Hopes of India’s ‘Untouchables’ Rise With Politician : Asia: New head of most populous state--herself of lowly origin--vows to fight for rights of all.

Their ancestors were ordered by religious edict to live in hovels away from other people, to eat only from broken dishes and to wear ornaments of black iron.

For its meticulous inhumanity, the brand of apartheid the “untouchables” of India were subjected to for centuries may have no parallel anywhere else in the world. In some regions, even standing downwind from them was considered to be ritually polluting.

“In short, this class was denied almost every human right; those that remained for them they shared with the animals: the right to eat and propagate,” one historian of Hinduism has noted.

But now, one of their own, 39-year-old Mayawati--a spitfire trained as a teacher and bearing a law degree--has been installed as head of government in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, whose population of 140 million approaches that of Russia.

For her fellow Hindu outcasts, who now prefer to call themselves Dalits, or the oppressed, the rise of a woman who was a virtual political unknown three years ago is a heady breakthrough and precedent.

“The fact that a Dalit has come to power in the largest state of the country has electrified the imagination of Dalits all over the country,” said Rajni Kothari, a political scientist who wrote a landmark study of caste in Indian politics. “It is part of a process in which the lower orders are fighting the upper castes through consolidating their caste identity.”

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Adding to the drama is the new Uttar Pradesh chief minister’s lowly origin, even among fellow Dalits. An unmarried Delhi University graduate whose parents belong to the lower middle class, Mayawati is from the Chamar, or leather-worker, sub-caste.

Chamars have traditionally earned a living tanning the hides of dead animals, a trade held by Hindu tradition to be particularly filthy and degrading.

During a 10-year career in politics that led her to the general secretaryship of the Bahujan Samaj (Social Majority) Party under the aegis of the man she calls her guru, Kanshi Ram, Mayawati served in both houses of India’s Parliament.

Last year, she vaulted into the headlines by denouncing Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi as the “worst enemy of the Dalits.”

In the view of Mayawati and some other activists, Gandhi was a pious hypocrite who preserved the grip of the Brahmins and other higher castes over Indian society even after the untouchables were granted equal legal rights.

Mayawati was catapulted into the chief minister’s chair in Lucknow when her party pulled out of the two-party coalition government of Chief Minister Muyalam Singh Yadav, another champion of the state’s “backwards.” She took the oath of office a week ago.

What actually tilted the scales in her favor was support from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which holds the largest bloc of seats in Uttar Pradesh’s assembly and had opposed Yadav’s government. Backing Mayawati was a naked ploy by the BJP to shed its well-to-do, Brahmin image and court the Dalits, who make up 21% of the population in Uttar Pradesh.

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To avoid disaster as elections for India’s national Parliament loom, other parties, including the ruling Congress (I), will almost certainly attempt similar gambits.

“Mayawati’s rise is certainly a trendsetter,” said Jayant Malhoutra, an independent member of the Indian upper house, the Rajya Sabha. Malhoutra is close to Mayawati’s party. “It will cause a major upheaval in realignment in the run-up to the general elections.”

The shake-up in Uttar Pradesh is also likely to encourage further fracturing of India’s politics along caste loyalty lines, which was one of the major criticisms leveled against Yadav’s 18-month, scandal-marred government.

On Tuesday, though, Mayawati met in New Delhi with Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao for the first time since her swearing-in, and she assured the people of Uttar Pradesh in a broadcast speech that her government will rise above considerations of caste and creed to safeguard the “life, livelihood and honor” of all.