10 highlights
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Equality is what the Dalit community demands. It is not seeking to snatch away the earned, meritorious income of other communities. But it is correctly angered and dismayed by the unpaid labour of their ancestors, and indeed of their contemporaries, and by the perpetuation of inequalities.
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The Modi government-which, let us remember, came to power with the lowest vote share (31 per cent) of any political party to win an outright majority-has been at the forefront of destroying Dalit aspirations and hopes. The evidence for this is in the repeated attacks, even lynching of Dalits, across India. Dalit students on Indian campuses find themselves frighteningly vulnerable.
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Mayawati, of course, is the totemic Dalit leader, the tallest hope of the community. She was part of a movement, she helped form the Bahujan Samaj Party, is still the most credible Dalit leader on a national level
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In Tamil Nadu, where the Scheduled Caste population is a whopping 19 per cent, Dalit political parties have preferred to remain in coalition, keeping abreast of the caste arithmetic that would play in their favour in assembly and local government elections. The VCK (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi), for instance, has aligned itself with the Dravidian politics of the DMK and fielded only two candidates-firebrand party president Thirumavalavan, and the writer and editor Ravikumar, who is the party’s general secretary.
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Maharashtrian Dalit politics is perhaps more complicated than elsewhere. There are several parties, each swearing by Ambedkarite and Buddhist ethics.
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What is the choice that faces Dalits in these elections? On the one hand, there are parties with a chequered history who are claiming to have formed a secular, progressive alliance. On the other, there are parties which spew communal hatred, and hope to convince Dalits to join their historical oppressors in sowing further division. Today, while all parties mouth platitudes about an Ambedkarite agenda, social and economic justice, their commitment to Dalit liberation has been non-existent.
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Dalits want jobs, land, equal opportunity, healthcare and access to high-quality education, including foreign study opportunities. But alongside material advancement, Dalits also long to annihilate caste, an anathema to India’s powerful Brahminical parties. These parties have no interest in the welfare of Dalits, but are only too happy to help create a greedy subset of Dalits whose job it is to tell the rest of us that the best we can hope for is a modicum of liberation under the current oppressive framework. To seek minor changes within the system rather than upend it.
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These trained Dalit cadres are sent out to contest elections, tied to furthering a Brahminical agenda. Due to the money they have access to, they can buy support in the Dalit community and receive wider, non-Dalit (anti-Dalit?) support. Such political opportunism undermines the autonomous Dalit project of revolution, of radical reform.
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You can see why a leader like Mayawati means so much to so many Dalits. Here is a leader who employs the likes of Satish Mishra as a token Brahmin, redeploying the principles of the Brahminical parties. She wants to expand her ‘footprint’, taking the BSP into uncharted territories. She has obvious appeal to both OBCs and Muslims. But her struggles with forming alliances, at one low point even allying with the NDA before withdrawing, illuminates the struggle at the heart of Dalit politics.
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Despite all the casteist mockery, elevating an able administrator such as Mayawati to the top office would be an effective way to keep the BJP in check, to counter its fear-mongering. After all, if those who profess to be progressive flinch at the prospect of a strong Dalit woman’s voice at the front, whom would they choose instead?