Dalit politics at a crossroads

In the 1990s, when Hindutva forces launched the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Dalit-Bahujan movement and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), invoked subaltern myths and icons to counter it. Kanshi Ram gathered Dalit icons from oral and folk narratives and reinvented minor characters of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in the process of developing a counter-Hindutva narrative. The icons he invoked included Shambuka, Eklavya, Uda Devi, Jhalkaribai, and Rabidas. This helped mobilise the Bahujans in Uttar Pradesh and resulted in a BSP-led government in U.P. four times. The myths and icons of the Dalits questioned and ruptured the dominance of one narrative.