Dalits are the worst victims of the ongoing Dalit revolution

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	Una (Gujarat)	Saharanpur (UP)
Event	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.	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.
Socio-Political reaction	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.	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.
State Response	FIR lodged. Police flung into action. 22 people were arrested and are in police custody. Investigation on.	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.

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.

Will Modi live-up to His Newly Found Wit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has found some new facts about Pakistan, it seems. As a career Sangh Pracharak and an icon of hardline Hindu nationalists, Modi brandished all kind of rhetorical sarcasm in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections while campaigning. His “biryani” jibe against UPA govt. and the “Miyan Nawaz Shareef” sloganeering with a clear connotation got jubilant echoes from the crowds during his campaign for May 2014 elections. But after he got an unprecedented single party majority for his Bhartiya Janata Party to take the reins of the country, everything changed overnight. Showing an extraordinary bonhomie, he invited Shareef in his swearing-in ceremony. The move was widely acclaimed by “Aman ki Asha” brand day-dreamers. The rightists took solace from the fact that Nawaz Shareef was only one of the SAARC nation heads.

In the days to come, the nation had to hear many high voltage statements from the Home Minister Rajnath Singh about BSF acting in vengeance to reply Pakistani rangers’ misadventures on border and terrorists getting befitting replies from paramilitary forces. Apart from such strong statements (which we heard nth times in last 2 decades or so), everything else remained the same on ground. Then came the decision of Modi government to cancel the secretary level Indo-Pak talks after the Pakistani High Commissioner in Delhi went ahead with meeting Kashmiri separatists despite Modi government’s strong reservations. People like me got ecstatic saying this was the first instance the Government of India showed its backbone. But with egg on my face, I heard just weeks after that the same secretary level talks were going to be resumed. I thought I missed some very important development regarding the Indo-Pak relationship. May be, Pakistan had given some assurance about not repeating such misadventure anytime in future again. Or, may be Pakistan had expressed, at least a superficial sorry for the recent past. I surfed google frantically cursing myself about not being up to date about such important developments. On the contrary, I found same stubborn provocating statements from Pakistani ministers and diplomats. And could never understand what made Narendra Modi to take an U-turn on his erstwhile stand of cancelling the talks.

Then came the Pathhankot air base attack. Again we heard all kind of blistering which were also used after 26/11 Mumbai attack. And then, Modi government did what no Congress government would have dared to do, of course, fearing a political backlash on back of BJP’s nationalist chest thumping had it been out of power. Mr. Narendra Modi permitted a Pakistani security apparatus comprising personnel of Pakistani army and infamous ISI to take a stroll across the air base for investigation. There couldn’t have been found a more stupid parallel in the world of international diplomacy. At one hand, Indian government claimed it had proof of direct handling of Pathankot attackers throughout their mission by Pakistan based terrorists who have openly been enjoying the patronage of Pakistani government and army. And on the other hand, the same Indian government, invites the Pakistani army in the garb of a legitimate Pakistan government investigation team to investigate the attacks and hands over the proof to them. In other words, you had a robbery in your house. You have clear-cut knowledge or proof that your neighbor committed the crime. Still, you call him to inspect your house and try to prove to him by giving him the proof that he was the robber. Great diplomacy!!! May be, we common people do not have a sense of true diplomacy. So would the great diplomats of the Modi government spell out what they really achieved by inviting Pakistani army and ISI officials to investigate the Pathankot air base attack venue.

And now the masterstroke has come right from the horse’s mouth. The one and the only protagonist of this government, Narendra Modi has declared that the only talking point will be PoK. But he has already lost his credibility as far as his government’s policy towards Pakistan is concerned. The image of a no-nonsense leader with a clear focus and result oriented determination that Modi acquired with a subtly calibrated campaign over years have been damaged badly by his UPA-style confused and fearful Pakistan diplomacy. Now this is the last chance Modi has got to reclaim the image of his hard minded focused national leader. Only giving a statement that PoK is the part of Jammu and Kashmir won’t work. Pakistan occupied part of Kashmir by force and so the only unfinished task is to take the PoK back. But unfortunately, we have been on pains for last 70 years to explain the oneness of J&K (one third of the original that we had in 1947) with India. Now the Modi government has left with about 32 active months in office. So does it really plan to take this point forward and make it a centre point of Indian policy towards Pakistan?

Besides, Baluchistan and Gilgit are two provinces that are undergoing unbelievable formidable atrocities on human kind. Pakistan has even used its air force for bombing on Baloch people. It has lost its moral right to govern Balochistan. And even from diplomatic point of view, to help Balochistan and Gilgit in getting independence from Pakistan is the only practical solution to get rid of this disease called Pakistan. Modi has already tried Noble peace prize winning gestures to tame Pakistan. But, we may only hope that he would have understood it that getting into the history with “Aman ki Asha” bandwagon may leave him fumbling in the no man’s land. Rather, he may carve his place in the lanes of history by helping struggling Pakistani provinces to get independence. Indira Gandhi is an example who is always revered as an iron lady for what she did on the eastern borders.