Chandrashekhar Azad's Dalit-Muslim Formula

Chandrashekhar Azad is building a dalit-Muslim coalition to take on the BJP, his primary political enemy.

- Pratul Sharma

In March 2019, six months after he was released from an Uttar Pradesh jail, Bhim Army founder Chandrashekhar Azad had announced that he would contest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Varanasi in the Lok Sabha elections that May. “Even a footsoldier can fell a wazir in chess,” he had said.

Most people thought it was bluster, or, at best, an attempt to divide the anti-BJP votes. Even though Azad, by then, had emerged as a fiery dalit leader who had spent over a year in jail after caste-related violence in Saharanpur, taking on Modi was clearly too tall a task. Even his own caste brethren criticised the decision, and Azad was forced to withdraw in favour of the opposition candidate in Varanasi.

Now, nearly a year after that retreat, Azad feels time is ripe for his entry into electoral politics. “We will set up a political party. The announcement may happen in March or April,” he told THE WEEK. “From panchayat to Parliament, we will contest all elections.”

The 34-year-old lawyer-turned-activist has more to showcase this time. He spent nearly three months in jail after protesting the demolition of a Guru Ravidas temple in Delhi last August. The Delhi Development Authority had demolished the temple following a Supreme Court order. And then, a week after Parliament passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act on December 11, Azad made a dramatic appearance on the steps of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, electrifying the throng of protesters against the CAA. He carried a copy of the Constitution and a portrait of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, and his act endeared him all the more to dalits and Muslims. He seemed to have emerged as a key figure of the largely leaderless anti-CAA movement.