The Chamcha Age: An Era of the Stooge, by Kanshiram, Released on 24^th  September 1982 On the Occasion of 50^th Anniversary of Poona Pact. Pp. 131, Siddharth Books, New Delhi. 

“It may be your interest to be our masters, but how can it be ours to be your slaves ?” — Thucydides.

When the oppressed sections of our society fight against injustice, they may lose or win the battle, but their collective struggle shall always question and speak against the authority of various oppressive institutions. Their collective struggle leads towards politics of autonomy, authenticity, and justice. In the context of modern democracy, the electoral system plays an essential role in facilitating various communities and groups, which are particularly marginalized and oppressed, to express and voice their opinion. This, in turn, helps in building a more inclusive and egalitarian democracy. Probably, for the oppressed, the constitution of a democratic state that allows them to vote and contest an election is one of the most important means to continue their struggle. The idea of political representation of the oppressed is ideal in a representative democracy like India. In this context, Dr. Ambedkar’s extraordinary contribution to the Indian political representative system that provides political reservations to the oppressed communities like Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is very crucial to think about. However, when these representatives become agents, tools, and stooges in the hands of Upper caste Hindus, who ultimately dominate the political system, they cannot put forth the political claims of the communities they represent. 

This issue has been raised in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s book What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables that not only exposes the hypocritical politics of Gandhi and Congress but also addresses the future of the Dalit question. The last seventy years of electoral political democracy has witnessed the complexities of Dalits politics. In India, post-independence, the strong presence of Dalit assertion challenges the Brahmanical political discourse in providing an alternative egalitarian and democratic language. The autonomy of Dalit discourse has created a situation where without Dalit representation the political parties cannot survive. However, for at least the last hundred years, the Dalits have become nothing more than token representatives. 

The Chamcha Age: An Era of the Stooge by Kanshiram carries forward the legacy of Ambedkarite politics post-1970s. The Chamcha Age is a challenge to and critique of those Dalits who become part of Brahmanical political parties. The main objective of Kanshiram is to bring Bahujan autonomy into Indian politics. In many ways, the Bahujan Samaj Party is a replica of Dr. Ambedkar’s vision of the Republican Party of India. Kanshiram was one of the very rare political voices after Dr. Ambedkar, who had imagined to take ahead the unfinished work of Babasaheb. Largely, his politics was transformative and pragmatic in approach. For him, voting was a weapon to fight against the political hegemony of Upper caste dominance in Indian politics. He understood that the only way to bring Dalit representatives to power is through a single transformation of the vote. The famous slogan “Vote Hamara, Raaj Tumhara, Nehi Chalega” (It is Our vote. Your rule, cannot go on), in this connection, is very relevant.

The Chamcha Age was written to commemorate the 50 years of the Poona Pact, a Black day for Dalit politics, which is observed in Maharashtra even today. Instead of double voting rights and the separate electorate, Dalit got more number of reserved seats. As a result, the joint electoral system, single electoral constituency, and reserved seat became a mechanism that began the Chamcha Age. The intent of this book is to set up a political discourse that will discern those who are actually being political agents and stooges of the Upper caste parties in the name of performing Ambedkarite politics. His discomfort with RPI of Maharashtra was that they were bargaining for political power and remained part of the Congress and other political parties as an agent. Kanshiram’s main contestation was to put an end to the political appropriation of Dalits.

Kanshiram found a glaring lack of leadership in RPI politics after the death of Dr. Ambedkar. Therefore, Kanshiram formed DS4 in 1981 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti), BAMCEF in 1978 (Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation), followed by BSP in 1984 (Bahujan Samaj Party). The purpose of DS4 and BAMCEF was to do social awareness programs. DS4, in particular, was involved in holding cultural and social activities, as well as fighting against caste atrocities. For example, Ambedkar Mela on Wheels, and Denunciation of the Poona Pact. BAMCEF, on the other hand, targeted the educated masses who could fund for the BSP. He deployed Dr. Ambedkar’s idea of payback to society programs in which every employee must contribute 5-15% percent of their salary. Either of the social organizations was to spread anti-caste awareness to educate, agitate and organize the oppressed masses. These were short-term solutions of the DS4 programs.

The long-term solutions were political actions. Kanshiram writes “As Social Action was found necessary to meet the challenge of the Chamcha age, Political Action is our solution for putting an end to the Chamcha age.”  For him, social awareness and political actions were the two wheels of the same vehicle. Surprisingly, there was a misunderstanding among intellectual circles that Kanshiram was not fighting and discussing caste atrocity and violence happening to Dalits. However, he actually understood caste and Brahminism in depth so that he could comprehend the political nexus of the Brahmin and Bania castes in controlling political democracy. To him, “Caste – Crux of the problem.” In this regard, he writes, “to change this culture of Perfect Inequality into the one of Absolute Equality must remain our cherished goal.”

Kanshiram demonstrated a data in which the top Indian officers in bureaucracy and judiciary were in the hands of the Brahmins. The SCs, STs, and OBCs were not only under-represented but completely marginalized. He argued the ruling state was a perpetuation of Brahminism. He indicated that despite there were representations of Dalits in politics and bureaucracy following the Indian constitution, the representatives were either nominees or agents in politics, or held a token post offered to them in bureaucracy as a matter of compulsion. In my reading, Kanshiram deeply understood the concept of misrecognition at the social level. Therefore, drawing on Kanshiram’s work, I argue that the complexity of representation in a democracy is such that without political reservation, the oppressed might not be elected to assembly or parliament. However, they could be the nominees of ruling upper castes, and therefore, can have representation but no recognition.

In the end, The Chamcha Age is a political manifesto of Kanshiram’s politics. This book created a political discourse and established his seminal position in Dalit Bahujan politics. ‘Chamcha Age’ is a metaphor that is easily understandable to common people. At one point in time, The Chamcha Age created a pan Indian political consciousness among Dalits. The word ‘chamcha’ has a negative connotation. It restricts the liberty of Dalits in order to address the historical burden of autonomous struggle. In a way, this book also brings the moral question of Dalit Bahujan politics in creating autonomous political discourse. It assigns the ethics of responsibility to the community and individual. In other words, the question of agency is a moral question in representing community interest. To put it differently, the emancipation of the community lies in doing politics without compromising the autonomy and authenticity of ideology.


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