Dalit liberation struggle entered a new phase with Chalo Una
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
While flogging the Dalits in Una of Gujarat, the Gau Rakshak gang, cow vigilante of the RSS led Hindutva brigade, could not anticipate the massive typhoon that was yet to storm the bastion of Hindutva fascism in India, Gujarat. This West Indian state was the citadel of the fascist Hindutva brigade since the early 1990s when Lal Krishna Advani, the son of the soil, was carrying out the most nefarious communal agenda in post-1947 India. Narendra Modi, the man whom Advani groomed and made his blue-eyed boy, became the strong man of the very state by organising a large-scale state-sponsored genocide of Muslims in 2002. Narendra Modi made Gujarat the citadel of his brand of Hindutva politics, which got endorsed by the RSS and then implemented on a pan-India scale. The flogging of the Dalits was quite common in the casteist Gujarati society until the oppressed people burst out in anger.
The spontaneous struggle of the Dalits, which outnumbered and lampooned the upper caste, feudal, Patidar movement of last year, brought the Hindutva camps to its knees, so much so that Anandiben Patel, the puppet Chief Minister, was made a scapegoat by Modi and Amit Shah. A strong rally of the Dalits in the capital city of Gujarat and their assertive attitude forced the ruling classes to retreat, even when the majority of the upper caste Gujaratis consider the flogging of Dalits a normal thing. The government of Gujarat in general and Narendra Modi, in particular, wants to handle the situation in a way that can save the BJP and the Modi regime from a disaster in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls scheduled for 2017. BJP is trembling in the very state where they managed to secure more than 50 per cent votes in the last parliamentary elections. The “Gujarat model” of the Dalit struggle is inspiring the out-castes in different corners of India to rebel against the caste apartheid system promoted by the ruling classes and their state apparatus.
Attacks on Muslims, Christians, tribal people and Dalits are on the rise throughout the country since Narendra Modi-led BJP government usurped power through a polarised verdict in 2014; the cow vigilante attacks too grew manifold since the last few months. The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Bisada village of Dadri in October 2015 by a cow vigilante mob; killing of a Muslim man in Jammu and Kashmir by cow vigilantes; killing of two Muslim men in Balumath forest of Latehar, Jharkhand, over cow smuggling allegations; flogging of Dalit youths by cow vigilante forces in Una, Gujarat; the attack on the Dalit family by 40 rowdies of the fascist Bajrang Dal in Chikkamagaluru district of Karnataka; attack on two Muslim women by cow vigilantes in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh; the flogging of two Dalit youth in Amalapuram town of East Godavari, Andhra Pradesh; all these incidents bear the testimony that there seems to be no end of the acts of bigotry under Modi government's misrule.
Even after several deaths caused by the cow vigilante troops of the RSS, the national mainstream corporate media, funded and owned by the foreign monopoly capital and their Indian crony compradors, mostly upper caste Baniyas, ignored the news, or shall we say swept the atrocities committed by the Hindutva thugs below the carpet and focused on an imaginary threat perceived from Muslims and Pakistan and plunged into inciting communal hysteria by peddling the chauvinistic demagogy as a parameter of nationalism. It was assumed that there can be no strong and united resistance to these cow saviour thugs who were killing and intimidating people with full-fledged support from the state machinery. Gujarat, the hitherto bastion of Hindutva politics, proved them wrong.
The rise of the Dalits in Gujarat and their march to Una from all over the state protesting the Brahminical atrocities and declaring an end to the traditional professions imposed on them by the Brahminical ruling classes, which again formed the basis of their socio-economic ostracism, is in itself a very significant development in a state where only one force has monopolised the right to speak and right to determine the course of politics so far. The rally by the Dalits in Una was a challenge against the Brahminical ruling classes, who on one hand ostracised the Dalits, and on the other hand, used them as pawns against the Muslim community.
The Dalits unitedly demanded their right to land and called the upper castes to deal with the nitty gritty of cow cremation, as the oppressed community feels no allegiance to the bovine, which is considered to be a motherly animal by the cow worshipping upper castes, especially the Gujarati Vaishyas, Baniyas, who are the de facto rulers of the state and the socio-economic pillar of the Hindutva brigade. The rally was itself a challenge to the hegemony of the Patidar (Patel community) and the Baniyas, who also owns a fair share in the trade and commerce of the country and have nearly monopolised the trading in the stock market. The hatred of the upper castes was manifested when the participants in the Chalo Una rally were heckled and assaulted at different places by the upper caste goons with full support from Vijay Rupani’s BJP government.
The Dalits live a miserable life in Gujarat where, according to the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011, 76.73 per cent Dalit families earn less than Rs. 5000 per month. In Gujarat 63.24 per cent of Dalits are landless, and they have only 4.67 per cent representation in the government jobs. The state also has the largest number of Dalit and Muslim prisoners and the social discrimination is at the highest in the so-called fast growing state of Western India.
The assaults and violence on the Dalits can’t stop the fire from spreading itself in the venomous paradise of Hindutva brigade; the Dalits of Gujarat, unlike their counterparts in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have somehow understood the importance of gaining financial freedom from the yoke of Brahminical oppression. They are now fighting for their land rights, which poses a challenge for the Patidar and Vaishya community in the communally polarised state. The Gujarati feudal lords will do everything possible to thwart the efforts of the Dalits to occupy land for themselves and the ruling classes will not shy from indulging in a large-scale bloodbath, as they did in the case of Bihar using the private armies of the upper caste feudal lords in 1980s and 1990s. Narendra Modi and his coterie will throw their hats, unofficially, behind the ruling classes of Gujarat to consolidate its upper caste elite vote bank. This will include the silent and affirmative nod to the violent campaigns.
The “Gujarat Model” is threatened by the demands raised by the Dalits for land, which will create further trouble for the Indian ruling classes in case this demand is echoed by the Dalits of other states as well, as the demand may get transmitted across borders of the state, thanks to the presence of large number of migrant poor in the state who came to Gujarat in search of a livelihood. The growth of the militant Dalit movement against the semi-feudal set up will also impact the working class to launch a broad struggle against the exploitation laden upon them by the enterprises running in Gujarat owned by either foreign monopoly and finance capital or their Indian comprador and crony lackeys. The initiation of such a broad struggle against the enemies of the people is something the Modi regime considers to be a true nightmare, and that is what they are working overtime to thwart under any circumstances. The international media, unlike the Indian media, is fully critical of Modi’s way of handling the situation, as the global monopoly and finance capital is scared of an impending turbulence at the heart of its haven of exploitation in India.
Though the movement that started in Una is filled with many shortcomings, though it is still devoid of any revolutionary agenda, and though the leadership of the struggle is still with the Ambedkarites, the fact is that this movement has opened the floodgate of Dalit liberation movement in the most reactionary state of India after Haryana. The struggle of the Dalits will surely grow from lower to higher stages and the battle will intensify in the coming days when the Dalits will in practice challenge the hegemony of the ruling classes and upper castes by claiming rights to land and fight for it. The experience of the Dalits will surely lead them away from the menial jobs that the upper caste rulers confine them to, and their fight for a dignified life will show them the path of democratic revolution, which can liberate them from the present bondages by overthrowing the existing semi-feudal production relations. The ushering of the new dawn of freedom of Dalits will cast doom on the Brahminical tyranny and compartmentalisation and nail the coffin of Hindutva fascism.
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