In an otherwise obscure bye-election in Bijnor, a reserved constituency in western Uttar Pradesh, the seeds of a larger battle for Dalit imagination were sown. The year was 1985, a year after Indira Gandhi was killed. The three candidates were a former IFS officer Meira Kumar, a young and emerging Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan and 29-year-old Mayawati. In the end, Meira Kumar secured more than 1,28,000 votes, Paswan came second, and Mayawati came third, but secured a significant number of votes ? 61,504.
The battle for capturing the Dalit mind, especially in north India, continues between the three ?Bijnor-ian? symbols. Meira Kumar, the winner then, is now India?s first woman Speaker and the bearer of an important Congress legacy ? a reminder of the time when Dalit votes (nearly 15% of the electorate in India) and minority votes (another 18%, approximately) were the staple fare for comfortable Congress victories.
If this election of Meira Kumar as Speaker of the Lok Sabha is a symbolic coup for the ruling Congress, then it?s a mixed metaphor, symbolising and signaling many different things. Kumar, one of the 59 women MPs elected in 2009, is fluent in Spanish, Bhojpuri, Sanskrit and English. She is a graduate in Law, a post-graduate in English and a member of the IFS (1973 batch). She is also a poet and is fond of Sanskrit tomes like Abhigyan Shakuntalam.
With a strong record in the Congress party ? a member of the CWC for 11 years ? Meira Kumar has been elected to Parliament from her home state Bihar twice. She has also won from Delhi and UP. She has been minister for social justice and empowerment in UPA I and was allotted water resources in UPA II.
It is easy to see why she was chosen as Speaker. Mayawati?s appeal as the ?Dalit ki beti? may have been reined in with this one move.
But Kumar is also Babuji ki beti, and the weight of that legacy is sometimes taken lightly.
Babu Jagjivan Ram, the son of a family of the cobbler caste, was the first to go to school or graduate from his village. He went on to become a senior member of Nehru?s Cabinet but was one of the six Union ministers to resign under the Kamraj plan in 1963. He represented Sasaram in Parliament for eight terms in a row. He was close to Indira Gandhi and was the one who moved the resolution in Parliament for Emergency. However, his sudden move out of the Congress, barely a month after general elections were announced in February 1977, also signaled which way the wind was blowing. After his departure, Dalit support for the Congress floundered.
Now, the Congress has pulled Meira Kumar out of a box once again, 24 years after that bye-election, as they deal with Dalit identity politics, honed to such a fine art by Mayawati, potentially the Congress?s most dangerous rival.
