SPECIAL ARTICLE Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 13, 2025 vol Lx no 37 53 The Dalit Movement in Uttar Pradesh and the Party–Politics Dilemma Insights from the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections Shilp Shikha Singh, Prashant K Trivedi A study conducted during the 2024 general elections in the Avadh region of Uttar Pradesh reveals the dilemmas faced by two major jatis, Jatav-Chamars and Rawat-Pasis. Despite the diversity in positions adopted by Dalits on party and politics, and in grappling with the predicament of strategy versus tactics, the determination to defend the Constitution has provided a unifying thread among Dalits. This 2024 election marks the return of Dalit politics with a boom, albeit in a different form. The views expressed in the paper are personal and do not represent the opinion of the institution with which the authors are associated. The authors are grateful to the respondents for their hospitality, trust, and openness. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on a previous draft of the paper. Shilp Shikha Singh (shilpshikha@gmail.com) and Prashant K Trivedi (prashantcsd@gmail.com) teach at the Giri Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow. T he results of the 18th Lok Sabha elections have been analysed from various perspectives. The primacy of economic issues like unemployment, low wages, inflation, and livelihood crises for millions of Indians has been held responsible for a huge setback to the ruling alliance (Ghosh 2024). Another popular analysis was that it was a people-driven election rather than a party-driven one, in which caste came to be recognised as the cause and an instrument to address social inequalities (Roychowdhury 2024). Stagnation in the Modi factor to mobilise voters for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (Shastri 2024) and dissatisfaction with the ruling government among voters on key issues (Attri and Jaju 2024) have been underlined as the major reasons for the BJP’s losses. The oppo- sition’s alternative social engineering, anxiety among Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Scheduled Caste (SC) about the Constitution, absence of communal polarisation, falling mar- ginal utility of welfare schemes (Beg et al 2024) and “diversity dividend” (Shastri et al 2024) also figured in the debate. It might have surprised some, but Dalits acquired a centre stage in the 2024 general elections. However, there was a shift in the form of their assertion, which was quite different from previous incarnations of the Dalit movement. Social scientists are adept at seeing Dalits only in the context of political par- ties, while ignoring politics. The paper diverges from many other probes on the question of primacy of party versus poli- tics in the voting behaviour of Dalits. It squarely places politics at the heart of Dalit mobilisation. A new form of Dalit politics may have appeared in the 18th Lok Sabha elections, but it was long in the making. Dalit poli- tics in Uttar Pradesh (UP) has been undergoing a churning. Until recently, a significant section of Dalits participated in and strengthened an autonomous form of politics in which Dalits provided leadership and formed the core. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) remained the chief architect of this politics, which formed alliances with parties—like the BJP—and castes, such as Brahmins, to retain power. Parties representing backward classes remained their chief rival in the state for a long time. The emergence of Hindutva further complicated the political landscape, and new challenges emerged for Dalit politics. The engagement of Dalit politics with multiple ideologies weakened its autonomous core and pushed back the Dalit agenda of identity, respect, and equal participation (Pai 2020, 2023). Scholars have raised concerns over the limits of political