Hardly
a day passes without headline news of some or another atrocity on Dalits. On 24
May, a Dalit man in the Ahmedabad district was beaten and his house attacked by
a gang of so called ‘upper’ caste men after he had attached Sinh to his name on
his facebook post. On 21 May a dalit
ragpicker was beaten to death in a Rajkot factory. Atrocities on Dalits are
occurring in the midst of a public ideological environment against them. On 26
May news came of a private school in Delhi asking 8th class students
to write a note on how reservations help undeserving and unqualified people for
their summer vacation homework. According to National Crime Record Bureau
reports for recent years, between 10 to 15 thousand cases of crimes are
reported under the Prevention of Atrocities act every year; an average of 35
crimes per day. Many times more crimes actually go unreported. In 2016 Indian
courts had over 45 thousand cases under this act. Out of the 4048 cases decided,
conviction occurred in 659 cases only. That is, five out of six cases of
atrocity against Dalits did not result in any punishment. The number of attacks
against one of the weakest and the poorest sections of the society, and the
abysmal rate of conviction would put any civilized society to shame, but India
chugs along.
Humiliation
and physical assaults on the body of Dalits have been a structural feature of the
Hindu caste society for thousands of years. Under the enlightened and steadfast
leadership of Ambedkar, Dalits managed to get civil rights and affirmative
action in the Constitution of India. The Hindu caste society has however
carried a grudge against such provisions. Representations of Dalits in state bureaucracy
and higher education have always been less than one half to one third of
constitutional provisions. Actually, reservations produced a prison house for
Dalits to remain within the Hindu fold. Up to nineteen eighties even when they
converted to Buddhism, they lost all reservation benefits. Nevertheless, till
the political successes of the BJP under Mr Modi, the moral weight of Dalit
struggles for their rights meant that post-independence Indian state did not
actively participate in their oppression. This is changing now.
The
central and state governments under the BJP have specifically targeted
autonomous Dalit youth who challenge Hindu caste hierarchy openly without fear.
This was the line of attack on Rohith Vemula and his comrades at HCU and Ambedkar
Periyar Study Circle of IIT Madras. The most vicious attack has been launched
against the Bhim Army of Western UP, whose leader Chandrasekhar Azad has been
booked in case after case under the NSA and put in prison by the shameless Yogi
government, despite Allahabad High Court quashing many cases against him. In
Maharashtra Fadnavis government is hesitant to act against attackers on Bheema
Koregaon gathering of Dalits, yet it has initiated cases against organizers of
Elgaar Parishad meeting in Pune where RSS-BJP were declared ‘new Peshwai’, the
most debauched form of Brahmanical rule. Another round of oppression has
visited Dalit youth after 2 April protests against dilution of prevention of
atrocities act by Supreme Court. Following these protests the dominant rural castes
in Rajasthan, MP and UP have physically assaulted Dalit youth and their
neighborhoods, with silent encouragement of the police. Thousands of Dalit
youth have been booked and arrested. The district chief for Muzaffarnagar of
Bhim Army has been arrested under NSA. Needelss to say, the systematic attacks
on radical Dalits, and running down of legal provisions have emboldened the
criminal lumpen base of Hindutva in cow vigilante groups, Bajrang Dal and Hindu
Yuva vahini to attack ordinary Dalits. This is also contributing to creating an
environment in which middle class professionals from ‘upper’ caste Hindus feel
no hesitation in circulating manifestly anti-Dalit propaganda on social
media.
BJP
governments in Center and states also seem to be systematically conniving to
dilute existing provisions of affirmative action and legal protection to Dalits.
Officials of the Modi government acted most dubiously in the case that led to dilution
of provisions of prevention of atrocities act. Additional Solicitor General is
on court records to have said this act is being misused. Modi govt did not file
a review petition immediately. Governments of Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and
Rajasthan showed unseemly haste in implementing the court order, depriving
Dalits of essential legal protection. Another area in which BJP government is
eager to dilute legal provisions for the benefit of Dalits is in appointments
to universities. UGC has passed orders that the basis of reservation roster
will be departments rather than university. Following this the advertisement
for 52 faculty posts at Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in MP had only
one reserved post. Government of India needs to urgently bring in an ordinance
to overrule Supreme Court decision in this regard. But Modi administration is
sitting pretty.
Brahmanism
is the core of Hindutva. It has however been adapted to the requirements of
modern electoral politics. Hindutva is
following a double pronged policy vis a vis Dalits. On the one hand are
symbolic gestures; making a Dalit the president, and routinisied ceremonial
appropriation of Ambedkar. On the other, legal and illegal state power and
lumpen street power is being used against radical Dalit groups. As is well
known Hindutva is a political project to build a political community of Hindus
without any internal reforms. This programme became the political common sense
of savarna caste Hindus after Congress failed to contain the upsurge of the locally
dominant peasant castes, many of them Shudras in the Hindu hierarchy, around
the Mandal programme of social justice. These castes had used democratization
of caste in electoral politics to successfully assert their claim. Before this,
the majority of savarna castes were aligned with the nation-building project of
Congress. Their switchover to Hindutva however
would not have given RSS-BJP the political success they enjoy. Their genius
lies in turning the fragmentation principle of caste against its democratization.
Basically, any group which mobilises itself politically as a caste, also
alienates other castes. Through blatant
misuse of mass religiosity of Hindus, and ground level organisational work,
RSS-BJP have managed to bring in sections of lower OBCs (left out of the
political successes of dominant rural OBCs) and some Dalit castes within their
fold. This has created a voting block under the ideological hegemony of savarna
castes.
A
radical Dalit who questions the very foundations of Hindu caste order on the
basis of principles of Equality and Freedom, is a moral and political anathema
to Hindutva project. Attacks on Dalits,
and sinister plans to dilute provisions of protection to Dalits and affirmative
action are revolting to all citizens with democratic consciousness. It assaults
their sense of a just society. However, it is also necessary to understand the
political game plan of Hindutva. As Ambedkar showed in his Annihilation of
Caste, Hindu society can never be democratic as long as it is caste ridden. For
democracy to take sustainable roots in India, it is essential that caste is
confronted without any compromise. Its ideology which divides humans in
hierarchy, its supporting practices in religious rituals, and its everyday
practices which are taken as normal (for instance keeping separate set of
utensils for maids and servants in households) need to be challenged. Electoral
understandings between opposition parties may locally or nationally defeat the
RSS-BJP in elections. However, as long as the socio-political basis of Hindutva
success persists, any victory against it will be short lived.
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