DELHI’S Jantar Mantar saw on Sunday the rise of an apolitical
Dalit force under the umbrella of the Bhim Army which disowned Mayawati and her
BSP. Led by a 30-year-old lawyer, Chandrashekhar, the Bhim Army claims a
40,000-strong membership in seven states, though active mostly in western Uttar
Pradesh. Some 6,000 blue-cap wearing young Dalits at Jantar Mantar rejected
their traditional, elite political leadership which they felt had lost touch at
the ground level as Dalits continue to suffer excesses at the hands of
upper-caste ruffians. There has been a spurt in atrocities after the swearing
in of Yogi Adityanath as UP Chief Minister. They say, “Behenji (Mayawati) was
our leader; Bhaiya (Chandrashekhar) is our new leader.”
Some of the recent violent incidents — the burning of Dalit
houses at Shabbirpur village near Saharanpur, allegedly by Thakurs, and
Dalit-Thakur skirmishes during the Ambedkar Jayanti and Maharana Pratap
processions — did not invoke any interest or intervention from Mayawati. Some
of the vocal Dalit leaders have migrated to the BJP for greener pastures. BJP
leaders of the area unabashedly use the police to their advantage. It is a
breakaway not just from their elected leadership; the parting of ways is also
from the practitioners of the Hindu religion who have not accepted them as
equal. In the Modi regime Saharanpur witnessed the third eruption of Dalit rage
after Hyderabad, where the Rohith Vemula suicide had attracted national
attention, and Una (Gujarat), where the thrashing of Dalit youths had
culminated in a joint procession with Muslims.
The BJP’s not-so-hidden
peddling of the RSS’ Hindutva agenda, an open play of majoritarian politics and
continuing attacks on Muslims by the self-styled gau-rakshak, mostly in the
BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana, have combined to
create a sense of fear and discrimination among Muslims. Dalits are reaching
out to Muslims for mutual support and solidarity. The Bhim Army has made its
intentions very clear. Apart from Muslims, it is seeking cooperation from the
Yadavs, Valmikis and other OBCs. A sense of deprivation and discrimination
binds them and in the upper-caste led BJP they see a common adversary.
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