On June 3, 1995, Mayawati was sworn in as Uttar Pradesh chief minister following the collapse of the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) coalition. Kanshi Ram, the BSP founder, told HT soon after that he wished to make Mayawati the Prime Minister. He said that by choosing her to head the BSP-led government in Uttar Pradesh, he was training her for the country’s top role. Kanshi Ram saw himself only as a mentor.

An enigmatic leader, Kanshi Ram expected a fractured verdict in the 1996 national polls and saw an opportunity to replicate his 1995 experiment in New Delhi, as all major parties appeared keen to work with his burgeoning Dalit party. He successfully manoeuvred Mayawati’s ascent in Uttar Pradesh even though the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had a numeric edge in the state legislature.

Kanshi Ram repeatedly cited Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar’s call for Dalits to seek power at the highest level for their emancipation. His calculations proved accurate regarding a hung house. The Janata Dal leadership outmanoeuvred him to form the government under Deve Gowda’s leadership.

The country’s top elected post eluded Mayawati even as she assumed BSP’s leadership and won a clear five-year mandate to rule Uttar Pradesh in 2007, a year after Kanshi Ram died. Ahead of the 2027 assembly polls, calls are growing to bestow India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, on Kanshi Ram, even as his dream of Mayawati becoming Prime Minister appears distant. The BSP’s support base has since eroded significantly. It won just one seat in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly in 2022. The BSP has no seats in Parliament.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been among those who have called for Bharat Ratna for Kanshi Ram in an ironic turn of events. Kanshi Ram, known for his abrasive style, described Congress and BJP as enemies number one and two, likening them to snake charmers. He vowed to unseat Congress from power in his lifetime. Kanshi Ram wanted the BSP to replace Congress as the leading party. He even called Mahatma Gandhi a “Manuvadi,” or a proponent of caste-based hierarchies. He described ally-turned-arch-rival Mulayam Singh Yadav, whom he had agreed to make the chief minister because of his background as a backward class leader, a thief.

In 1996, Kanshi Ram agreed to an alliance with the Congress in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, allotting barely 100 of the 425 seats only after Prime Minister Narsimha Rao visited him. He would soon dump Congress after the elections and form a coalition government with the BJP.

Even when the BJP and BSP shared power, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati attacked “Manuvadi-Brahmin” political dominance. The tensions led to the fall of the BSP governments in 1995, 1997, and 2003.

Kanshi Ram partially achieved his mission of overthrowing the Congress. But the BJP has gone from strength to strength, while the BSP struggles for relevance. As other parties vie for Dalit votes while the BSP’s irrelevance grows, they are increasingly invoking Kanshi Ram, whose “85% (non-upper caste) versus 15% (upper caste) politics” clashes with chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s “80% (Hindu) versus 20% (Muslim)” gambit. Kanshi Ram united the so-called lower castes against the upper castes, while Adityanath thrives on religious polarisation.

Political parties are playing to the gallery, hoping to win Dalit sympathy and support by demanding Bharat Ratna for Kanshi Ram, who is arguably the second most important icon of the community, which accounts for 20–21% of Uttar Pradesh’s population, after Ambedkar.

The BJP-led Union government has previously awarded Bharat Ratna to Chaudhary Charan Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who opposed its Hindutva politics. The BJP secured some Dalit votes through welfare schemes but lost their support in the 2024 national polls over issues such as alleged threats to the Constitution and quotas. The BJP hopes to woo them back even as Jatavs, the core BSP supporters, remain hopeful of the BSP’s revival. Bharat Ratna for Kanshi Ram could help the BJP make further inroads into the Dalit vote bank.

Despite erosion in its support base, the BSP represents Dalit assertion and the belief that they can still rule if united. The BSP leadership foresees a hung house in Uttar Pradesh in 2027, in which Mayawati perhaps will be the only leader that all political parties will be willing to support, or at least would not oppose it openly.