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New Delhi: What could be more telling of the dire conditions in which Dalits live in India than the attack on Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai on Monday (October 6)?

A senior advocate, presumably belonging to a dominant caste group, with barely any noticeable professional record, thought it was appropriate of him to fling his shoe at the highest chair of the Supreme Court, in the name of ‘sanatan dharma’.

That chair is currently occupied by a judge who also happens to be India’s only second Dalit chief justice.

It did not escape attention that the shoe-hurling targeted someone who was the son of a renowned leader, a prominent Ambedkarite who was present when B.R. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in 1956.

This attack lays bare the deepest fault line in India currently.

On one side are those who swear by the Constitution that has made possible for a person from the most marginalised group to claim the topmost judicial position, and on the other are those who resent this very prospect of such a person being able to inhabit a position higher than his own feudal, and thus traditionally superior, social identity.

Rakesh Kishore, a 71-year-old senior advocate with access to the CJI’s court, apparently was offended by Chief Justice Gavai’s recent remark during a case in which he dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) as a “publicity interest litigation”.

The PIL sought to restore a dilapidated statue of Lord Vishnu in one of the UNESCO heritage sites in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh. While dismissing it as a stunt, Justice Gavai remarked, “Go and ask the deity himself to do something. If you are saying that you are a strong devotee of Lord Vishnu, then you pray and do some meditation.”

The dismissal itself didn’t stop Kishore, who is coincidentally at the fag end of his career, to indulge in an act that was as crass as throwing a shoe at the CJI. What could have been more convenient for him than to invoke “sanatan dharma” to defend the indefensible?

The police later said that he had brought........

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