The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh will now work towards bringing the young generations of dalits into the party fold and familiarize them with the party ideology and philosophy.
“It has been almost a decade and a half since Ms Mayawati became the UP chief minister for the first time and late Kanshi Ram took a back seat in dalit politics due to health reasons. A new generation of dalits is not yet familiar with the BSP mission and ideology and our effort is now to bring this segment into the party fold,” said a senior BSP minister.
According to party sources, the new dalit generation is educated and urban oriented, besides being English speaking.
“We plan to get dalit thinkers to address the dalit youth through seminars and conventions. We will also be translating into English, books and booklets that highlight the achievements of the Mayawati government and also chronicle the journey of the party. The English media, incidentally, has always been anti-BSP and we do not want our children to get influence by what is usually written in the English media,” the minister explained.
The BSP, apparently, realises the need to expand its base among the new generation dalits who do not necessarily belong to the deprived sections of society and have a broader outlook in social and political terms.
“A large section of the new generation of dalit children has had good education and a fairly comfortable life. Their problems and issues are different from those that confront the mainstream Dalit population. We will have to remodel our system to address this segment because this class of youth is more inclined to work in big cities and metros and does not understand the basic social issues that plague the community,” the minister said.
The BSP leadership understands that dalit youth who belong to a comfortable background may lack the zeal and mission needed to continue the BSP journey.
“We need to give the youth an emotional reason to remain connected to the BSP and we plan to do this through seminars and conventions where we can remind them about their older generations and interact with them on various issues,” the minister added.
The BSP also plans to connect to the youth in order to counter the influence of youth leadership in parties like the Congress and the Samajwadi Party in UP.
At present, the BSP does not have any youth leader and Ms Mayawati now wants to present an icon for the youth so that the BSP can also attract youth into its fold.