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6/11/19, 9'20 AMThe Dalit Question Is One That the Government Wants to Tame Under Draconian Laws
Page 1 of 8https://thewire.in/rights/dalit-caste-bhima-koregaon-hindutva-activists-arrests
RIGHTS
The Dalit Question Is One That
the Government Wants to Tame
Under Draconian Laws
It is the growing, yet nebulous association of people from anti-caste
groups and Leftist sections to resist violence and injustice that is
being clamped down upon by the government in the name of threat
to the present political system.
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6/11/19, 9'20 AMThe Dalit Question Is One That the Government Wants to Tame Under Draconian Laws
Page 3 of 8https://thewire.in/rights/dalit-caste-bhima-koregaon-hindutva-activists-arrests
RIGHTS 08/SEP/2018
Speaking your mind and making critical political choices have become crimes
in the world’s largest democracy today. Knowing and learning became
questionable and punishable that we see political silence looming around us.
The love for ideas, people and movements is repressed and hate of all forms
is let to unleash itself unabashedly. Why is it that knowledge and love, but not
ignorance and hate are being repressed unlike ever before in this country?
Why is it that people and movements’ coming together invite the wrath of the
government than considering them as an embellishment to democracy? The
immediate background story behind the recent arrests of social activists
unfolds over the last two years, but is not devoid of twists and turns… It is a
story of the Hindu nationalist government’s failed attempts to appease Dalits
and appropriate the Dalit question that soured just after a year they came to
power.
Narrative of Dalit question as threat
The Dalit question was treated as a minor domestic issue by previous
governments, while the Bharatiya Janata Party government nursed ambitions
of facilitating Dalit votes in its favour by appropriating them into the
Brahmanical Hindutva fold. It backfired when Rohith Vemula, a charismatic
Dalit scholar, died on January 17, 2016 after putting up a months-long
6/11/19, 9'20 AMThe Dalit Question Is One That the Government Wants to Tame Under Draconian Laws
Page 4 of 8https://thewire.in/rights/dalit-caste-bhima-koregaon-hindutva-activists-arrests
struggle with university authorities aided by the government. Dalit students
mobilised a campaign at the University of Hyderabad which soon caught on
at other campuses including the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Despite
persisting ideological differences between the Left and the Dalit movement,
they fiercely fought back repression by the Hindu nationalist government.
The rise of young Dalit leaders like Jignesh Mevani after the flogging of
Dalits in Una, in Gujarat, strengthened this evolving movement against the
Hindu nationalist government.
This was a defining moment for Dalit politics for many reasons. The assertion
that Dalit movement cannot be appropriated by the Hindu nationalist state
prompted the government to respond towards Dalits with repression typically
reserved towards the religious minorities. This shift in approach towards Dalit
politics is evident in the detention and now the preventive custody under the
National Security Act of Chandrasekhar Azad, founder of Bhim Army, in
Saharanpur Jail, Uttar Pradesh. The Dalit question is no longer seen as an
internal question to be resolved, but as one the government wants to tame
under the draconian laws of national security. In other words, decades of
Dalit resistance have captured the imaginations of people aspiring for
equality and human dignity. This upsets those who want to retain the unequal
and divided society.
Tenuous strings of hope
Another significant development which has caused a major disturbance to the
government is the tenuous and nascent issue-based coalition that some Left-
leaning activists and organisations seem to be developing with Dalit politics.
Anti-caste politics, for the longest time, has questioned the Left in India for
its failure to understand the caste question as well as for its Brahmanical, top-
down approach in grassroots politics. The disdain was mutual because the
Left also dismissed the question of identity or rather appropriated it in some
places instead of engaging with it fruitfully. In recent times, though
6/11/19, 9'20 AMThe Dalit Question Is One That the Government Wants to Tame Under Draconian Laws
Page 5 of 8https://thewire.in/rights/dalit-caste-bhima-koregaon-hindutva-activists-arrests
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ideological differences exist, anti-caste student political groups as well as the
Left student groups have allied in issues which are gaining momentum in the
society at large.
This trend of concerned people and groups allying in spite of immediate
differences to fight against caste, lynchings and discrimination supported by
the BJP government is branded as a threat to the national security. Dalit and
social activists targeted in the recent raids and arrests exemplify this
insecurity of the Central government. Some of the social activists arrested
have a long history of being part of people’s struggles.
It is interesting that now they are accused of instigating violence in Bhima-
Koregaon, a symbolic victory Dalits have been celebrating every year for the
last two centuries. It is the growing, yet nebulous association of people from
anti-caste groups and Leftist sections to resist violence and injustice that is
being clamped down upon by the government in the name of threat to the
present political system. Bhima-Koregaon is used as the plot to trap Dalit and
social activists this time. In some sense, an aspiration to resist violence,
spread love and the dream of everyone having dignity of life are considered
as acts against the government. At a time when love is punished and haters
are hailed, the only way to stay alive and awake is by never stopping the
struggle for dignity of life.
Carmel Christy teaches at the University of Delhi.