Republican Party of India: Crisis of Dalit Leadership in Post-Ambedkar Maharashtra

This article delves into political predicaments confronted by Dalit leadership in Maharashtra after the death of Ambedkar. The article analyses the potential and effects of post-Ambedkar Dalit politics in Maharashtra, focusing on the role of the Republican Party of India (RPI) between 1957 and 1984. One of Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s legacies was the RPI, established after he died in 1957; the other was the conversion of Untouchables (Mahars) to Buddhism. Ambedkar envisaged the formation of RPI to represent the downtrodden and underprivileged sections of society, founded on the principles of ‘liberty, equality, and brotherhood’. RPI embodies one of the pivotal phases of Dalit assertion in post-independence Maharashtra. It began as a political party steering the Dalit movement through electoral democracy. Soon, it morphed into a party primarily concerned with electoral gains. This article explores RPI’s growth, ideology and electoral journey to assess how effectively it fulfilled Ambedkar’s ideas of Dalit empowerment. This article also posits that the post-Ambedkar Dalit movement deviated from Ambedkar’s path in many respects, which resulted in a leadership crisis within the Dalit movement in Maharashtra.