Hey, Kanshi Ram!

Can this be about Kanshi Ram? First, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh offered that his government would foot all the bills for the treatment of the ailing BSP patriarch, at home or abroad. Because Kanshi Ram is a great leader, he said. Now, BSP supremo Mayawati says she needs two days to react to the offer. Because she must frame a suitable answer, she says. Could this really be about the ailing Dalit leader, who painstakingly, nearly singlehandedly, crafted the Dalit8217;s arduous struggle to the political spotlight? From the first national association of Scheduled Caste government servants, BAMCEF, in 1973, through the quasi-political DS4, to the Bahujan Samaj Party, established in 1984 and perhaps the only party without any roots in the Congress to break into the 8216;8216;national8217;8217; party league.

There is a drama around Kanshi Ram. But this time the untiring trail blazer, so used to rewriting the prevalent script, must take second place to the theatricals. The focus is on Mulayam Singh Yadav. By all accounts, the Samajwadi Party leader is still fighting a political battle after comprehensively winning UP. It8217;s not just the Congress that has announced war on its intimate enemy, railing against 8216;8216;law and order8217;8217;, agitating against a government it supports. The CPI has just joined in the harangue. The offer to bear the cost of Kanshi Ram8217;s treatment could be read as an embattled leader8217;s attempt to fish in troubled waters not his own 8212; and reap a few defector MLAs. It comes not long after a minister in his government, a former lieutenant of Kanshi Ram, led a protest rally in Lucknow, demanding that his mentor be 8216;8216;freed8217;8217; from Mayawati8217;s control. The focus is on Mayawati. The BSP chief must guard her flock from poachers at a time when Ram Vilas Paswan is also said to be on the prowl. Behenji cannot allow Kanshi Ram8217;s condition to become the pretext for a split in the BSP8217;s ranks.

The focus is also on the BSP and SP 8212; their tumultuous rift after that brief coming together in 1993, their stolid unwillingness to join hands again. The story of backward caste politics would have been different in India8217;s most politically alive state, had Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav not fought quite so irrevocably.