In the course of Nehru’s nearly 17-year-long tenure as the PM over multiple terms, during which he also called the shots in the Congress’s affairs, UP saw four CMs from the party, all of whom belonged to upper castes. The Congress continued to be a dominant force in UP up to 1989.
During Nehru’s premiership (1947–64), the Congress appointed four CMs in UP: Govind Ballabh Pant (Brahmin, 1950-54), Sampurnanand (Kayastha, 1954-60), Chandra Bhanu Gupta (Vaishya, 1960–63, 1967 and 1969), and Sucheta Kripalani (Kayastha married to a Sindhi; 1963–67).
Other CM aspirants in the UP Congress then included leaders like Purushottam Das Tandon, Sri Prakasa, Vijaylakshmi Pandit and Kamalapati Tripathi (became the CM in 1971), who were all from upper castes too.
The Congress leadership frequently changed the CMs in UP, but their selection seemed to ignore considerations of social justice or equitable representation. While party factionalism was a concern for Nehru, he was also not seen to have prioritised the representation of deprived sections in top government roles.
On his part, Kanshi Ram castigated Nehru-era politics as he made a scathing critique of national politics as part of his movement for the uplift and empowerment of Bahujans in the country.
Kanshi Ram’s arc
Kanshi Ram (1934 – 2006), who was born in Punjab’s Ropar district, joined the Pune-based Explosives Research and Development Laboratory as a research assistant in 1960 but resigned in 1964 to dedicate himself to building a social transformation movement inspired by B R Ambedkar. Nehru passed away in May 1964.
Kanshi Ram’s critique of Nehru-era politics featured in his book “The Chamcha Age (An Era of Stooges)”, published on September 24, 1982 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Poona Pact, which was an agreement between Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar that replaced the proposed separate electorates for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) with a reservation system for them.
Dedicated to Jyotirao Phule, whose anti-caste rebellion influenced Ambedkar and Periyar, the book argued that the Poona Pact initiated the “Chamcha Age” by denying separate electorates to Dalits, enabling upper-caste “manipulation” of oppressed communities.
Kanshi Ram’s politics centered on advancing Ambedkar’s ideas while sharply criticising Gandhi, Nehru, and the upper-caste dominance of political leadership under the Congress dispensation. He viewed the post-Independence Congress as perpetuating a system where the SCs, Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and minorities—whom he termed the “Bahujan” (85% of India’s population)—remained leaderless and exploited through “chamchas” (stooges) of upper castes.
Kanshi Ram argued that during the Nehru era, upper castes—especially Brahmins—dominated the power structure. In Chamcha Age, he cited the 1957 Lok Sabha elections, saying that 47% of elected MPs were Brahmins and even with the 22.5% reserved SC/ST seats, Nehru ruled “majestically” with SC/ST representatives acting as “chamchas”.
He also referred to the 1980 general elections when Indira Gandhi was the Congress supremo, stating that the polls saw 15% Kshatriyas along with 36% Brahmins getting elected as the party MPs, as Indira was wary of ex-party leader Jagjivan Ram’s prime ministerial aspirations.
In his book Kanshi Ram described the SC/STs getting 22.5% reservation as “tools” of the ruling castes, and OBCs as the “worst sufferers”, saying they lost political and administrative grounds to Brahmins after the Independence. He claimed that the Chamcha Age would end within a decade through the Bahujan mobilisation.
In 1971, he founded the All India SC, ST, OBC, and Minority Employees Association, which became the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) in 1978. It mobilised educated employees from these communities. In 1981, he established the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS-4).
On April 14, 1984—Ambedkar’s birth anniversary—Kanshi Ram launched the BSP. He made UP his primary political laboratory despite Punjab having the highest Dalit population percentage in the country (32%).
The BSP focused on neutralising Congress influence, particularly among the SCs and even among the OBCs and minorities. His famous slogan, “Jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni hissedaari” (representation in proportion to population), has since resonated across the country.
He also contested the Lok Sabha elections – first unsuccessfully as an Independent in 1984 from Janjgir-Champa (now in Chhattisgarh), then winning from Etawah in 1991 and Hoshiarpur in 1996. He however lost the 1998 election from Saharanpur.
He allied strategically, scripting the BSP’s first major success in the 1993 UP elections through an alliance with Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party (SP).
Staunchly opposed to Brahminism and Manuvad, Kanshi Ram’s efforts produced leaders who influenced multiple parties even after leaving the BSP. Several of them are now handling key positions in various parties, especially in UP.
Ironically, however, the BSP has suffered multiple setbacks in the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in UP over the last several years, with its image as a “party of Bahujans” also getting dented.
UP CMs after Nehru
During the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, when they also headed the Congress, six other party leaders became the UP CMs, who also belonged to upper castes. They included Kamalapati Tripathi (Brahmin), H N Bahuguna (Brahmin), N D Tiwari (Brahmin), VP Singh (Thakur), Sripati Mishra (Brahmin), and Bir Bahadur Singh (Thakur).
None of the 10 Congress CMs could complete a full five-year tenure in a single term amid a perennial tension between the party dispensation in Delhi and Lucknow, which led to frequent changes at the helm of UP government.
Some OBC leaders also became the UP CM over the decades, but none of them was from the Congress. They included Ram Naresh Yadav (Janata Party), Mulayam Singh (SP), Kalyan Singh (BJP) and Akhilesh Yadav (SP).
The only Dalit leader who could assume the post of the UP CM is Mayawati, the BSP chief, who was chosen by Kanshi Ram as his political successor.