Educate, agitate, organise (and celebrate!) Dalits who made it to the 18th Lok Sabha

Air has felt a little better since 4 June. The 18th Lok Sabha mandate gave so many reasons to celebrate. For instance, the poetic justice in Ayodhya where Dalit leader Awadhesh Prasad's win reminded Narendra Modi that his shameless politics of religious polarisation would only take him this far.

And look at Sanjana Jatav, 25, and a mother of two, dancing for her historic win as one of the youngest Dalit MPs in India.

Although the number of women MPs in Lok Sabha is saddening, the representation of disadvantaged castes is relatively a sigh of relief. These are some of the many Dalit leaders who won Lok Sabha seats.

The Samajwadi Party fielded a Dalit leader Awadhesh Prasad who successfully defeated the two-term BJP MP Lallu Singh. It is remarkable because under the Faizabad Lok Sabha comes the temple town of Ayodhya, the epicentre of the BJP's Hindutva politics.

The BJP had made a huge spectacle of the Ram Temple consecration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January this year. Almost all political pundits believed at that time that the BJP was going to sweep Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha polls. But it spectacularly lost Ayodhya, and Awadhesh Prasad is certainly not going to be just another MP in the Lok Sabha--his presence in the House will constantly remind the BJP and Modi of their defeat.

The youngest Dalit Member of Parliament is a mother two. Although she had narrowly lost the 2023 assembly election by only 400 votes, she showed resilience by winning the Rajasthan's Bharatpur Lok Sabha seat in this election by over 52,000 votes.

Thol. Thirumavalavan, a distinguished Ambedkarite scholar and activist from Tamil Nadu, currently holds the position of an MP representing the Chidambaram constituency.

Thirumavalavan's politically charged work is deeply rooted in Ambedkarite and Dravidian ideologies. He aimed to completely eradicate the caste system.

Starting his political journey with the Republican Party of India (RPI), Balwant Wankhade, an Ambedkarite Buddhist, clinched a significant victory over BJP's Navneet Rana in Maharashtra's Amravati constituency.

The defeat of Rana, who had been positioning herself as a Hindutva hardliner, marked a significant shift in the Vidarbha political landscape.

A prominent figure in the Maharashtra Congress, she is one of the seven women MPs elected from the state. She has been a four-term MLA from Mumbai's Dharavi seat. Now, she will represent the Mumbai North-Central General constituency in the Lok Sabha.

In an important socio-political development, Congress nominee Kadiyam Kavya has secured a resounding victory in the Warangal constituency. She triumphed over her contenders, Aroori Ramesh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and M. Sudheer Kumar of the BRS, by a huge margin of 2.20 lakh votes.

Congress leader Charanjit Singh Channi is Punjab's first Dalit Sikh chief minister. He belongs to the Ramdasia Sikh Dalit community. He has served as an MLA for three terms from Punjab's Chamkaur Sahib, winning in 2007, 2012, and 2017.

Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad is a lawyer who secured victory in UP's Nagina Lok Sabha constituency as an Independent candidate. He secured 51.19 per cent votes and won with a margin of over 1.51 lakh votes.

His victory is significant in many ways. Azad did not join the INDIA bloc, contested under his own party's banner on the Nagina seat where he competed with the BJP, the SP and the BSP. Dalits comprised 20 per cent of the total votes in Nagina.

Congress leader Kumari Selja won from Sirsa Lok Sabha seat in Haryana. A prominent Dalit face in the Congress party, she served as the Union minister of social justice and empowerment and minister of tourism in the Manmohan Singh government.

K. Radhakrishnan of the CPI(M) won from Kerala's Alathur Lok Sabha seat. He has been the minister for welfare of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes and Devaswoms in the Pinarayi Vijayan-led state government.