Bharat bandh claims several lives: How the govt allowed Dalit anger to fester
Protesters stop a train Patna during the protests on Monday.
Several people have died and clashes reported across several states as protests against the Supreme Court's recent ruling on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act have turned violent, with people resorting to vandalism and stone pelting and the police, in turn, using force to control the situation.
#WATCH #BharatBandh over SC/ST protection act:Shots fired during protests in Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior pic.twitter.com/p8mW36qL0s
— ANI (@ANI) April 2, 2018
Places in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana witnessed buses being set on fire, trains stopped, curfews imposed and internet services restricted, even as police cane-charged protesters. The Centre has already filed a review petition against the changes made to the Act by the SC to "prevent its misuse", and Union law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday said the government will argue the matter with “full authority”.
But the protests we are witnessing across most of the country are not just over the Act. They are born of an anger that has been gathering momentum over the years — sparked by various incidents and allowed to fester, even aggravated, by an insensitive government.
According to the latest available National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, crimes against SCs went up by 5.5 per cent in 2016 (40,801) over 2015 (38,670). Crimes against Scheduled Tribes saw a spike of 4.7 per cent, (6,568 in 2016 over 6,276 in 2015). According to a study of the same data, in India, a crime is committed against Dalits every 15 minutes, and six Dalit women are raped every day.
Of these thousands of incidents, some emerged as flashpoints over the past two-three years, witnessing a coming together of Dalits and the emergence of a younger, vocal leadership.
Rohith Vemula’s suicide
Rohith Vemula, a 26-year-old PhD scholar at University of Hyderabad, committed suicide on January 17, 2016. Along with four other students, Rohith was suspended from the college hostel after an ABVP student leader lodged a complaint against them.
Rohith’s suicide shook the nation, and sparked protests in campuses across India. In haunting words, Rohith wrote of how his life could never be anything more than the sum total of his identity: “The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.”
Ironically, the inquiry commission set up to probe his death said Rohith’s Dalit-ness was questionable, and that “personal frustrations”, not institutionalised discrimination, claimed his life.
The Una protests
In July of the same year, “gau rakshaks” thrashed seven Dalit men for allegedly skinning a dead cow, and even filmed the atrocity. Four policemen were suspended for not acting on time to prevent the Dalit youth’s humiliation.
Gujarat was rocked by protests, with Dalits dumping cow carcasses in government offices instead of disposing them – their caste occupation makes them impure in the eyes of the upper castes.
The slogan “Gaay ki poonch tum rakho, hume hamari zameen do” became a rallying cry for Dalits who were rejecting what the upper castes held to be “holy”, and demanding economic independence and equality.
In October 2017, Gujarat saw the “moustache protest” after two Dalit men were beaten up for sporting a moustache, the symbol of “upper caste” masculinity, and after a Dalit man was lynched for watching a Garba event.
Saharanpur violence
During Ambedkar Jayanti in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal took out a "shobha yatra" without police permission, chanting slogans such as “UP mein rehna hoga, to Yogi-Yogi kehna hoga” in areas housing Jatav and Muslim population.
The incident snowballed into a major clash between Rajputs and Dalits, and 60 Dalit houses were burnt. Before the rally, the Rajputs had objected to a statue of Dr BR Ambedkar coming up in the area, saying its raised finger would be pointed at their women using the street.
While the Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Ravan was booked under the National Security Act and is in jail, despite protests, there has not been much action against the Rajputs.
Bhima-Koregaon and Maratha protests
The year 2018 began with caste clashes, when Hindutva forces decided to attack Dalits gathering in Maharashtra to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon, in which the Mahar caste soldiers, who had fought for the British, defeated a bigger contingent led by Peshwa Baji Rao II.
There has been no action so far against the two saffron leaders accused of inciting violence, Sambaji Bhide Guruji and Milind Ekbote.
The Maratha protests organised all across the state, which saw the government agreeing to look into their grievances, too had had a strong anti-Dalit undercurrent, with one of their main demands being the scrapping of the Atrocities Act.
One of the triggers for the rallies had been the Kopradi gangrape and the murder of a Maratha girl by Dalits. Activists in the state had pointed out that while the Dalit convicts were sentenced to death, barely a week before, all the nine men charged with the murder of a 17-year-old Dalit student for having an affair with a Maratha girl had been acquitted.
The discontent and anger stemming from such incidents has been exacerbated by a government with an unabashedly saffron ideology, which believes in the varna system and the Dalits’ intrinsic inferiority to the upper castes.
Thus, while we have Union ministers comparing Dalits to dogs in Karnataka, the Uttar Pradesh government offers them soaps and shampoos to sanitise them before their CM can visit them. The latter government then decides that Ambedkar’s full name ought to be “corrected” to include his father's name "Ramji".
The few attempts that the Centre makes to reach out to Dalits seem half-hearted and insincere.
Dalit anger is growing, and the BJP leadership, if nothing else, is politically astute. It remains to be seen if it will go for band-aid solutions to address the rage, or actually do something for the community.