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Jaipur: In May this year, Vishnu Balai, a 40-year-old Dalit man from Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district, wrote a letter to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, seeking the latter’s help over what Balai termed as attempts by anti-Dalit persons and individuals associated with the RSS to stop him from doing the duties of a priest at a temple in his village.

“You speak of the entire Hindu community and speak of harmony. You are against caste discrimination, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is running a campaign for one well, one crematorium, one temple. However, the swayamsevaks of the Sangh have usurped my temple from me, a Dalit priest…,” Balai wrote in his letter to Bhagwat.

“…and now they want to implicate me and my family in false cases, send us to jail, and even kill us. Your swyamsevaks are behaving in the exact opposite way to what you say,” he added.

‘You, a low-caste man, we will make you drink filthy urine’

On July 16, Balai was allegedly assaulted for the second time in less than a year near the Khakhul Dev temple, when he was preparing to conduct the prayers.

“…came with weapons, iron rods, iron pipes, bamboo sticks and entered the Khakhul Dev temple illegally. They told my husband, ‘You, a low-caste man, we will make you drink filthy urine and throw you out of the temple’,” says the FIR registered at the Asind police station on July 16 on the basis of the complaint filed by Balai’s spouse Sita Devi.

Balai says that he was first taken to the health centre in Asind and then later referred to the district hospital Bhilwara, where he was admitted for a day and was discharged on July 17.

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