Dalits unlikely to fall for BJP’s bluffs again

Barely five days before the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Tuesday, April 10, re-open the house on Alipur Road in the Civil Lines area of Delhi, where Babasaheb lived and breathed his last.

The Modi Government and the BJP’s propaganda machinery can be trusted to turn this into a spectacle and try to pass it off as proof of the ruling party and the Government’s abiding faith in the teachings of Ambedkar. Never mind that the house was already made into a memorial to the great Dalit leader long before Modi Government came into existence.

Immediately following the Supreme Court’s dilution of stringent provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, leading to countrywide outrage and agitation by Dalit groups that culminated in a Bharat Bandh on April 2, the Modi Government started advertising the event in a bid to assuage Dalit anger.

Even as atrocities on Dalits and insults hurled at people enjoying the fruits of reservation have grown exponentially since Dalits decided to take to the streets, there appears to be some kind of a race among BJP leaders to secure certificates of pro-Dalit conduct by little known Dalit outfits.

The latest to join the race is Chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, whose one-year rule has surpassed all previous records of atrocities on Dalits, OBCs and Muslims throughout his fiefdom. It is therefore ironical that an obscure Ambedkar Mahasabha has come out with plans to felicitate Yogi as ‘Dalit Mitra’ (friend of Dalits).

But these cosmetic measures do not seem to have impressed even Modi’s own Dalit Members of Parliament. Yashwant Singh, the MP from Nagina in Uttar Pradesh, was the fourth BJP MP to question both the Governments in UP and the Central Government on Dalit anger.

Atrocities on Dalits and Tribals have multiplied and become more vicious in BJP citadels like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. As for UP, the Yogi has been true to his word by putting Dalits, Yadavs, the Muslims in their place through various means starting with shuddhi karan (purification) of the chief minister’s official residence because Lucknow’s 5, Kalidas Marg was earlier occupied by Akhilesh Yadav and prior to that by a Dalit, Mayawati.

Next, he came down heavily on the meat trade, targeting Muslims and Dalits. Those dying in supposed “encounters” during Adityanath’s eventful one year in office too reportedly happen to be predominantly Yadavs, Jatavs and Muslims. The young articulate and bright leader of the Bhim Army Chandrashekhar Azad is still languishing in jail for close to a year now, while the Rajputs who indulged in arson and mayhem in the Dalit areas of Shabirpur are strutting around freely.

While the Government made a song and dance about filing a review petition in the Supreme Court against the SC/ST (PoA) Act judgment, the arguments offered were so weak that the apex court refused to grant an interim stay on its earlier order. It was a half-hearted effort to give a face-saver to Dalit leaders in the NDA like Ram Vilas Paswan, Ramdas Athawale and Thawarchand Gehlot, so that they may tell their constituents that they did everything to get the dilution stayed but the court thwarted their plan.

But this does not seem to have impressed Udit Raj, a one-time firebrand Dalit leader and now BJP MP, Bahraich BJP MP Savitri Bai Phule, the party’s Robertsgunj MP Chhote Lal Kharwar or its Etawah MP Ashok Kumar Dohre, all of whom complained bitterly of blatant discrimination against Dalits.

Even a self-confessed Modi fan like senior journalist Tavleen Singh, in her weekly column in The Indian Express on Sunday, admitted for the first time that, “It is beginning to seem increasingly as if Modi could be defeated in 2019 not because the ‘secular’ opposition parties will consolidate their votes but because Hindutva has managed to de-consolidate the Hindu votes.”

But these voices have made little difference to the hardcore Modi bhakts who have reacted sharply against the Dalits’ audacity to hold public protests. They have given a call for a bandh on April 10, even as some of them called for the disenfranchisement of Dalits. They are clearly opposed to any concession to the Dalits and the OBCs.

The anxiety of the BJP is easily understood. To win elections, Modi has to unite all Hindus against one perceived common enemy, the Muslim. So, the communal cauldron has to be kept on the boil in Bihar, UP, MP and all such places to bring the Dalit, the tribal and the OBC back to the Hindu fold.

This time around, it’s doubtful whether the Dalits and OBCs will again be deceived.