By Sidharth Mishra
It’s said that politics is a great leveler. Last Sunday Atishi Marlena, the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat held an unusual press conference to clarify her religion. She said that she was a Hindu Punjabi belonging to the Kshatriya community. Atishi, born to Marxist Leninist parents, who gave a surname extracted from the names of their ideological icons Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, pushing her caste identity is an indication that politics in India is a way bit different from what Marx, Lenin and their ideological heirs pitched for.
For instance, 1100 kilometers away at Begusarai in Bihar, where the country’s best-known Marxist Kanhaiya Kumar is in fray as Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate, the electoral calculations are all based on which side the voters of Bhumihar caste go. Kanhaiya, all through his campaign, despite swearing by the ideology of classless society has made no overt attempt to disown his caste identity.