But after six months of talks that led to the merger of nine Dalit groups in a united Republican Party of India (RPI), the party has yet to convince anyone that they have deleted the most familiar word in the lexicon of Dalit politics: disunity. "We have broken our alliance over unity—unity with this group or that. This time it will not happen," declares Ramdas Athavale, former social welfare minister, who broke the Dalit grouping of late 1989 by aligning with the Congress before the assembly elections.
Athavale's group—the Republican Party of India (Athavale)—drew a blank in the 12 assembly constituencies it contested in 1990 but claims that the RPI's support helped the Congress win in about 42 constituencies. Athavale has now broken up with the Congress to facilitate Dalit unity once again.
The current convergence of Dalit forces includes the Bharatiya Republican Party (Prakash) led by Prakash Ambedkar, son of B.R. Ambedkar, RPI (Athavale), RPI (Gavai), the Dalit Panthers led by Gangadhar Gade and other groups. They will elect a president at a party convention six months later. Apart from the urgency provided by the impending elections, these groups were goaded into mending fences by the spectre of the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. "We have come together to face the reactionary forces," says faction leader R.S. Gavai.
Clearly, it is easier to react to the enemy's presence than to recognise comrades-in-arms. The BJP is non grata, despite its pro-Dalit posturings and the several steps it has taken to woo the dalits and OBCs. The Sena is a more cut-and-dried case: it has never been Mandal-minded or Dalit-friendly.
In the past, it is mainly issues that have united the Dalits—briefly. For instance, the Sena's attack on Ambedkar's book Riddles in Hinduism in the '80s and the agitation to rename Marathwada University after Ambedkar had wrought a semblance of unity on the highly-divided Dalit groups.
This time, as they try to put the past behind them, the RPI's effort is also to rope in OBCs and minorities, besides the remaining Dalit splinter groups that have not joined. "We want to bring together the underprivileged. We want a broad-based party of all those who believe in Ambedkar's ideology," says Athavale. The scheduled castes themselves constitute about 11.09 per cent of the state's 78.9 million population; while OBCs account for approximately 30 per cent and scheduled tribes another 9.27 per cent of the population. Given its self-professed anti-BJP/Sena and anti-Congress stance, the 9.45 per cent Muslim population forms another significant target-group.
A year ago, after their electoral success in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP and the Samajwadi Party came together with 17 parties to form a third force. The aim was to present a viable alternative to people fed up with the corrupt Congress, and unwilling to back a communal BJP-Sena. A successful public rally on January 2 last year in Bombay, where V.P. Singh shared a platform with Kanshi Ram and Prakash Ambedkar, signalled the shape of things to come. But differences within the Janata Dal leadership frustrated Singh's efforts and unity efforts went off track. Subsequently, there were many faces of the third force on offer to the voter—like the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Mahasangh, which fought the election in an alliance.
This time, however, unity efforts should hold, argues Sanjiv Chimbulkar, general secretary of the state Janata Dal. "Then, it was a fight for the assembly. There were more seats; and the stakes were higher.
This time those factors are not there." He says the idea is to replicate the National Front-Left Front kind of alliance at the state level, bringing all anti-Congress and anti-communal forces into the ambit. "The RPI unity makes it that much easier for us to mobilise these forces," adds Chimbulkar.
That is, as sceptics say, if they remain united till the polls. "They have too many leaders all wanting to be leaders. Let's see if they can concentrate on the quest for unity rather than the quest for grabbing power," quips a BJP MP. But RPI leaders have a singular response to this taunt: "Give us another chance to bury the mistakes of the past." Can they? The answer to that can swing the fortunes of many in the forthcoming polls.
