India (44 page)

“Does the genetic landscape map reveal anything about caste?” I asked. “Some people tell doctors that they like sperm donors to come from their own caste, to get the right genes.”

Dr. Mukerji was dismissive. “There’s no logic to talking about caste and sperm and which community has better genes. Indians all have opinions, but the caste system has no genetic basis.”
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In September 1977, the veteran politician Raj Narain was addressing the “Abolish Caste Conference” at Delhi’s Constitution Club. The Emergency had recently ended and he was something of a national hero, having defeated the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in her stronghold, the constituency of Rae Bareli. Caste prejudice should be defeated, Raj Narain declared. The harijans must be protected. Were these children of god not our brothers and sisters?

Before he became a national figure, Narain had a reputation as a buffoon, and he may not have noticed a shift in the attitudes of the Scheduled Castes. A distinct wave of energy was touching both the middle classes with government jobs and the poor who felt neglected by politicians. Gone were the days when they would be patronized as harijans. The Dalit Panthers had launched themselves with a bang in Bombay in 1972, inspired by the Black Panthers in the United States. So when Narain gave his speech at the Constitution Club, many listeners were unhappy at his repeated use of the term “harijan,” although none of the speakers challenged him bar one, a 21-year-old primary school teacher named Mayawati. When she spoke, she was neither polite nor deferential. Why was this cabinet minister insulting the Dalits in the audience? Did he not know Dr. Ambedkar had referred in the Constitution to “Scheduled Castes” rather than to “harijans”? Why did parliamentarians pretend to be fighting the caste system even while perpetuating it? She wrote later that the term “harijan” was as offensive as “devdasi” (“slave of god”) to describe a woman who was sexually exploited by temple priests.

India remains a socially conservative country, and for a young, unmarried woman to have spoken in this way to an eminent older man in public was remarkable. Mayawati had started as she meant to go on: she was in awe of nobody, and not bound by precedent. There were no senior women in politics from a background like hers, but despite her deprived upbringing
on the broken fringes of Delhi, she was ready to take on politics and the caste system. Her guide and mentor would be Kanshi Ram, twenty-two years her senior and another political maverick. Former untouchables had remained subordinate since independence. According to Mayawati’s biographer: “Dalit leaders came in two models. One was the wild-eyed radical who spoke of blood on the streets,” the other was the Congress politician who feathered his own nest while “preserving and consolidating the loyal scheduled caste vote bank that had remained in the party’s pocket since independence.”
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Kanshi Ram worked on the simple but visionary premise that if the downtrodden were to organize themselves, they could take power in India democratically. He believed that if barriers of region, religion, language and sub-caste were forgotten, they could band together and become a majority, and drive out the high-caste “Manuwadis,” the followers of the ancient edicts of Manu, who had kept them enslaved for thousands of years.
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It was a fine theory; the problem was executing it. Drawing on the writings not only of Ambedkar but of earlier thinkers like the Maharashtrian revolutionary Jyotirao Phule (who in turn had been influenced by Thomas Paine’s
Rights of Man
) and Phule’s teacher wife, Savitribai, Kanshi Ram sought to put his ideas into practice. He was contemptuous of the standard forms of agitation used by left and liberal politicians in India. By 1972 he had an organization with around a thousand members and a cumbersome name: The Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Minorities Employees Welfare Association. When he recruited Mayawati after her fiery speech at the Constitution Club, the movement was spreading from Maharashtra to Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Like African-Americans in the United States, it was only when Dalits organized themselves rather than being helped by external well-wishers that things really began to change. In 2010 the activist Chandra Bhan Prasad started a private school and built a temple dedicated to a new deity, “Dalit Goddess English.” His supposition was that Dalits, being socially and educationally excluded, should learn English so as to advance. The bronze image of “Dalit Goddess English” held a pen in one hand and books in the other, and the mantra chanted at her dedication ceremony was “A-B-C-D.” Prasad believed that only by deifying the English language via the goddess would he be able to persuade low-caste parents to send their children to the new school.
²⁰

The relationship between Kanshi Ram and Mayawati remains one of
the mysteries of modern Indian politics. It endured until his death in 2006, and was as intense as any marriage. From the outside it looked evident: an unmarried woman was living in the house of an older man. Many long-time colleagues thought Kanshi Ram was being foolish, damaging his own credibility and allowing himself to be manipulated by an ingenue. Mayawati was furious at any lewd insinuations, saying Kanshi Ram was a sanyasi and she was his daughter or his sister (this sounds more peculiar elsewhere than in India, where unusual personal relationships abound and terms like “daughter” and “sister” can be flexible). At one point Mayawati even said she was his son.

Whatever the internal dynamic between them, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati’s main interest was in political change. A roadshow called “Ambedkar Mela [festival] on Wheels” was sent across rural north India to educate people, and Mayawati toured villages by bicycle in the burning heat, persuading the poorest they should no longer let others speak on their behalf. Her message was stark. “Can you name me even one Dalit family in this village or in the surrounding region who has prospered because of the various economic welfare schemes like pig herding, rickshaw pulling, leather tanning, etc., initiated by the Congress government over the past forty years?” Generally, the answer was no. In which case, Mayawati demanded, why were 95 percent of Dalit votes going to the Congress party? “We all know that upper caste Manuwadis do not want Dalits to eat well, dress well or do well, so do you think a machine can be built in Delhi or in some other part of the country that can suddenly change the hearts of all these upper caste ministers and leaders so that they will help Dalits to prosper?”
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No, roared the village crowd. Then the solution, she said in answer, was to vote for the BSP, which Kanshi Ram had built “for Oppressed and Exploited Indians.”
²²

At any given time, India is full of aspiring parties and leaders. Most do not go far. The BSP reached the Lok Sabha in 1989 in the avatar of the now 33-year-old Mayawati. Her caste destiny was to be a leather worker or a cleaner of floors and toilets, though not of tables or mantelpieces—that would be the job of a maid. When she entered Parliament, other MPs complained she dressed badly, smelled sweaty and wore her hair in an oiled plait. Could something be done about it? Learning on her feet, Mayawati realized she might use Parliament’s formal procedural conventions to her advantage. When twenty-three Chamar women were reported raped by Jat men in Agra, she advanced to the well of the house and accused a minister, who happened to be a Jat, of personal responsibility. He responded with a
college humour honed at his alma mater, St. Stephen’s: “Behenji [sister], I have one wife and can barely handle her! What chance of me trying to tangle with two dozen women?”
²³
Wholly unimpressed, Mayawati kept up a barrage of insults and allegations, even as the speaker tried to calm proceedings. It symbolized an end to the paternalistic politics of the early post-independence era. Like Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram and the Congress leader Jagjivan Ram before her, Mayawati came from a family with a military connection, beneficiaries of the British policy of recruiting untouchable soldiers, and her approach was martial.

When she became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh under Kanshi Ram’s guidance six years later, she ruled in a shockingly unconventional way, appointing Dalits to key positions in the state’s administration and police service, erecting thousands of statues of Dr. Ambedkar at public expense and sacking men who opposed her. Uttar Pradesh was home to many minorities, religions and sub-castes, and its history was the product of cultures coarse and refined; it had important historical sites like Sarnath, Ayodhya and the Taj Mahal, and landscape running from cold hills to hot plains. The state’s population was huge, nearly equal to that of Brazil. Mayawati had no previous administrative experience, and constitutional tradition or propriety was not her concern. If she was challenged on any front, she asserted herself with exceptional force. Raja Bhaiya, a prominent Thakur politician and gangster who kept alligators in a lake in front of his palace to intimidate the locals, was imprisoned under anti-terrorism legislation, and for good measure Mayawati confiscated his family’s properties, sealed his bank accounts and handed over the lake of gators to the forest department. To draw a New World comparison, it would be like a woman who had been born a slave, with all the fear that comes from having no redress, daring to jail a plantation owner.

A key spur or precipitant to Mayawati’s forceful way of operating appears to have been a debacle just before she became chief minister, when she believes she came close to being assaulted or killed. Realizing her party was about to pull down a coalition state government in Uttar Pradesh, angry activists from the ruling party raided the official guest house where Mayawati and other legislators were staying. While politicians were slapped, beaten and in some cases temporarily kidnapped, she and others retreated to a suite and locked the door. “Drag the Chamar woman out from her hole,” men and women shouted from outside, along with other more offensive remarks.
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Even by the rough standards of north Indian politics,
the attack in Lucknow was unprecedented. A battle between rowdies and police—some of whom were helping to protect the suite, while others were conspicuously standing idle—continued into the night until the legislators escaped. Mayawati remains terrified of assassination, and travels in a convoy of up to thirty-five matching vehicles when not touring her kingdom by helicopter.

In Mau in the poor, dusty eastern part of Uttar Pradesh, towards Bihar and the Nepalese border, there has long been intense caste rivalry, as well as communal violence between Hindus and Muslims. The wider region, once the United Provinces, had given birth to many of the leading statesmen of India and Pakistan, and was also home to vicious social antagonisms. To protect themselves, rival communities have over the years formed gangs to defend their interests. In places where the rule of law barely functions, a strong local politician can become a godfather or gang leader, and vice versa—and a politician’s police escort can act as a useful form of additional security.

One of the most popular godfathers in Uttar Pradesh—UP—was Mukhtar Ansari, a giant of a man from a Muslim feudal family. His grandfather Dr. M. A. Ansari was an associate of Motilal Nehru who had served as president of the Indian National Congress in the 1920s. When Mukhtar Ansari was growing up in the 1970s, the region had been a communist stronghold and he was conscious of the depth of local animosity between different social groups. His brothers were politicians, and in the 1990s Mukhtar gained a reputation as a man who got things done. When he was elected from Mau as a state legislator, he secured more than $20m in extra government funding for his constituency. Rival gangs fought for control over contracts, which ranged from coal mining and scrap disposal to public works like road building and licences to sell liquor. In 2001, Mukhtar’s convoy was ambushed while he was driving between Mau and Lucknow. During a shootout three of his best men were killed, but they managed to seriously injure a rival leader. A few years later, five murderers on motorcycles surrounded a car and shot the occupant, a BJP state legislator and a Bhumihar—an upper-caste Hindu—who was said to have been close to the original attacker. Rioting followed, and several buses, a mosque and part of a railway station were burned down. Mukhtar Ansari was blamed for the killing, although he pleaded his innocence since he was in jail in Ghazipur
at the time, awaiting trial for inciting a mob during earlier communal violence. His accusers said that he had directed the operation from his cell using, fittingly, a cell phone.

Although he had not been convicted of any crime, Mukhtar was a “sheeter,” charged with thirty-four offences, including gangsterism, homicide and firing an AK-47 at a police commissioner. He was reputed to carry a .357 Magnum and six mobile phones with him at all times. The authorities moved him frequently, not wanting him to take over the administration of his prison. In one jail he was said to have been allowed to build a volleyball court, and to have had a bathroom with soap from Harrods. The legal cases against him were grinding their way slowly through the court system.
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At the 2009 general election, he was recruited by Mayawati to run as a BSP candidate in Benares, one of north India’s most ancient and holy cities, with its cremation ghats lining the banks of the Ganges. Mayawati knew he was likely to bring in Muslim votes, and she portrayed him as a Robin Hood character who could speak for the oppressed. “Mukhtar is a victim, and I consider him innocent,” she told a rally. “A person who fights those who harass the poor people cannot be termed as a criminal just by implicating him in false cases.”
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Mukhtar had a nominal advantage: although his family traced their lineage to Medina and were thought to have been the standard-bearers of the prophet Mohammed, most Ansaris in India were poor weavers who were classified as OBCs. The forebears of these low-caste Muslims would probably have taken the name of the local ruler, perhaps on conversion. Mukhtar’s main opponent in Benares was Murli Manohar Joshi, the author of the BJP manifesto. The other candidates stood little chance of winning, so it would be a straight race between the two of them, the Brahmin cow protector versus the imprisoned Muslim outlaw.