The Congress, which claims to represent the dalits in the electoral arena cared nothing for dalits more than using them as a vote bank. With the growing menace of the Shiv Sena and the increasing threat to the dalits, the Congress’s skin deep concern was exposed by its inability to protect their interest. The dalits now lie splintered into various formations. With the failure of the old leadership, the splintered RPI formations and other dalit organisation like Dalit Panthers etc., a section of disillusioned dalits are now turning to the new emerging leadership of Arun Gawli and his Akhil Bhartiya Sena. Surprisingly, the underworld don and his party with criminals and lumpens as office bearers, pulled up a massive rally with large dalit participation. Gawli’s bold anti-Sena tirades may have won him dalit sympathies at a time when political parties have failed to assuage the community’s bruised psyche but an underworld don and his terror tactics cannot be the answer to counter the Sena’s offensive. All these underline the need for a strong unity between the left and forces like RPI of Prakash Ambedkar.

Surprisingly, Kansi Ram, who poses himself as the ‘other’ dalit messiah after Ambedkar, and who has never concealed his aversion for Ambedkarite brand of politics and hates to be seen in the shadow of Ambedkar, and who even claimed to have gone one step ahead of Ambedkar, has maintained silence over the firing and did not openly condemn it. Understandably, expediencies of opportunist politics have refrained the dalit messiah from condemning the killing of his brethren lest it turns unpalatable for his political ally in UP. Yet again this brand of dalit politics has shown that the only concern it has is for the dalit votes. In the past the ruling class parties had been effective in coopting a section of the dalit leadership through sops and doles extended to them. It now stands clear that the BSP — accepting a share in the spoils of power — hasn’t been practising any different form of ruling class politics in the garb of a ‘dalit party’.

Atrocities on dalits have been an indelible reality in the past fifty years of independent India. Of increasing regularity have been incidents of deliberately igniting dalit sentiments by the dominant castes, and in some cases, by the land-owning middle castes, leading to a violent caste conflagration with the dalits ultimately at the receiving end. Most often the sources of such flare-ups have been the desecration of dalit symbols and identities. Ugly incidents of caste clashes recently took place in southern Tamil Nadu between the dominant Thevar community and the dalits. In Andhra Pradesh, a major caste war erupted when two dalits boys’ heads were forcibly tonsured by an upper caste MLA allied with the ruling TDP. In Karnataka, a similar incident like in Mumbai took place involving the sons of a JD minister leading to a major controversy.

Ambedkar who has come to be symbolised as the most accepted pan-dalit leader, has been at the centre of attacks by the upper caste Hindus all over the country. Apart from its deliberate acts of igniting tension through desecration of Ambedkar statues, the BJP has intensified an ideological offensive against Ambedkar. Noted right-wing commentator, Arun Shourie, in his recent book on Ambedkar, Worshiping False Gods: Ambedkar and the Facts Which have been Erased, vilifies the leader by presenting him out of proper context. The author presents him as an ally of the British and as deceiving the freedom movement. The main mission in Ambedkar’s life was upliftment and emancipation of dalits and his role should be judged in this light. Congress version of independence, i.e. transfer of power from the British to what he called the Brahmin-Bania rule was not his goal and what is the need to highlight his ‘collaboration’ with the British now even if it was true? Clearly, it is nothing but the need to launch an ideological offensive for a rightward shift in the polity.

The past few years have seen a significant change in dalit politics. As a social force their assertion has increased. Clashes in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra and other places have shown that dalits are retaliating against upper caste attacks. Also of significance is that the middle castes who are becoming the new landowning class in the countryside, have fallen apart with the dalits and are increasingly involved in caste clashes with the them. But the dalit resurgence hasn’t been marked by a commensurate independent assertion in the political scene and howsoever much BSP may claim an exclusive hold over dalits in UP and even Punjab, it has not progressed beyond playing second fiddle to the upper caste forces. And while the dalit masses in Maharashtra may have successfully delivered a blow to the Sena, they are hopelessly directionless without a strong political leadership.

Our practice in Bihar has also set a new example for dalit resurgence in a state with the worst record of feudal oppression. Against the narrow ideologies of ‘dalitist’ variety of politics, it has built a struggle with all the economically and socially depressed sections of society while centering the struggle on class lines. From a situation few years back when dalits were debarred from voting by the landlords to the present situation where they are politically asserting under the banner of CPI(ML), they have politically and socially advanced far but they have had to pay the price in blood with the worst ever spate of massacres of dalits in fifty years of independence by the private armies of the upper caste landlords. And the vicissitudes of dalit politics are such that many heinous massacres of dalits in Bihar hardly become news and many political leaders who are now shedding crocodile tears over Maharashtra, kept a total silence.

SIDDARTHA