| • Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh (Fourth-time) |
| • National President, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) |
| • Member of Uttar Pardesh Legislative Council |
| KUMARI MAYAWATI | |
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BOOKS & BOOKLETS |
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| Mayawati-Book Father once pressured me to sever ties with Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji : Maya |
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| New Delhi, January 15, 2006 : After becoming chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati once rebuffed her father, reminding him of "pro-son-bias", when he came to her for getting some work done in their native village.
The incident is recalled with a sense of pride and feeling of triumph over the patriarchal setup of her society in a voluminous book written by her. Ms. Mayawati narrates how she had to leave her house after her father, Prabhu Das pressurized her to sever ties wit her mentor, guide and BSP founder Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji as he was against her joining politics. Some controversies regarding her relationship with Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji also find mention in the book. The book "Mere Sangarshmai Jeevean Aur Bahujan Movement Ka Safarnama" (A travelogue of my struggle-ridden life and Bahaujan Samaj Movement) was released on the occasion of her 50 th birthday by ailing Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji here on January 15 th. "Why don't you go to your sons who were supposed to carry forward your family name. Ask them to construct roads, set hospitals and schools and run busses", Ms. Mayawati bluntly told her father when he came to her along with residents of her native village Badalpur in Gautambuddha Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh bordering Delhi. She recalls that people of Badalpur would say to her father that his daughter can do a lot of her village as had been done by Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav for his Saifai village. They would daily come to him and say that they had come to know through newspapers that his daughter had become "Super Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh". And one day, they prevailed upon him to accompany them to her, not knowing that the father would referred back to his sons. However, her curt reply was taken with magnanimity by Mr. Prabhu Das and he admitted without any hesitation that he was mistaken in his notions and it was she not his sons who could get things done. She says her father wanted to remarry after three daughters, including herself, were born to him. One of them later died. People around him would advise him to take a second wife to have a son who could carry forward the family name, she says in her book. But, her grandfather Mangal Sen, "who was a man to progressive outlook", advised her father against the move, saying he should educate her daughters to bring good name to the family. Finally, her father had to drop the idea. Ms. Mayawati rues that her father spent a lot of money and care on the education and upbringing of his sons, leaving her and her sisters to a government school. However. she exults in the fact that she overcame all odds to be what she is today. She sees in her success, an assertion of women-power and of all other downtrodden sections of the society against the "Manuwadi System", which she terms as discriminatory against women and lower castes. While tracing her rise to power, she devotes substantial space to her relations with Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji. Ms. Mayawati says she was once threatened by her father that she would throw out of her house if she went along with Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji to join politics and did not appear for IAS examination for which she had been preparing for long. She said she came into contact of Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji after her bachelor's degree in law and was working for creating awareness in Dalits through BAMCEF. It was he who advised her not to join lAS, she recalls. "You can achieve much more. Not only a collector, you can become a successful leader too, and then hundreds of collectors would take orders from you", Manyawar Kanshi Ram Ji had told her when she expressed her wish to join the civil services. Ms. Mayawati said she was attracted towards this mission as from childhood she had started experiencing the indignity, humiliation and discrimination meted out to dalits. "Whenever, I would visit my grandparents with my mother, she were asked at the entry of their village about the locality we wanted to visitwhether it was Jatav, Brahamin, Thakurs, Gujars or Chamars, and we would tell that it was Chamar locality, the person would make no efforts to hide his indignation", she says. "This kind of set-up and mind-set left a deep mark on my thinking as I was a very sensitive child, and led me into a movement that was bringing about a "silent revolution" in the society", says the BSP leader. In the foreword of the book, Ms. Mayawati says intellectuals, both foreign and those from the country, had so far been unable to understand the philosophy of her movement", we are working for social change (transformation) and not for social justice, she says. "If the meaning of the two concept is to be explained in one sentence, one would says that replacing manual disposal of the night soil by mechanical is social justice, whereas social change would require this work to be done not only by the people of a particular caste but of all castes", Ms. Mayawati says. The Congress leadership of both pre-independence and postindependence period has come under scathing attack in the book for its "anti-Dalit" politics. The book, divided in two volumes of about a thousand pages each has been described by Ms. Mayawati as "Blue Book" of the Bahujan Samaj Movement and the BSP which would inspire future generations in their struggle to stand up for their rights". While the first volume is devoted to the period before the Bahujan Samaj party came to power, the latter part deals with the period after Ms. Mayawati formed the first BSP government in Uttar Pradesh. UNI NAZ |
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