Political Diary
New Delhi, 26 July 2016
Caste War: Yours Vs Mine
I AM A DALIT, WHAT
ARE YOU?
By Poonam I Kaushish
“Recently seven of our family members were flogged by the
Hindutva Parivar’s Gau Rakshak Sangh…..15
of my Dalit brothers have tried to commit suicide…one lost his life….We want
justice not financial assistance,” averred Balu a Dalit worker. Their crime?
Skinning the carcass of a dead cow in Gujarat’s
Una district.
“Ek vaishya se bhi
badtar charitra ki aaj Mayawati ho gayi hain. Woh kisi ko 1 crore mein ticket
deti hain, koi 2 crore dene wala milta hai toh usey ticket deti hain, shaam ko
koi 3 crore dene ko taiyyar hota hai toh ushe de deti hain.” said BJP UP Vice President Daya
Shankar Singh.
Thereby unleashing a revolting chain of events: “I will
reward Rs 50 lakhs to anyone who brings me Singh’s tongue”, countered a BSP
worker. Adding fuel to fire, another called Singh’s daughter an “illegitimate
child” culminating in the BSP bringing Capital Lucknow to a standstill, Singh’s
wife filed an FIR and Behenji
Mayawati anointing herself as Devi.
Stray angry voices, cries for help or rank hatred? All this
and more. Alas, even as I write the vicious and virulent slanging match between
your caste vs. my caste and mera dharam vs. tumhara dharam continues.
What else, stupid! Which trashes promises of equality and blots pledges of
development.
Undoubtedly, the more India changes, it remains the same
whereby the past continues to survive and thrive in the present. Today, caste
has cast a long shadow over Indian politics. The scepter that haunts the nation
is not of class struggle but caste struggle. “Backwards” and “Forwards” are
more meaningful than the Left and the Right in politics.
Certainly, these two incidents have snowballed into a
political controversy with the BJP worried over how these would impact its
prospects in the forthcoming State elections in UP and Punjab
next year.
In Gujarat, a massive
uprising of Dalits has exposed the fault lines in the Party's model of
governance, threatening to strike at the very edifice of the assiduously built Modi-style
of governance. In UP, despite BJP's attempts to reach out to Dalits and
artificially assimilate them into its Hindutva fold, a blowback by the
community has led to panic among its leadership.
Confessed a senior BJP leaders, “Attacks against Dalits in
Party-ruled States, abuse of their leaders coupled with the Opposition’s
efforts to paint us as an anti-Dalit party, like in the Hyderabad Rohith Vemula
issue and JNU’s Kanhaiya, are extremely damaging as it could consolidate the
Muslims and Dalits against us. This would be fatal and drown all efforts by the
Modi-Shah combine to win at the hustings.”
Towards that end it has initiated a major firefighting
exercise by fielding leaders to underscore its credentials as a beckon of the
poor and downtrodden besides instigating many schemes to woo the community. Adding
to the BJP’s woes these events have breathed new life in the comatose BSP and
Congress.
Notably, given that the Dalits form a crucial vote bank in
Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, constituting more
than 20 per cent and 32 per cent respectively of the population, any wonder our
Parties are desperate. All are falling over each other in positioning
Ambedkarism as the ideological alternative to Gandhism as vote-banks on caste
lines are easier to build.
From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Maharashtra
to Manipur communal and caste explosions and exploitations rule the roost.
Wherein, this C2 has become the most luscious mistress to be measured through
the prism of power glass politics. With parties defining it according to its
own warped and selfish needs.
Not just that. With everyone propounding their won recipes
of communal and caste harmony, the nation is getting sucked into the vortex of
centrifugal bickering. So caught up are our leaders in their frenzied pursuit
of political nirvana through
separatism that they confuse themselves.
Touch any sphere of national life --- political, social,
economic, administrative, educational and judicial. The cancerous C2 has
already spread into its vitals. Tragically, bringing things to such a pass whereby
everything today has degenerated into the caste paradigm.
Mandalistation of politics and the emergence of the
Dalit-OBC-Muslim combine in electoral politics brought about a sea changed in
our polity. Wherein it is now polarised on a caste basis with elections being
fought on caste considerations.
In fact, voters are regressively but decisively voting along
caste lines. This social engineering via the ballot has become its mainstay.
After all, why should the Brahmins and Thakurs, a mere 15 per cent of the vote
bank, rule the roost? In other words, political consciousness today terminates
at the caste and community level.
Consequently, this social chasm widened with the emergence
of the “Made in India”
leaders like Lalu, Mulayam and Mayawati. If Lalu kid gloved the forwards with
his massive backward following, Mulayam played his Yadav and Muslim card to the
hilt in Government and judicial appointments. Mayawati revealed in “transfer
Raj”, replacing many upper caste officers by Dalit officials.
Thereby, giving the rootless down-trodden a new identity and
attitudinal changes. Think. In UP over 16,000 warrants and challans continue to remain unnerved in various police thanas, thanks to caste politics. Caste
warlords have access to plentiful of guns and ammunition.
Today, Bihar resembles a
battle ground of caste senas. If
yesterday it was a tussle between the Ranveer
Sena, private Army of Upper caste landlords, vs the Left, Marxist Communist Centre today it is the Jai Shri Ram
Sena, which has just been floated to defend farmers, against the two. All,
merrily turning Bihar into the killing fields.
Clearly, our leaders are either unable or unwilling to break
out of the caste mould. In the long run, this is bound to increase
dissatisfaction all around. By making noises and finding a scapegoat, our
polity runs the risk of changing major political alignments on caste lines.
Forgetting that it is equally dangerous to indulge in the
ongoing political power games passed on caste rivalries. By that token, the
whole social reform movement will become meaningless.
It is clear that if political consciousness terminates at
the caste level, divisive caste combinations will continue to dominate Indian
politics. Granted it will be suicidal not to take cognizance of the new found
political aspirations of the backward castes. At the same time, it is equally
dangerous to indulge in the ongoing political power games based on caste and
communal considerations.
Against this backdrop there is only one solution. Truce
between the netagan and their
progenies. The time has come to undergo catharsis --- a course in emptive
cleansing and in cementing a cohesive society. The moment for soul searching,
not soul searching. Away from the electioneering fields.
Undoubtedly, India
stands testimony to the fact that power in privilege stands further transformed
through electoral competition into power in numbers. Either way, our netagan are caught in a zero sum game.
Time now for our petty power-at-all cost polity to think beyond vote-bank
politics and look at the long-term implications. Which, if not arrested, could
well boomerang on them and spell danger to our democracy. ---- INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
|