After Ahmedabad and Agra rallies, BJP feels Dalit heat: Time for party to rethink poll strategy

Caste violence in Gujarat’s Una district has triggered a revolution among the Dalit community. On Sunday, thousands of Dalits took out a massive rally in Ahmedabad, sending out a strong message to the BJP government. Around 30 Dalit groups across Gujarat, who had come together at the rally, took a pledge not to lift cow carcasses from the streets.

Dalit leader and convener of the event Jignesh Mevani asked his community to take a pledge to stay away from their traditional work of disposing dead cattle. “To give a strong message to the government, I urge all Dalits to discontinue the work of disposing dead animals. I also want you to take a pledge of discontinuing the work of cleaning sewer lines. We no longer wish to do this work and want the government to allot agriculture land to us, so that we can live a respectable life,” he said.

Mevani told IANS, “You might feel the number of people is much less, but this should be understood from the point of view that it is for the first time there has been such a Dalit uprising in Gujarat, and that too without support of any political party.”

They also put forth other demands, including people involved in assaulting the Dalit youths in Una to be arrested under Prevention of Anti-Social Activity Act (PASA) and permanent posts for sanitation work and payment as per the 6th Pay Commission.

On 11 July, seven members of a Dalit family in Gujarat’s Una town, involved in leather trading, were attacked and brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed gau rakshaks. Four of them were stripped half-naked, tied to a car, dragged for about a kilometre and then beaten up with iron rods and sticks by the cow vigilantes.

The state “must provide us licenced firearms to protect ourselves since the government has failed to provide us security”, said Mevani. “We have had enough. We will break their hands and legs if the upper caste exploiters torture us any more,” he added.

Demanding justice against these cow vigilantes and the violence practiced by them, Muslims too joined the rally. Three Muslim leaders from Ahmedabad attended the rally. Many Muslim activists were also seen in the rally. Members of the religious body Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind were also present.

Maulana Mahmood Madani, general secretary of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind told The Times of India that the Muslims, Dalits and the tribal communities are feeling threatened in India. “An attempt is being made to paint everyone in one colour,” he said.

“We have been victims of political conspiracy in the past. Religion and caste have been abused. Political parties have only attained power by using our emotions,” said Mohammed Hanif, vice-president of Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind.

The Dalit uprising in Gujarat, and Muslim support, come at a time when the BJP is trying to woo the Dalits votes in poll-bound states of Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. In fact, Mevani’s statement, “If atrocities on Dalits do not stop, we will show our strength in the 2017 Assembly polls,” should make the Centre and Anandiben Patel-led Gujarat government rethink it’s strategy of handling caste violence and the cow vigilantes.

The party is also feeling the repercussions. BJP president Amit Shah had to cancel a rally in Agra on Sunday after the UP BJP failed to gather a crowd of 40,000 Dalits. Amit Shah’s rally was supposed to coincide with the arrival of the Dhamma Chetna Yatra.

Though the local BJP leaders claimed that the rally was cancelled due to bad weather, reports suggest that the gathering was cancelled due to poor response from the Dalit community and possible threat of protests.

According to sources, the party’s Dhamma Chetna Yatra was only attended by its party workers and a few other monks. A local eyewitness in Agra was quoted in The Indian Express as saying, “It was quite shocking that most people in the hall were either monks or BJP workers. They even called street children and beggars to the venue as the older audience wasn’t available.”

There is simmering anger within the party with the BJP government’s inability to curb the violence carried out gau rakshaks. “Why do only Dalits come forward in case of atrocities of Dalits? Do the proponents of Indian nationalism not consider them to be a part of Indian society? Or are they not a part of the ideal Indian nation,” said BJP MP Udit Raj during a national conference in Delhi.

The Dalit protests are not likely to die down anytime soon even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to remain silent on the issue. Dalit leaders, on Sunday, announced a plan to organise a foot march from Ahmedabad to Una town in Gir-Somnath district, where four Dalits were brutally thrashed by cow vigilantes for skinning a dead cow. They said the march will be organised from 5 August.

With inputs from agencies