These days, the intellectuals, thinkers, leaders and activists of the movement are spending lot of time and energy in making critical analysis of the way the RSS/BJP governments at center and states are working against the poor, farmers, labour, industrial workers, small businesses, etc. Especially the ways in which BJP governments are robbing the SC/ST/OBCs, of their constitutional rights of reservations in educational institutions and public employment, scholarships, etc are widely being discussed. The mindless and thoughtless implementation of demonetization and GST and it’s adverse impact on country’s economy, leading to widespread industrial distress and unemployment is being talked of. Also the onslaught by BJP governments on the free speech and freedom of expression, increasing intolerance, undermining of democratic institutions and rule of law, misuse of various government agencies like CBI, Election Commission against the opposition parties, EVM fraud, complete control over media, are the other threats and challenges posed by the BJP rule before the nation, that are being talked about.

While this type of critical analysis of the real anti-people, anti-poor, anti-farmers, anti-labour, anti-workers, pro-rich, pro-capitalists policies of BJP governments is necessary and awakening the people against them is absolutely necessary, what is more, important is how do we stop RSS/BJP from harming the nation? How do we stop BJP/RSS from pushing the current and future generations of Bahujan Samaj- the SC/ST/OBCs/Minorities, into socio-economic slavery?

To fight against the BJP/RSS, we need to build the organizational infrastructure of the size and scale of RSS/BJP. Have we done that? Are we working towards building such organizational infrastructure that can take on the might of RSS/BJP? Do we have any plan to do so? The answer to all these questions is, unfortunately, a big NO. Then what are we doing?

Instead of consolidating our small social organisations and political parties, we are busy forming newer and newer organisations and political parties. Our social organisations, instead of creating synergy among themselves, are busy competing with each other. Our political parties, instead of merging with each other or forming alliances, are cannibalizing each other in the elections. No wonder the result of this self-destructive politics is what has come out in Nanded Municipal elections recently, where none of the candidates of Ambedkarite Parties have won in spite of having a large population of Ambedkarites in Nanded. We are not spending enough time to do the critical analysis of ourselves, our own weaknesses, our inabilities to build and sustain the organizations, our inabilities to work as part of organisations, following their discipline, our inabilities to work among the Bahujan Samaj. Instead of strengthening the organisations, what we have is the emergence of individual leadership. The individuals, whether they are political leaders or social activists or thinkers/writers or top government officers, are becoming popular at the cost of organisations. Once a person gets a little bit popular, he starts considering himself a big leader, he starts a new organization or a party. Nowadays through social media there is a new trend where some over-enthusiastic leaders/activists do their own marketing to gain cheap popularity. This is all happening at the cost of growth of organisations. Individuals are becoming more important than the society, principles, ideology and organisations.

On the contrary, look at the RSS. The whole leadership and activists of RSS function anonymously. They do not work as individuals whether inside the organization or in the outside world. That is the reason although RSS is probably one of the largest organization in the world, we hardly know names of any of their leaders or activists. In their scheme of things, individuals, their popularity, their name and fame is all secondary in front of the organizational goals and objectives. Every activist or leader works for achieving the organizational goals. Most of the Savarna top government officers work for RSS directly or indirectly. We hardly see them starting their own social organisations. On the contrary, the SC/ST top government officers do not work directly or indirectly for any of the social organisations in the movement. Instead, what they do is, they float a new social organization under their own leadership. Through such organisations they individually become popular. Such proxy organisations under the leadership of government officers act against the interest of the movement. Firstly because such organisations can never talk against the anti-people policies and acts of the government. They do not and will not talk against robbing of the constitutional rights of the Bahujan Samaj by the governments. Secondly, by engaging people in such proxy organisations, they help in weakening other existing social organisations. It is high time the Ambedkarites realize that it is not a job of government officers to form and lead social organisations. If they want to contribute to the movement, they should work in any of the existing social organisations like the way Savarna top government officers work for RSS

Similarly, we can see the difference in the style of functioning of BJP and the Ambedkarite parties. BJP even after having political power in center and more than half of the states, is still looking for alliances, it is carrying out membership drive to make more members. BJP has formed alliances across the country with parties/leaders who apparently are their ideological adversaries. They are open to new experiments. They do not close their doors forever to the people who have moved out of their party. On the contrary look at the way, BSP has functioned in last 15 years. It has made the BAMCEF dysfunctional. It had stopped its own in-house media. It had stopped taking cadre camps which were meant to spread awareness among the people. Anyone, who had a slight difference of opinion with leadership starting from national to state to the district level, was thrown out of the party without even giving show cause notice or a chance of explaining his side of the story. In the process almost all of the old activists, sympathisers are now outside the party. The way a snake sheds off its skin, BSP has been regularly throwing out its activists and recruiting a new lot, so that every 5 years it is altogether a young new organization! No wonder it has not been able to gain ground, grow and win any VS/LS seats in Maharashtra. It is better not to talk about other political parties, most of them are district/city level players. Nonetheless, the political solution has to be necessarily found around BSP or in an alliance between smaller parties and BSP.

What is stopping us from uniting and working among ourselves? There are many things – our individualistic nature, our inflated egos, our false belief that it’s only me after Babasaheb, our inherent inabilities to work as part of team/organisations, we as society are hero worshippers and emotional people, our lack of discipline, our unwarranted rebellious nature, our inabilities to respect the views of others, our inabilities to respect the seniors and elders. All these things can not be learned/unlearned or changed by reading Books. These have to be inculcated in our social character. It is a separate, difficult and long drawn process in itself. Nevertheless, if we want to save ourselves and safeguard rights of the current and future generations, we need to move away from individualistic to collective thinking. We need to collaborate, we need to associate, unite. We need to delve more on our own weaknesses and find out ways to strengthen our organizational infrastructure that can take on the might of BJP/RSS.

Author – Jayant Pathri