Kanshi Ram (15 March 1934 – 9 October 2006), also known as Bahujan Nayak[1] or Manyavar, Sahab Kanshiram[2][3] was an Indian politician and social reformer who worked for the upliftment and political mobilisation of the Bahujans, the backward or lower caste people including untouchable groups at the bottom of the caste system in India.

Kanshi Ram was born on 15 March 1934 into a Ramdasia Sikh family of Chamar caste in Pirthipur Bunga village, near Khawaspur, Ropar district,[a] Punjab, British India.

As reason for the comparative absence of social discrimination in Kanshi Ram's early years is because he belonged to a Sikh family.

Kanshi Ram referred to this in a later interview to French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot saying, 'the teachings of the Sikh gurus were more egalitarian' and that 'converted Chamars at least had some upward mobility.

[10] Ram initially supported the Republican Party of India (RPI) but became disillusioned with its co-operation with the Indian National Congress.

Suryakant Waghmore says it appealed to "the class among the Dalits that was comparatively well-off, mostly based in urban areas and small towns working as government servants and partially alienated from their untouchable identities".

In the Poona Pact, Ambedkar who had worked hard to earn separate electorates from the British, had to surrender the possibility due to Mahatma Gandhi's fast unto death.

Ram believed that the separate electorates would have provided the Dalits autonomy and authority; it would have undermined the power of the upper castes who constituted a relatively smaller population.

[17] Opportunist mobilization of a section of Dalits in the chamcha age thus produces, what Kanshi Ram calls, an ‘alienation of the elite’.

[18] In 1988, he contested in Allahabad against a future Prime Minister V. P. Singh and performed impressively but lost polling close to 70,000 votes.

[21] After the election, a coalition government of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party was formed in UP under the leadership of Mulayam Singh Yadav, although due to some differences and Mayawati's ambition, this alliance broke up in June 1995, Mayawati became first time Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in support of BJP.

He had a larger understanding of social change and was able to unite various underprivileged sections of our society and provide a political platform where their voices would be heard."

[44] In 2017, a Hindi-language Biopic film The Great Leader Kanshiram was released in India, directed and produced by Arjun Singh,[45][46] based on the story of DS4, BAMCEF and Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram from his childhood to 1984.