New Delhi: When she first met Ram Vilas Paswan in August 2018, two years before his death, The Hindu’s deputy editor Sobhana K. Nair recalled how he took her by surprise with a remark that she had barely expected a Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) ally to make.
“A bit of Naxalism should be there. Rights are not given; they have to be snatched,” the veteran Dalit leader told Nair off-the-record when asked for a comment on the recent arrest of an academic-activist in the Bhima Koregaon case. He cringed at the label “urban-naxal” that was being widely used to justify the arrest, Nair said.
At the New Delhi launch of her first book, Ram Vilas Paswan, The Weathervane of Indian Politics, published by Roli Books, Nair said that Paswan’s remark on Naxalism, that she couldn’t pen down as a journalistic copy, sowed the idea in her head to write his biography someday – something that she also conveyed to the leader who is now no longer alive to read it.
“The book, as a result, is not an insider’s perspective as many may know Paswan much better than I did. I wrote it from the perspective of an inquisitive outsider,” Nair said.
The book was launched by the deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha Harivansh Narayan Singh. The launch was followed by a panel discussion on the future of Bahujan politics in India by Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha, former diplomat and politician Pavan K. Varma and senior journalist Rasheed Kidwai.
Everyone at the event on Tuesday (March 19) agreed that Paswan’s remark on Naxalism reflected Paswan’s deep understanding of India’s caste-ridden society and his unwavering commitment to empower the marginalised despite his several flip-flops that earned him the title of mausam vaigyanik or the weathervane of Indian politics.
Also read: The Contradictions between Ram Vilas Paswan’s Personal Beliefs and Professional Compulsions
Harivansh praised the book for its deep research and readability while disagreeing with the title of the book. He said that reducing Paswan as the mausam vaigyanik buries his long history of struggles because of which he could emerge as one of the biggest Dalit leaders of India. He recalled how Paswan walked miles to Darbhanga from his village to attend school, secured a position as a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in state police before switching towards politics under the influence of tall socialist leaders like Jayprakash Narayan and others.
He said that Paswan was consistent in advocating for 15% reservation for the poor across all castes throughout his political career.
“He was clear about his goals. As a Dalit, he understood the importance of being in power,” Harivansh said, while remembering his famous Lok Sabha speech on the infamous 1977 caste massacre in Belchhi, Bihar, which forced Indira Gandhi to visit the village.
Paswan, a nine-term Lok Sabha MP and two-term Rajya Sabha MP, also had a distinguished record of winning the 1977 Lok Sabha elections with the highest margin of nearly 4.5 lakh votes. However, he also earned disrepute for switching political camps frequently to remain in ministerial positions.
“I think he was a shrewd strategist. Given the background he came from, he was consistently concerned about the poor,” Varma said, but added that while he saw his “astuteness” as his success, he also believed that one of his biggest failures was to let the social justice movement slip into a state of disarray.
He said that Paswan witnessed the breakdown of Bahujan politics. However, even Varma disagreed with the title of the book. “The sub-head of the book ‘The Weathervane of Indian Politics’ to refer to Ram Vilas Paswan is wrong. The title should go to someone else in Bihar now,” Varma said, taking a dig at his former party Janata Dal (United)’s leader Nitish Kumar who appears to have outdone Paswan in switching political camps.
“Paswan was a sincere, genuine man who believed in Bahujan politics. But he could not carry forward the legacy of his own politics,” Varma said.
Jha, on the other hand, said that the decline of independent Bahujan politics is also a result of Dalit MPs and MLAs being caged with their respective party whips in the parliament and assemblies.
He also pointed out that the increasing use of money in Indian elections and politics have prevented independent Dalit voices from reaching the mainstream. “Capital’s grip is increasing in our politics. I can’t imagine a voice like Paswan who, in his first electoral campaign, went around villages in a cycle to canvass for himself and reach out to people, can win an election now.
Note: An earlier version of the report had quoted Nair as having said that she wrote the book from the perspective of ‘inquisitive curiosity’. The phrase has been replaced with ‘inquisitive outsider’.
