar’s seat in the undivided UP. This constituency also has a high percentage of Muslim and Dalit voters.
Once again, Ram Vilas Paswan submitted his nomination papers. A then relatively unknown political team, called the Bahujan Samaj Party, also put forward its candidate. The election was handily won by Congressional candidate Ram Singh. BSP’s Mayawati came in second with close to one lakh of votes, and Paswan came in third.
Two years later, Mayawati would record her first Bijnor electoral victory. That election also marked the rise of Kanshi Ram as a powerful Dalit Indian ideologue in post-independence India. The BSP for years to come would continue to dominate Uttar Pradesh politics for two decades or more by uniting a social coalition of subaltern caste groups.
Kanshi Ram’s tactical modus vivendi juxtaposed with the missionary Marxist dialectic helped the BSP develop a national captive vote and influence.
Paswan, however, won the 1989 elections to Hajipur’s Lok Sabha by more than 5 lakh votes. Paswan’s best moment in politics perhaps lies in his stint as minister of social justice in VP Singh’s government. It was the minister who introduced a strict law to penalize atrocities against registered castes and tribes. Paswan also tested the executive order for the implementation of the Mandal Commission report, a decision that completely altered the political paradigm in India for decades to come.
Despite his national ambitions, Paswan was able from the days of Janata Dal and, from then on, never really get out of Bihar politics. The closest he came to becoming the state’s CM was in February 2005 when his LJP party won more than two dozen seats in fractured politics. The stagnation continued for a month and more had to be called and finally early elections.
Within Bihar, Paswan’s influence over its Dalit subcaste, the Dushad, who make up about 4% of the population, remained intact. In the districts bordering UP, however, the BSP made progress, especially among the Khatavs. Nitish Kumar walked away with a large number of Dalit votes by announcing special plans for the poorest among them, also called Mahadalits.
Nitish Kumar in alliance with the BJP obtained a comfortable majority. Paswan continued to draw his limited political strength from Bihar, but remained entrenched in national politics. With also the same percentage of caste support, Kumar would continue to rule for 15 years.
That is why Paswan’s son and political heir Chirag is seeking a bigger and more proportionate pie in state politics for his party.
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