05-11-2007, 07:48 PM
http://in.news.yahoo.com/070404/43/6e58b.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The importance of Satish Misra for Mayawati
By IANS
Wednesday April 4, 12:49 PM
Lucknow, April 4 (IANS) Thirty months back, when he first got the offer to join the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Satish Misra was apprehensive. Was there any future for someone from an apolitical Brahmin family in a party of Dalits?
From being a political nobody, the very corporate-looking Misra has now emerged as a potent 'Brahmin force' in BSP, which is now trying to do a Congress. For four long decades, the Congress banked on the Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim axis that it built and carefully nurtured.
'The Brahmin-Dalit combine disintegrated in the Congress for the simple reason that the Congress used Dalits as a vote bank,' points out Misra.
'Unlike the Congress, we in BSP chose to establish a complete social integration between the two communities,' he adds.
Though it is known that the 55-year-old lawyer-turned-politician and son of a high court chief justice was the key architect of this social engineering, the low profile Misra attributes the success story entirely to BSP chief Mayawati.
And Mayawati took advantage of the vacuum created on account of the Congress going into virtual political limbo.
Once the task of wooing the Brahmin to BSP was entrusted to Misra, he left no stone unturned to carry it out with a missionary zeal, sacrificing his legal practice that had made him the highest income-tax paying attorney in Lucknow.
And if he is being envied today for being the only star campaigner for the party besides Mayawati, it is sure enough on account of his merit and perseverance.
'It was no surprise that Behenji (Mayawati) has given him an independent helicopter to go about campaigning in the Brahmin dominated areas of the state. After all he has proved his mettle by mobilizing Brahmins in a big way for BSP,' remarked a Muslim leader in the party.
By Misra's own account, he had addressed as many as 98 Brahmin 'sammelans' (meetings) in the state.
'Within eight months of my induction into the party as its national general secretary in October 2004, I organized the first Brahman sammelan at Allahabad in February 2005. It was there that the party's new slogan - 'Haathi nahin Ganesh hai, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai!' (This is not just an elephant, but the party icon symbolizes the Hindu Trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv!)
The slogan caught on - like wildfire.
'I addressed 21 such meetings in different places and concluded the first round of this series with a 'maha-sammelan' (mass rally) in Lucknow on June 9, 2005,' Misra recalled.
His next move was to travel to each of Uttar Pradesh's 70 districts where he constituted a 'Brahmin-Dalit Bhaichara Banao Samiti' (Brahmin-Dalit Goodwill Committee).
'Each of these committees has 300 Brahmins and 100 Dalits who met periodically to discuss mutual social problems and also thrash out solutions.'
At the end of one year in June 2006, Misra organised a state level meeting of the goodwill committees in Lucknow. That was promptly followed by a series of 77 rallies in different parts of the state between July and September.
He covered about 21,000 km within the state over these three months, busy breaking the caste barrier in a highly hierarchical Uttar Pradesh society.
Misra took pains to make his audience realize and understand that Brahmin was never the exploiter of the have-not Dalit.
'In traditional Hindu society the Brahmin survived only on 'bhiksha' (alms) while the Thakur and Yadav remained the powerful landowner who exploited the poor Dalit at will,' was the oft-repeated refrain of Misra to his audience.
As far as possible, he would make it a point to have Brahmins to traverse the distance to the nearest Dalit pocket for the goodwill rally.
'And that really worked to repose confidence among Dalits that this bond was here to stay,' asserts Misra, who believes that 'the success of the Uttar Pradesh experiment would go a long way in eventually re-writing the political destiny of India'.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The importance of Satish Misra for Mayawati
By IANS
Wednesday April 4, 12:49 PM
Lucknow, April 4 (IANS) Thirty months back, when he first got the offer to join the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Satish Misra was apprehensive. Was there any future for someone from an apolitical Brahmin family in a party of Dalits?
From being a political nobody, the very corporate-looking Misra has now emerged as a potent 'Brahmin force' in BSP, which is now trying to do a Congress. For four long decades, the Congress banked on the Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim axis that it built and carefully nurtured.
'The Brahmin-Dalit combine disintegrated in the Congress for the simple reason that the Congress used Dalits as a vote bank,' points out Misra.
'Unlike the Congress, we in BSP chose to establish a complete social integration between the two communities,' he adds.
Though it is known that the 55-year-old lawyer-turned-politician and son of a high court chief justice was the key architect of this social engineering, the low profile Misra attributes the success story entirely to BSP chief Mayawati.
And Mayawati took advantage of the vacuum created on account of the Congress going into virtual political limbo.
Once the task of wooing the Brahmin to BSP was entrusted to Misra, he left no stone unturned to carry it out with a missionary zeal, sacrificing his legal practice that had made him the highest income-tax paying attorney in Lucknow.
And if he is being envied today for being the only star campaigner for the party besides Mayawati, it is sure enough on account of his merit and perseverance.
'It was no surprise that Behenji (Mayawati) has given him an independent helicopter to go about campaigning in the Brahmin dominated areas of the state. After all he has proved his mettle by mobilizing Brahmins in a big way for BSP,' remarked a Muslim leader in the party.
By Misra's own account, he had addressed as many as 98 Brahmin 'sammelans' (meetings) in the state.
'Within eight months of my induction into the party as its national general secretary in October 2004, I organized the first Brahman sammelan at Allahabad in February 2005. It was there that the party's new slogan - 'Haathi nahin Ganesh hai, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai!' (This is not just an elephant, but the party icon symbolizes the Hindu Trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv!)
The slogan caught on - like wildfire.
'I addressed 21 such meetings in different places and concluded the first round of this series with a 'maha-sammelan' (mass rally) in Lucknow on June 9, 2005,' Misra recalled.
His next move was to travel to each of Uttar Pradesh's 70 districts where he constituted a 'Brahmin-Dalit Bhaichara Banao Samiti' (Brahmin-Dalit Goodwill Committee).
'Each of these committees has 300 Brahmins and 100 Dalits who met periodically to discuss mutual social problems and also thrash out solutions.'
At the end of one year in June 2006, Misra organised a state level meeting of the goodwill committees in Lucknow. That was promptly followed by a series of 77 rallies in different parts of the state between July and September.
He covered about 21,000 km within the state over these three months, busy breaking the caste barrier in a highly hierarchical Uttar Pradesh society.
Misra took pains to make his audience realize and understand that Brahmin was never the exploiter of the have-not Dalit.
'In traditional Hindu society the Brahmin survived only on 'bhiksha' (alms) while the Thakur and Yadav remained the powerful landowner who exploited the poor Dalit at will,' was the oft-repeated refrain of Misra to his audience.
As far as possible, he would make it a point to have Brahmins to traverse the distance to the nearest Dalit pocket for the goodwill rally.
'And that really worked to repose confidence among Dalits that this bond was here to stay,' asserts Misra, who believes that 'the success of the Uttar Pradesh experiment would go a long way in eventually re-writing the political destiny of India'.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->