Kanshi Ram

Kanshi Ram built the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and made Dalit politics a force in Indian elections. He was born in Punjab into a Dalit Sikh family of the Ramdasia community, and his win at Hoshiarpur in 1996 is the link between his movement and Punjab.

Life. Kanshi Ram was born on 15 March 1934 at Khawaspur in Ropar district. Outlook describes his family as a Scheduled Caste Sikh family, and The News Minute as an ordinary Raidasi Sikh family. His parents were Hari Singh and Bishan Kaur. He took a B.Sc. at Government College, Ropar. Outlook and The Quint say he joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) at Pune in 1957. He got the post through a seat reserved for Scheduled Castes (Round Table India). ThePrint says instead that he joined the Pune-based Explosives Research and Development Laboratory in 1960, as a research assistant. The cancellation of the Ambedkar Jayanti and Buddha Jayanti holidays there pushed him towards activism (ThePrint). Outlook says he left government service in 1965; ThePrint says he quit in 1964.

Key moments

• 1978: founds BAMCEF, an association of backward-caste and minority employees, described as non-political and non-religious.
• 1981: sets up DS4, the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti, a step towards a political party.
• 14 April 1984: launches the Bahujan Samaj Party.
• 1995: the BSP helps form the Uttar Pradesh government, with Mayawati, his protege, as chief minister.
• 1996: wins the Hoshiarpur seat in Punjab with 2,30,011 votes (39.50 per cent), beating the Congress candidate Kamal Choudhary by 10,944.
• 2001: names Mayawati his successor.
• March 2002: announces that he will take Buddhism, with his followers, on the 50th anniversary of Dr Ambedkar's conversion, 14 October 2006.
• 9 October 2006: dies in Delhi aged 72 after years of stroke, diabetes and hypertension, five days before the planned conversion.

Two true statements about his faith. He was born into a Sikh family, and he announced that he would become a Buddhist; he died before he could. His cremation was held with Buddhist rites. Both are part of the record, at different points in his life. What the sources opened here support is the sequence, not a claim about his private belief.

Remembered for. The Quint calls him the Bahujan Nayak of India's Dalit movement. He built a party out of an employees' association and street campaigns, and took it to power in Uttar Pradesh. His win at Hoshiarpur in 1996 is his mark on Punjab's electoral record.