Listen to this article:

On August 15, 2016, thousands of people belonging to Scheduled Castes from across Gujarat took a collective public oath to reject caste-imposed occupations, including discarding dead animal carcasses and manual scavenging. They demanded land in lieu of centuries of their unpaid labour, threatening more agitations.

This historic event happened in Una, a town in the Gir Somnath district in Saurashtra region, where four Dalit men were tied up and assaulted publicly a month prior. Dominant caste gau rakshaks alleged that these men were spotted slaughtering a cow, but the truth was that they were performing a caste-imposed occupation; they were handed over a dead cow and they were doing what was needed to dispose of the carcass. This occupation has been forced on SC communities across the country, and is institutional.

Something that had never happened before followed in a state that has been loyal to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 1995. The Dalits brought the BJP government in Gujarat to a standstill, coming out in huge numbers across districts. This was in spite of the mainstream media completely blacking out the mass movement. 

I saw Dalit groups dispose of carcasses of dead animals in government buildings in open defiance. This is from a state which had documented 100 forms of untouchability that was being practised at the time, and probably still continues now. This is also a state which had over the years forced loyalty from a deeply segregated and unequal society across caste lines, bringing them together as “Hindus” while orchestrating anti-Muslim spectacles, such as the 2002 violence. This is despite the fact that Gujarat’s social development indicators are abysmal, and the only ones who have really gained out from BJP’s rule are the traditional capitalist castes, making communalism nearly imperative to breed loyalty. 

A year before the Una incident, the Patidars – a dominant caste of Gujarat – had organised a statewide agitation against the BJP, demanding reservation. Hardik Patel had emerged from this campaign. It was followed by Alpesh Thakore, who created the Other Backward Classes’ Kshatriya Thakor Sena, and OSS (OBC, SC, ST) Ekta Manch to counter the Patidar demands. 

Eventually, both Alpesh Thakore and Hardik Patel joined the BJP. Both of their movements saw mobilisations in lakhs across the state, yet none of them broke loyalties to question the almost “unvanquishable Modi’s BJP”, as most people there termed it, the way the Dalits of Gujarat did, in spite of being a much smaller number in population. 

Jignesh Mevani emerged from the Una movement, organising a statewide rally culminating in the town on August 15, 2016. Thousands of Dalits took the pledge that day. They didn’t just break away from the BJP loyalty, but also from a country that demanded caste slavery as national duty.

Dehumanisation of Dalits continues

In India, Dalit leaders I’ve spoken to from across the country during various agitations say that it is natural for them to be the most defiant. Even as Dr B.R. Ambedkar set safeguards to ensure equality, and compliance against caste atrocities and caste-based sexual violence, dehumanisation of Dalits in all forms of work continue to this day. Even senior politician Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress president and leader of opposition of the Rajya Sabha, wasn’t spared. 

After his participation in a rally at Uttarakhand’s Haldwani, a group of Brahmins from the state carried out a purification ritual publicly. Such incidents are so regular that Dalits have, time and again, had to militate against the violence, with nearly no support from other groups or the media.

When the Mandal Commission was deliberating on reservation, a strange alliance was starting to form between Dalits and OBCs, even though these two communities had always been at loggerheads. OBCs had turned into the foot soldiers of Brahmanism, they made sure Dalits were mistreated in line with the diktats of caste hierarchy, just so that some OBCs could enjoy piecemeal benefits doled out by Brahmins. This new shift worried the BJP to no end, who were trying to mobilise the largest group in the country as ‘Hindus’ in order to position them as a coalition that would eventually target Muslims across the country. BJP worked extra hard at this time to create inroads into major OBC groupings. 

Take for example, the Tulu region in southern coastal Karnataka. The communalism project has been running at the behest of the Saraswat Brahmins, the Arya Samaj, and eventually, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), since the 1800s. There were many attempts to turn the Tulu population against the Beary Muslims for decades, but it only became successful when the........

© The Wire