We all know Una in Gujarat, but how
many of us really know Saharanpur. May be you had heard some headline about
Saharanpur someday, but it certainly doesn’t haunt your mind and soul as much
Una haunts. And it’s not about me and you. Even the people doing all their
politics on the name of Dalits are concerned about Una only, the people
enjoying their aero plane sojourns, TV appearances, 1000s of likes and comments
on social media pages/handles to their Dalit “well-crafted allegiance”, are not
having sleepless nights as they had remembering Una.
Now, let’s revisit the happenings in
Una and Saharanpur briefly on point to point basis so that the contrast could
be understood properly.
Place
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Una (Gujarat)
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Saharanpur (UP)
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Event
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Some hooligans flayed 4 Dalit youth on the name of cow vigilance. It
was filmed (a Muslim boy was coerced to do it by the same goons as per the
revelations made by the investigators) and then uploaded on the social media.
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A person from some other caste asked a Dalit to “deposit” his
daughter in return for the debt he had taken. The fateful event got escalated
as community war and a riot like situation erupted in the village.
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Socio-Political reaction
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A national brouhaha erupted. CM Anandiben, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind
Kejariwal visited the victims’ family. The event was widely covered in the
national and international media. Both the houses of parliament was rocked by
protests on what happened in Una. A landmark Dalit movement started in the
leadership of Jignesh Mevani from Una which mobilized Dalits from across the
states. Dalits decided that they wouldn’t indulge into the job of skinning
and declined to clear carcasses.
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No political heavyweight visited the ground zero “Usand” village.
Newspapers and TV news channels took it up as a routine news story. No news channel rushed its OB Vans and cared to beam the visuals of a total chaos in the village. The news was
shifted to internal pages in some newspapers and dropped by some others in just a couple of days. The Dalits of Usand didn’t find any nation wide support either
from likes of Arvind Kejriwal, or Rahul Gandhi, or even Mayawati. Akhilesh
couldn’t get time to visit the village. And Dalits didn’t start a movement to
leave a lasting effect on system.
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State Response
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FIR lodged. Police flung into action. 22 people were arrested and are
in police custody. Investigation on.
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When the situation in the village got tensed and two communities
confronted each other, police came in the village. The situation was so
grave, as according to the police, that lathi charge was ordered. But the
lathis were charged only on Dalits. Two dalit women succumbed to the lathi
injuries. Police attacked on Dalit women with infants, old age villagers
and even bed ridden patients from Dalit community. As ToI reports on 22nd August that since 15th August, the Dalits are so terrified that they
scram in the forests every night to evade the state’s wrath. Deafening silence follows from the political class as well as Dalits leaders.
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So, what is the take away? What I understood
from the event chains that local administrations, be it in Una or Saharanpur,
are equally insensitive towards the plight of weaker sections of the society. But
what’s about the media response and that of the political class? At both
places, Dalits were subjected to atrocities by dominant classes. But what
baffles me is the the socio-political responses aroused by both the events. By simple
political calculation, it should have happened other way round because all the
political parties have their stakes higher in UP than in Gujarat. So, why is
this contrast?
If the victim is same, system is
same, political parties are same and the police is same, what has changed? The
only changed element is the perpetrator. In Una, it was a group whose so-called
concern of ‘Gau Raksha’ could easily be attributed to Hindu nationalist
organizations in general and Narendra Modi (the event having been happened in
Gujarat was an added benefit) in particular. Whereas in Saharanpur, the
perpetrator was an advocate with no political or ideological identity. So, the
Dalits struggling for their self-respect and right to life have no takers.
The inference I am compelled to
draw in these circumstances is that nobody is worried about the self-respect
and plight of Dalits, in fact. Nobody means, absolutely nobody. Not even Dalit
leaders, Dalit sociologists, Dalit academicians, Dalit reformers, Mothers of
Vemullas (who travelled to Una to take part in Dalit agitation), Gandhis,
Kejriwals, Mayawatis etc. The degree and depth of the agony of “Dalitwadis”
depends upon who is holding the other end. This is why the day ToI reports
about the atrocities Dalits being faced at the hands of state police in
Saharanpur, it publishes a statement by Mayawati in 5 columns saying “Muslims, Dalits
are not safe under Modi” and by Congress in 3 columns saying “Modi ignoring
Dalit atrocities in Gujarat”.
So, it is not about Dalits, in
fact. It is about Modi, it is about RSS and it is about anything and everything
about those who proud on their Hindu identity. The question arises then, in
spite of a visible upsurge in Dalit conscience, how much are the ground
realities going to change. I doubt, there is any possibility for the same. Because
Dalits have become a vote bank like Muslims used to be in this country for last
seven decades. No one is actually concerned about changing their lives, but
everyone wants to show up. The most unfortunate part of the saga is that Dalits
themselves are now part of the machinery that sucks the community. So after all
the hoopla being played with so much noise, the situation of Dalits is going to
get worse, it seems.