Meira Kumar, a Dalit, is a former diplomat and a polyglot. Seema Chishti in the Indian Express:
In an otherwise obscure by-election in Bijnor, a reserved constituency in western Uttar Pradesh, the seeds of a larger battle for Dalit imagination were sown. The year was 1985, a year after Indira Gandhi was killed. The three candidates then were a former IFS officer Meira Kumar, a young and emerging Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan and a 29-year-old Mayawati. In the end, the debutant Meira Kumar secured more than 1,28,000 votes, scraping through by about 5,000. Paswan came second and the young Mayawati came third, but interestingly, secured a significant number of votes-61,504.
The battle for capturing the Dalit mind, especially in north India, continues between the three ‘Bijnor-ian’ symbols. Meira Kumar, the winner then, is now India’s first woman Speaker and the bearer of an important Congress legacy-a reminder of the time when Dalit votes (nearly 15 per cent of the electorate in India) and minority votes (another 18 per cent, approximately) were the staple fare for comfortable Congress victories. More:
[Image: UNODC]
Similar Posts:
- Starship enterprise
- The Thackerays’ primitive charisma
- Past its blooming period
- India’s ‘Dalit Queen’ Mayawati wants short tribute £500,000 taller
- Tiger burning bright
0 Responses to “India’s first woman Speaker”
Leave a Reply