Ambedkar’s squabbling children

DHARMENDRA JORE
Posted: Apr 02, 2004 at 0000 hrs IST



MUMBAI It's time to feel the Republican blues in Maharashtra. In the state where Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar started the Dalit movement in the late 40s, the Republican Party of India (RPI) forum—now split into over 10 factions (at last count)—is still a force to reckon with. The unified RPI can do a Uttar Pradesh in Maharashtra if a sizeable chunk of 38 per cent OBCs favour it.

Their fixed vote-bank—Buddhists (6.39 per cent)—and a large chunk of the SCs (11.09 per cent) will certainly make its task easier.

However, given their individual records of being fickle, key figures from within the community will make alliance-building a tricky task for the big parties.

The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have been successful in keeping the ‘three musketeers’—R S Gavai, Ramdas Athavale (sitting MP from Pandharpur) and Jogendra Kawade with them. The trio, who represent three different factions, have now rallied together under one umbrella—the Republican Federation—to forge a Congress-NCP-RPI front.

In its unified avatar, the RPI had won four seats in the 1998 elections from the general category. ‘‘We are confident of repeating our performance,’’ Gavai told The Indian Express in a telephone interview from Amravati, the seat in Vidarbha he contested and lost last time. His current ally Kawade too had lost. Athavale was the only RPI representative to reach Lok Sabha in 1999.

However, it is the fourth and foremost of them all, Prakash Ambedkar, the sitting MP from Akola (another general segment), who holds the key, perhaps wielding more influence by virtue of being the grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Ambedkar, who broke away from the unified RPI and Congress-NCP, has floated the Bharatiya Republican Party-Bahujan Mahasangh.

This time Ambedkar kept Congressmen waiting when the Akola seat was ‘offered’ to him. But he did not entertain the BJP. ‘‘I did not approach them. And why should I join them when I’m able win on my own,’’ Ambedkar said, speaking from Akola. Having won four assembly seats (apart from his own Lok Sabha seat) last time, he is the man who could be the deciding factor.

But Ambedkar holds a grudge against Congress as it had lured three of his MLAs into its fold during the Vilasrao Deshmukh regime.

‘‘We are fighting the election on issues,’’ said Ambedkar, who believes the Republican party was never the party of Buddhists alone. ‘‘We are people from all castes and religions.’’

Gavai, however, refuses to buy Ambedkar’s argument and blames him for placing his own interests above the broad RPI agenda. Gavai says Ambedkar has prevented the various factions from rallying together under a common banner.

‘‘Everybody knows he (Ambedkar) is a vote-eater. He’s more interested in satisfying his own ego than working for a common cause.’’

Apart from the Congress-NCP combine, the BJP too has been looking for some convenient alliances amidst this mess. Its soft corner for Prakash Ambedkar is a well-known fact.

‘‘The RPI leaders may not be with us physically but the masses are with us,’’ said State BJP chief Gopinath Munde, who is trying hard to take the party to OBCs and Dalit leaders and masses alike.