At the 15th Convention of the Uttar Pradesh Scheduled Caste Federation held at the Ramlila ground in Agra on March 18, 1956, BR Ambedkar shared the reasoning behind his assertion that the Scheduled Castes (SC) were not Hindus. He said, “If we had been Hindus, then we would not have been untouchables. Instead, we would have been pujaris (priests) in the temples.” Ambedkar’s words continue to echo, given that untouchability, on a much-diminished scale though, remains a social reality seven decades after it was abolished and its practice in any form declared a punishable offence. Ironically, eradicating untouchability or social isolation of Dalits is no longer a major agenda of any political party though the scheduled castes are a much-wooed vote bloc.

In March this year, Agra, where Ambedkar had installed a statue of Buddha (his ashes are kept near the statue), saw caste tensions escalate after the Rajasthan-based Karni Sena ransacked the house of Samajwadi Party MP and a Dalit, Ramji Lal Suman over his unwarranted remarks about a mediaeval-era Rajput ruler, Rana Sanga. Since then, reports of Dalit wedding processions in UP, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh being attacked or stopped in areas dominated by the upper castes have become frequent.

The contradiction between Dalits being wooed in the electoral battlefield and rejected in the social space is not new. Dalits first emerged as a political constituency in northern India in the 1980s. The 1990s saw growing........

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