Bahujan Samaj Party
Political party of India
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is a progressive political party in India that was formed to represent Bahujans (literally means "community in majority"), referring to the country's Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (OBC), along with minorities. According to Kanshi Ram, when he founded the party in 1984, the Bahujans comprised 85 percent of India's population, but were divided into 6,000 different castes. The party claims to be inspired by the philosophy of B. R. Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Narayana Guru, Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj, and Gautama Buddha.
Kanshi Ram named his protégée, Mayawati, as his successor in 2001. The BSP has its main base in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh where it was the second-largest party in the 2019 Indian general election with 19.3% of votes and fourth largest in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election with 12.88% of votes. Its election symbol is an elephant which is also the symbol historically used by Dr. Ambedkar's Scheduled Castes Federation.
Etymology
"Bahujan" is a Sanskritic term found in Hindu and Buddhist texts, and literally refers to "many people", or "the majority". It connotes the combined population of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Muslims, and minorities who together constitute the demographic majority of India. The word "Bahujan" appears in the dictum "Bahujana Hitaya Bahujana Sukhaya", or "The benefit and prosperity of the many", articulated by Gautama Buddha.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q803681. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2001, 2019 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bahujan Samaj Party” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.