Dalit anger building up

DELHI’S Jantar Mantar saw on Sunday the rise of an apolitical Dalit force under the umbrella of the Bhim Army which disowned Mayawati and her BSP. Led by a 30-year-old lawyer, Chandrashekhar, the Bhim Army claims a 40,000-strong membership in seven states, though active mostly in western Uttar Pradesh. Some 6,000 blue-cap wearing young Dalits at Jantar Mantar rejected their traditional, elite political leadership which they felt had lost touch at the ground level as Dalits continue to suffer excesses at the hands of upper-caste ruffians. There has been a spurt in atrocities after the swearing in of Yogi Adityanath as UP Chief Minister. They say, “Behenji (Mayawati) was our leader; Bhaiya (Chandrashekhar) is our new leader.”

Some of the recent violent incidents — the burning of Dalit houses at Shabbirpur village near Saharanpur, allegedly by Thakurs, and Dalit-Thakur skirmishes during the Ambedkar Jayanti and Maharana Pratap processions — did not invoke any interest or intervention from Mayawati. Some of the vocal Dalit leaders have migrated to the BJP for greener pastures. BJP leaders of the area unabashedly use the police to their advantage. It is a breakaway not just from their elected leadership; the parting of ways is also from the practitioners of the Hindu religion who have not accepted them as equal. In the Modi regime Saharanpur witnessed the third eruption of Dalit rage after Hyderabad, where the Rohith Vemula suicide had attracted national attention, and Una (Gujarat), where the thrashing of Dalit youths had culminated in a joint procession with Muslims.

The BJP’s not-so-hidden peddling of the RSS’ Hindutva agenda, an open play of majoritarian politics and continuing attacks on Muslims by the self-styled gau-rakshak, mostly in the BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana, have combined to create a sense of fear and discrimination among Muslims. Dalits are reaching out to Muslims for mutual support and solidarity. The Bhim Army has made its intentions very clear. Apart from Muslims, it is seeking cooperation from the Yadavs, Valmikis and other OBCs. A sense of deprivation and discrimination binds them and in the upper-caste led BJP they see a common adversary.