A 34-Year-Old From India’s Lowest Class Challenges Modi’s Party

“I’d seen so much corruption in politics when I was younger, I didn’t want to become a politician,” says Chandrashekhar Azad. “But I knew I wanted to go into activism.” He ended up doing both. Azad, 34, is a well-known activist for the rights of Dalits, a group long oppressed under the Indian caste system, and other marginalized groups. Last year he formally moved into politics, founding the Aazad Samaj Party (ASP), which loosely translates to the Free Society Party. He says the party next year will contest all 403 seats in the assembly of his home state of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party.

Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state, with as many people as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France combined. Its chief minister, Hindu monk-turned-politician Yogi Adityanath, is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and is seen as a candidate to succeed him. With his campaign, Azad, a Dalit and a trained lawyer, is attempting to undercut the BJP’s power as Modi’s handling of the pandemic threatens to erode the party’s political support. It’s not Azad’s first swipe at Modi: In 2019 he said he would challenge the prime minister for his seat in Parliament before withdrawing, out of concern, he said, about splitting the Dalit vote.