Image: PTI

Angry over the killing of a girl belonging to the upper-caste Maratha community, a Dalit locality was attack on the outskirts of Korale Khurd village in Satara. Police in Satara district of western Maharashtra have arrested 36 persons for attacking a Dalit locality following the murder of a girl belonging to the upper-caste Maratha community.

The accused, angry over the killing of the girl last month, targeted the houses and vehicles of Dalits on the outskirts of Korale Khurd village on night, police said.

Barely five months ago, in July, the rape and murder of a Maratha girl at Kopardi in Ahmednagar district had sparked off state-wide protests and mobilisation of Marathas.

Yesterday's incident at Korale Khurd followed the murder of 21-year-old Aruna Mohite, allegedly by her estranged lover Siddharth Dhanane (24), a Dalit, police said.

They were in a relationship for the last few years but her parents forcibly married her off to another person, according to the police. Dhanane asked her meet him at Thoseghar on November 30.

During an argument, he allegedly hit her with a stick, killing her on the spot. He then buried the body to destroy evidence, police said. After a missing persons case was lodged, police found that she was in contact with Dhanane on phone, and questioned him.

He allegedly confessed and took the police to the buried body.

Late last night, several members of Maratha community attacked homes of Dalits on the outskirts of the village and torched their vehicles, police said.

Stones were pelted at the houses, window panes of 18 houses were broken and 13 vehicles including three cars were damaged, police said."We have arrested 36 persons. We also held meetings of leaders from both communities," said Sandeep Patil, Superintendent of Police, Satara, speaking to PTI.

The post Maratha-Dalit Violence as Dalit Homes Attacked after Maratha Girl’s Murder appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Till date many of the Dalits, fearful of their lives, have not returned to their homes. No arrests have been made by the police, with the BJP-Shiv Sena government in power in the state presiding over the developments in silence. The Opposition parties — Congress and Nationalist Congress party in particular — have remained silent as well for fear of antagonising the powerful Maratha vote in the state, or conversely the Dalit voters. The result is a shadowy silence with the political leaders ignoring the violence that has continued non-stop. 

Large-scale violence of the Nashik kind also now got little space in what passes for the mainstream media that has remained stuck on war, Pakistan, China and issues that have little to do with the oppressed community on the ground. In fact the Maratha protests across Maharashtra and the subsequent anti-Dalit has found just the odd mention, with more reliance being placed on official versions than on the use of abundant resources to obtain on the spot reports from the ground.

Nashik in Maharashtra has been boiling for days, with aggressive Maratha rallies adding to the insecurity of the Dalit population. A second rumour that a Dalit youth had raped a Maratha minor—very much on the lines seen in parts of Uttar Pradesh where the Muslims youth are held responsible—swept through the area further fueling belligerent Maratha sentiment. This followed the gang rape of a Maratha minor by a Dalit youth in the first instance. 

In the absence of government and even an opposition, it has been left to civil society and Dalit organisations to collate the facts. According to several organisations that have now written to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to take action, the sequence of events in this second phase of violence is as follows: 

– On Saturday,October 8 2016, a rumour spread across social media that a 14-year-old Dalit boy had molested a minor girl in Talegaon (Nashik district, Maharashtra). 

– The guardian minister of Nashik, Girish Mahajan later stated that the medical authorities have reported that rape has not occurred, and the issue is under investigation.

– However, inflammatory messages regarding this incident had already spread. 

– Ambedkarite Buddhist Dalits were immediately targeted by mobs from the dominant Maratha caste. 

– In some parts of Igatpuri, the caste rioters burnt Dalit Buddhist residential houses and vehicles. They entered the houses of the Dalit Buddhist community in Igatpuri brandishing swords and knives and abused and beat them and ransacked their homes. A statue of Dr B. R. Ambedkar was also desecrated.

– From late afternoon of October 9, the caste rioters blocked the Talegoan road. They targeted vehicles displaying Buddhist symbols like Ashok Chakra, pictures of Buddha, Ambedkar, Blue Flags, and Dhamma Flags, and attacked and burnt them. 

– Nearly 20 vehicles were burnt on the Nashik-Agra highway. The caste rioters burnt down nearly 20 homes of Dalit Buddhist families. 

– Most of the Dalit Buddhist families in Talegaon have been forced to leave their homes.

– The Maratha rioters also attacked Dalit Buddhist residents, Buddhist temples and statues of Buddha and Dr BR Ambedkar in Sevgedang, Nanded, Wadiwahne, Gonda, Goti, Ambegoda, Shivli, Khandale, and Gondegaon in Nashik District. 

– Police refused to register any FIRs nor did they arrest a single member of the violent Maratha gangs. The district administration failed in their legal duty to visit the affected areas within 24 hours.

– On Wednesday October 12, in the Nashik Road area, the local Police Department targeted the Dalit Buddhist residents in the name of combing operations. They forcibly entered their houses and beat men, women, and children, injuring many and arresting a number of innocent people. 

– On the same day, around 500 Police Personnel staged a flag march in the Nashik Road area. 

– The Police beat up Dalit Buddhist residents of Bhim Nagar, Kuber society, Nalanda Society, Adarsh Society and various wards. These attacks on the Dalit Buddhist community in Nashik by the police are continuing on a daily basis since then.

This agitation by the Marathas according to local politicians, is now being politically exploited. The fear and terror amongst the Dalit community is palpable but has not evoked a response from the main leaders. The agitation first started following the gang rape and murder of a Maratha girl by Dalits in Kopardi, with large processions being taken out demanding the scrapping of the SC/ST )Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Marathas also demanded reservation. As reported in The Citizen at the time, Dalits had also joined these protests to condemn the rape and murder, and express their solidarity. However, as the protests got more aggressive, the Dalits sensing danger started staying away. 

Within days the protests have taken a anti-Dalit turn, with the police also joining in to ransack houses, and strike terror. The combing operations were restricted to the Dalit community, with not a single attacker from the privileged caste group being arrested. This despite photographs of the vandalising mobs, some of which appear here.

The letter to Fadnavis points out that the “rallies are also extremely well planned and organized and resemble political rallies rather than an organic peoples’ movement.” 

The letter further states: “We are extremely concerned about the emerging reports from the ground of police collusion in atrocities against Dalits in Nashik by Maratha mobs, which have been taking place since 8th October. Not only has not a single arrest been made by the Maratha dominated Police force till date, but we have strong evidence that the Nashik Police is actively beating up Dalit families in their own homes instead of protecting them from the Maratha mob. The BJP-Shiv Sena Government of Maharashtra has been sitting on the fence and allowing this dangerous situation to escalate, while a number of other parties and politicians are covertly providing support to the Maratha agitation. More details of recent events are set out below.” 

And demands: 

– The BJP-Shiv Sena government of Maharashtra takes immediate action to ensure the safety of Dalit citizens 

– Police personnel responsible for Dalit atrocities must be arrested and charged 

– The Marathas involved in systematically instigating and executing violence against Dalits must be immediately arrested and brought to justice. 

– Politicians conspiring and instigating this targeted violence against Nashik’s Dalits must be brought to justice. 

(It is signed by Eugene Culas, Voice of Dalits International,Santosh Dass, Federation of Ambedarite and Buddhist Organisations UK, Ravi Kumar, Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance,Meena Varma, Dalit Solidarity Movement, Saunvedan Aparanti, South Asia Solidarity Group.)

The post Letter to the CM: Act to stop Attacks on Dalits in Nashik appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The protests across Maharashtra, which are drawing lakhs of people, are silent. But they aren't leaderless.

Image credit:  Mridula Chari

Prajakta Sankpal’s voice rang out through the bustling hall in the heart of Kolhapur last week, cutting through the commotion of people entering and leaving, holding private conversations.

“Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj was the one who gave our country the idea of reservations and at that time, all Marathas were included in it,” she thundered in Marathi to a ring of middle-aged and elderly men seated around her. “But when we got independence, Marathas were not included in that list. We need to ask why this injustice was done.”

Sankpal, 20, was auditioning, if a little late. Five young women were to deliver speeches at the Maratha Kranti Morcha scheduled for the next day, as Marathas across Kolhapur district gathered to silently hand over a set of demands to the district collector. The organisers had finished selecting the five speakers some days ago. The youngest of them was five years old. Their photographs had even appeared in local newspapers.

“I read about this only yesterday morning, which is why I came so late,” Sankpal admitted after her performance was over. “The organisers were kind enough to listen to me, but they said that I was too late. Maybe I will get a chance to speak in Mumbai instead.”

Sankpal has been delivering speeches since she was in school, which explains how her declamation slipped so easily into the cadence of political speeches. Caught up with her engineering studies, she had missed the excitement building around the impending rally. But she was not so far removed from events. As a result, her script – which she had hastily written the previous morning – converged almost entirely with the rhetoric that surrounded the rally.

This was an energetic propaganda machine was working itself to its final conclusion.

Prajakta Sankpal. Photo credit: Mridula Chari

Entering the rally

The Maratha Kranti Morcha that took place on October 15 in Kolhapur was the largest rally of a series of similar demonstrations that have been organised in districts across Maharashtra since August 9.

These marches all share certain features. They are all silent: no slogans are raised, no political leaders are visibly involved and there is no visible face leading the rallies. All the rallies end with vehement speeches delivered by young women and then the national anthem. Protestors are discouraged from cheering. The protestors are demanding reservations in educational institutions and government jobs, the dilution of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocity) Act of 1989 that penalises people who abuse Dalits and Adivasis, and relief for farmers burdened with heavy input costs and loans.

Most of these Maratha rallies have attracted anywhere between two lakh and five lakh people, most of them from the district in which the event was held. But the one in Kolhapur, which is the seat of a branch of descendants of the famous Maratha ruler Shivaji, is estimated to have drawn around 40 lakh participants, according to organiser estimates. To put this in perspective, it must be noted that the official population of Kolhapur city is just 5.4 lakh.

The nerve centre for the rally was the two-storied Shivaji Tarun Mandal building in Shivaji Peth in the heart of Kolhapur. The organisation from which the structure takes its name is home to one of the city’s more prestigious football groups. It also hosts a famous Ganapati every September. In October, the building also became the temporary headquarters of the committee that would organise the city’s largest-ever rally.

A poster reminds people at the rally in Kolhapur to attend the largest one planned in Mumbai for after Diwali. Photo credit: Mridula Chari

Wheels turning

Behind the pious declarations of the rallies being leaderless, and by implication free of corruption from hidden agendas, there is a smoothly running mechanism that generates the conformity across districts and manufactures the discourse that channels lakhs of voices into a seemingly unified one.

There are several theories of how the rallies first began. Some say planning began a year ago.

There is also the theory that a group of Marathas gathered on July 14 in Kolhapur to discuss the rallies at a roundtable conference on the future of the Maratha community. There were 500 people at this conference.

Dilip Patil, founder of the Kshatriya Maratha Chamber of Commerce and owner of four steel factories on the outskirts of Kolhapur, was among them. He was introduced to this reporter by several people at the Shivaji Tarun Mandal as one of the key organisers of the rally.

Patil described the core membership of the organisers of the conference as a thinktank, which included poets, journalists, authors, industrialists and agricultural leaders. They were careful to avoid people associated with any political party.

The conference took place a day after news of a gang rape and murder at Kopardi in Ahmednagar district broke. This incident, in which three Dalits are alleged to have gang raped and then murdered a 15-year-old Maratha girl, has become the flash point for the community. The three Dalits are alleged to have threatened the girl’s family by claiming that they would file a case against them under the Prevention of Atrocity Act if they complained to the police about the rape, which is why Marathas are now demanding that the act be diluted.

The meeting itself had been planned some months ago, Patil said, even before the agitations of Patels in Gujarat and Jats in Haryana – other dominant castes that also want government assistance. The idea, Patil said, was that the Maratha community was floundering and needed direction. For that, it would be best for Maratha organisations that had gathered to share resources and plan together.

“To organise the community, we had to raise feelings,” Patil said. “Kopardi helped us to materialise that. When we heard the news at the conference, the inner voices of all the people was raised and that was when we first began to come together.”

Dilip Patil. Photo credit: Mridula Chari
 

No room for politicians?

Their first rally in Ahmednagar in July was a regular morcha, complete with slogans and leadership. The response, however was cold, and only one lakh people attended.

“Our thinktank people thought then this should be a mook morcha [silent rally] and that if all the political people were out, more people would join,” Patil explained.

The groups were tapping into an evidently growing anxiety of Marathas across the state. Their perception was that while political and economic power is certainly in Maratha hands, it is concentrated only in a few families. Most others have not seen these benefits.

“The government was made of our people for 50 or 60 years,” Avinash Naik, from Hervad, 50 km from Kolhapur, who attended the Kolhapur rally on October 15, told Scroll.in. “So the leaders said the Marathas are our people only, who else will they go to? They took us for granted and just took out the caste card at election. This is our way of showing them.”

While the organisers claimed they were non-political, that did not prevent politicians from frequenting the rally headquarters at Shivaji Tarun Mandal. Among the people who came “as Marathas, not as party people” were politicians from the Nationalist Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Uttam Korade, associated with the Nationalist Congress Party, spoke of his considerations in coming there.

“The public hopes that a new person will do more than the old one, so it is good that they sent NCP out of power this time and see the other side,” he said. “They think they will get 100% work from the new person, but now they are getting not even 20%. Then in the next election, they will be happy with the 60% of the Congress-NCP. Now I am here to support them because they are my community.”

Korade’s son was unable to get admission into an engineering college without him having to pay a capitation fee.

“To be honest, there is very little education talent in the Marathas,” Korade said. “But even the 5% of the community that has talent cannot get admissions in colleges. At least I have money so I can make it happen, but what about the poor?”

Several parents dressed their children in saffron accessories for the rally. Their main concern was reservations. Photo credit: Mridula Chari
 

Sticking to the script

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on crafting the narrative in the minds of people who were to attend the rallies. In Kolhapur, young women and girls were despatched to villages to hold “janjagruti” discussions – or discussions to awaken the people. Armed with a set script, these volunteers were to rattle off the list of demands to village residents and coax them into attending.

This they did in large numbers, and stayed on message. At the Kolhapur rally, organisers encouraged people to speak to journalists only of the main demands and not of their personal lives. They used social media too. When the mainstream Marathi media did not cover their first three rallies, the organisations called for a boycott of one of these outlets on Twitter and Facebook. After this, Patil claimed, they have gotten solid, consistent coverage.

The decision to use Kopardi as a rallying point was taken on the day of the Kolhapur conference. The group also attempted to make it clear that only this incident and no other would be used – in order to keep emotions under control.

The script has already slipped once. In early October, there was an incident in Nashik where initial rumours suggested that a Dalit teenager had allegedly raped a five-year-old Maratha girl, Though doctors confirmed after medical examination that she had not been raped, violence broke out across the district. But Patil claims that this was an aberration, and that the group did their best to ensure that the unrest did not travel outside Nashik.

“We have to raise spirit only, not the instinct to fight,” Patil said. “After Kopardi, there were incidents at Pathardi and Nashik. Why do you think nobody at this rally is talking about them? Because our social media team has made sure not to let any message of that circulate.”

Volunteers in yellow cordon off a narrow path to allow protestors stuck farther down the road to move ahead. Photo credit: Mridula Chari
 

Standing against it

Despite the community's anger, it ignores a simple fact: no matter how poor a Maratha might be, that person will have more social power at the village level than Dalits or members of the Other Backward Classes. This, claims Shravan Deore, a leader who has been organising silent counter-rallies of OBCs in Marathwada, is the reason the Maratha events have been so well-attended – to the point that even certain OBC and Muslim groups have endorsed and joined the marches.

“In any village, the Patil is the zamindar or watandar [land owner] and does not even have to hold political position to be dominant,” explained Deore. “All they have to do is put a vehicle in the village and everyone will have to come, whether they are Mali or Teli. … The entire private and government machinery is in their support. Aisa unka morcha yun hi nikal jata hai. This is how their rallies happen without any effort.”

That is also why the Dalit and OBC counter-rallies so far have seen fewer numbers gathering, he said. It was simply difficult to get people to spend their own money to come.

“All of us initially supported the Maratha morcha in Aurangabad because we all thought that what happened in Kopardi was very wrong,” Deore said. “But when we saw their demands, insecurity began to grow in our people.

Around one lakh people attended an OBC rally against the Marathas in Nashik on October 3. Dalit and OBC groups have also held separate silent rallies in Beed and Jalna. Some organisations plan to organise a rally in Mumbai as well, but planning for this is still underway.

“Be very clear," said Deore. For the Marathas this is not a war against a party, ideology or religion. This is a caste war. But we also have some tradition of fighting, so we are not going to sit silently.”

A water stall with the images of Chhatrapati Shahu and BR Ambedkar above it courtesy of Rajesh Latkar stands unfrequented early in the morning of the rally. Photo credit: Mridula Chari

This Article was first published on Scroll.in

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A Spark and the Blaze
On July 13, a 14-year old school girl belonging to the Maratha caste was brutally gang raped and murdered by allegedly four drunkards who belonged to a Dalit caste at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, infamous otherwise for caste atrocities on the Dalits. All the four culprits were arrested almost immediately. The incident evoked the state wide condemnation as it deserved. But during the monsoon session of the assembly, leader of the opposition RadhakrishnaVikhe-Patil who comes from Ahmednagar stressed the caste angle and attributed the incident to the lack of protection (for Marathas) such as provided to the Dalits under the PoA Act. It was ludicrous, to say the least, as it suggested that the Marathas were vulnerable to atrocities by Dalits, and mischievous because his own district has had a shameful history of most infamous atrocities on the Dalits by the Marathas.

In recent years, a 17-year-old Dalit boy at Kharda in Jamkhed tehsil was brutally lynched to death in April 2014; in January 2013, three men of a family in Sonai village were murdered; in October 2014, three members of a Dalit family were killed at Javkheda; just to name a few of them. The Kopardi incident as such is an exception in terms of Maratha being a victim. 
Several protests and bandhs were observed across Ahmednagar district to demand the speedy arrest of and death penalty to the culprits. Several social and political organisations also staged protests. But after a month, the protests assumed a very different form and content under the banner of Maratha Kranti Morcha. The demand for speedy justice for the victim was overtaken by the demand for reservation for Marathas in education and jobs and repeal of the PoA Act. New demands like implementation of the Shiv Smarak in the Arabian Sea and taking back the Maharashtra Bhushan award from a Brahmin bard Babasaheb Purandare for allegedly insulting Jijamata, were added as demands. The people collected in hundreds of thousands and marched silently. No leader, no speeches and no slogans. Several such silent rallies have taken place, each being larger than the previous one; the last being planned with 100 lakh people at Mumbai. This novel way of the show of strength sans leader and sans organization has stunned political observers.

Politics of Silence

These silent rallies are supposedly supported by individual professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc., and are executed by the faceless youth who would not allow any established politician. But the sheer scale of them makes this theory unconvincing. News of some NCP politicians admitting logistical support has already been leaked. The people who conceived this form of struggle and maintain its integrity may not show up but they do exist. It is a very creative strategy that used the spark of Kopardi to create a blaze among the fragmented Marathas across parties. Its silence effectively communicated their anger and more importantly, it forged the consciousness of victimhood, which would be lasting political asset for the coming days. The violent protests that the Marathas normally resort to, priding on their warrior pedigree, could not have accomplished these objectives. Violent protests are not scaleable, replicable over the large areas, controllable and are prone to be repressed by the inimical government. This strategy, however, does not obviate the need for huge finance which is not possible without support of political parties.The party that backs it is the one that expects to benefit most.

The Marathas who are almost one third of Maharastrta’s population, are not a homogenous community. Historically they evolved from the farming caste of Kunbis who took to military service in medieval times and started assuming a separate identity for themselves. Even then they claimed a hierarchy of 96 clans. But the real differentiation has come from the post-independence development process, creating classes within the caste.

A tiny but very powerful section of elites that came to have control over cooperatives of sugar, banks; educational institutes, owning factories and politics, called gadhivarcha (topmost strata) Maratha, has its own political outfit in the NCP. The next section comprising relatively populous section of owners of land, distribution agencies, transporters, contracting firms, and controlling secondary cooperative societies, are the wadyavarcha (well-off strata) Maratha, is with the Congress and the BJP. And the third, comprising the balance of the population of small farmers, are the wadivarcha (lower strata) Maratha who is with Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), etc.

Enthused with the Patidar agitation that forced the removal of Anandiben Patel, the NCP that faced its worst humiliating defeat in the last election saw an opportunity to use Maratha anger over the Kopardi incident for mobilizing them through seemingly apolitical protests. The consolidation of the Marathas across strata is bound to benefit the NCP the most, which is seen as exclusively Maratha party. But other parties too, would imagine an enhancement in their vote share. Only the BJP has a big reason to worry, about likely erosion of its Maratha vote base and share because of the incumbency factor, and the fact of its chief minister being Brahmin, particularly in the short term: the impact on the forthcoming civic polls. It would hope to recover grounds partly through coalition partners like Shiv Sena and partly through the vote of Dalits due to their increased sense of insecurity.

Dalits themselves are a fragmented lot left with little political choice and hence may not be a significant factor. BJP has Athawale as its agent; Congress is complacent that Dalits would not see the Hindutva forces as their friends politically, and the other bunch, the rest  do not care a damn about Ambedkarite Dalits as it thinks that ‘other’ Dalits are with them.

Toxic Logic
The demand for reservation for the Marathas has been around since 1997. The government-first appointed committee under the retired judge R M Bapat, who had rejected granting them OBC status in its July 2008 report. The state government instead of rejecting or accepting that report appointed a new committee under the retired judge B P Saraf. Whatever happened to that committee is not known but the state government set up another special committee in the run up to the last elections headed by then minister for industry, Narayan Rane, himself a Maratha. Rane predictably recommended 16% reservation for the Marathas. The eager Congress-NCP government got it accepted by the cabinet and hurriedly issued an ordinance to ensure swift implementation. To its misfortune, the Bombay high Court stayed this decision when a public interest litigation (PIL),  objecting to the grant of OBC status to the Marathas, simply because total reservations in the state would go up to 73%, exceeding the limit set by the Supreme Court.     

The technicalities apart, the main argument of the Marathas is that the majority of them are backward. This argument is axiomatic, applicable to any caste or community including Brahmins and pricks at the logic of backwardness as the basis of reservations. It is true that majority of the Marathas are small land holders, and while taking pride in their socio-political dominance, have been neglected in access to education within the changing environment.

Over the years, with the mounting agrarian crisis, mainly due to neoliberal policies of the government, accentuated by the crop failures in Maharashtra in previous three seasons, they have experienced severe erosion of their status. In contrast, the Dalits who had little or no land, got educated following the leadership of Babasaheb Ambedkar and his sharp and repeated emphasis on getting educated before getting organized (shiksha, sanghatan aur sangharsh) got jobs and live a relatively secure life. The Marathas grudge this as their suppression of the Dalits no more remains unchallenged. They do not see that their elite (Marathas) who dominated the state power (12 out of 18 chief ministers of the state were Marathas), and the economy and educational sectors under their leadership is now responsible for their misery. As a community, they still own most lands (32% of Marathas owning in excess of 75% of land) and dominate all spheres of public life. They do know that it is not easy to establish themselves as a socially and educationally backward community to be included into the OBC. If they do, the OBCs who are already up in arms against them will agitate further. Therefore, they are subtly demanding scrapping of the entire reservation system itself.  And that seems to be their real agenda.

The other demand asking for the repeal of the PoA Act is a demand directly pitted against the Dalits and is not at all sustainable. The oft-repeated argument of its misuse based on acquittal(s) is self defeating. The fact is that the entire state apparatus is directly dominated by them, which has rendered this Act toothless in implementation as case after case reveals. The rest of the damage has been inflicted by the judiciary. The conviction still hovers around single digits within Maharashtra. These abysmal figures are testimony enough to see the impact (or lack of) this law. The very fact that the Dalit victim of atrocity, unless backed by their community, finds it impossible to get his/her complaint registered, shows up the argument of its misuse to be mischievous. There are, on the contrary, few cases where Marathas bigwigs have resorted to misusing this Act using some Dalit as a proxy to settle scores against their/his caste rival.
When the dominating community develops a grievance it could lead to systemic change provided it transcends its narrow community identity. If not, it could signal a civil war. One hopes that Maratha youth would avoid the latter.

(The article first appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly and is being reproduced here, with some editing, with the permission of the author)
 

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