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.