ABSTRACT
Kanshi Ram’s plunge into electoral politics unduly surprised many of his comrades. They did not know that Bamcef was just a strategic first step to launch a full-fledged political party. The DS4 was just a short-lived intermediate step before he would launch a full-fledged political party – Bahujan Samaj Party – which would stun people with its astute electoral strategies. Whichever way history pronounces its verdict on him, it can never ignore the fact that he was an extraordinary strategist, organiser of people, communicator to the masses and focused implementer of strategies in the history of electoral politics of India. Political power being the master key to all problems for the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo, it became its sole raison detre like any other ruling-class party. Identity politics, celebrated as politics of difference by postist movements (e.g. post-structuralism, post-modernism), is basically meant to decentre radical movements by reclaiming stigmatised identities to re-valorise hierarchical positions.
