However, for Dalits of Bhagana, democracy has already lost in its quest to provide them with their right to vote.

Scared of being attacked by the dominant members of their village, around 500 Dalit voters of Haryana’s Bhagana village skipped casting their votes on the Assembly elections on Monday.

These voters have been living outside their village since 2012 when following a land dispute between the Dalits and the dominant caste members of their village, the former were socially boycotted by the upper-castes resulting in the exodus of 138 Dalit families from the village.

Despite the long passage of time, the Dalits say, that the animosity between them and some of the upper-caste people of their village hasn’t subsided, particularly because of the insistence of the protesters to demand prosecution of the people who had made them leave the village.

Given the circumstances, Satish Kajla, who has been leading the protest movement since it started in 2012, had requested the administration to shift some of the polling booths in the village near the Dalit homes. The demand, however, was not met.

“In the last Lok Sabha elections also, I had demanded that the place be declared as extremely sensitive and requested that the polling booths be made near the Dalit Basti. The administration declared the place extremely sensitive but didn’t accept our second demand,” said Satish Kajla.

Kajla said that this time he wrote to the District Election Officer and Central Election Commission about the fear of Dalit voters in casting their ballots in polling booths located near the residences of upper-caste people of Bhagana. But his demand was again turned down.

“They didn’t even declare the village as extremely sensitive like in the last Lok Sabha election,” claimed Kajla.
 
If a polling booth is declared sensitive or extremely sensitive, then additional security personnel must be deployed at the booths. 
However, Kajla said that problem is not just at the polling booths only.

“If the booths are located at the other corner of the village, then we have to walk through the rows of houses of the same people who had persecuted us earlier. They still don’t let any opportunity slip by to hurl abuse and threaten us. Hence it’s important that the polling booths should be made near our houses,” Kajla added.

With a voter population of around 4,000, Bhagana has approximately 1,200 Dalit votes, out of which about 500 live outside of the village.

The Dalits who live outside Bhagana remain in contact with those Dalits who live in the village. However, physical contact rarely takes place due to the tense situation in their village.

Jagdish Kajla, a youth from Bhagana who now lives in Hisar, says that even fulfilling their religious and cultural customs is difficult for them as the village upper-castes don’t leave any opportunity to humiliate them.

“In our tradition when a person dies, people donate some firewood from each household of the community for the cremation. However in Bhagana, when we try to do that, the village upper-castes don’t let us collect wood from village land. So the enmity is still there,” Jagdish said.

Dalit rights activist Rajat Kalsan described the government decision to not install separate booths for the Dalits of Bhagana as ‘prejudiced’.

“Right to vote is a constitutional right of every citizen. The government can make a special arrangement for security forces to be deployed in difficult places to help people cast their votes. But the fact that it ignored a similar demand of a section of the population with genuine reasons explains either the government thinks that they (Dalits) will not vote for them or perhaps just don’t care about them,” said Kalsan.

Kalsan said that there was a need to hear the fears of the marginal community of the village.

 “In a place like Bhagana which has witnessed one of the most heinous caste atrocities in the country’s history, the administration should have heard the Dalits and tried to ameliorate their grievances. Their fears can’t just be removed by the bureaucratic thought process,” Kalsan added.

Courtesy: Two Circle

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Representational image. | Image Courtesy: Latestly.in

With the completion of polling for 51 seats on May 6, people in 424 parliamentary constituencies have voted in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Newsclick’s data analytics team has analysed previous Assembly election results and, after factoring in state-wise swings in votes, it appears that the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is headed for a debacle getting only 124 seats compared with 251 in the 2014 elections. The Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is likely to increase its tally dramatically from just 55 last time to 169 this time.

Besides these two alliances, several other parties or regional alliances which are aligned against the NDA and likely to support the UPA after final results are declared, are also projected to increase their tally. Among them, the strongest showing appears to be that of the Gathbandhan (Alliance) in Uttar Pradesh which will increase its seats from a mere four in 2014 to 37 this time round. Out of the 80 seats in UP, 27 are yet to go to polls and the Gathbandhan’s tally is likely to increase further. The BJP and its allies had won 73 of the 80 seats last time.

NDA includes Shiv Sena, JDU, TDP and various smaller parties. UPA includes NCP, RJD, JDS and various smaller parties.
Source: Projections from ECI Assembly/LS results

Other states in which the BJP-led NDA is facing defeat include Tamil Nadu, where its current alliance partner AIADMK is getting resoundingly defeated with rival DMK alliance (part of UPA) getting as many as 28 of the 38 seats that have completed polling, with polling deferred for one seat.

In the last two phases of polling, significant BJP/NDA strongholds went to polls including 13 seats in Madhya Pradesh, seven seats in Jharkhand and all 25 seats of Rajasthan. However, these projections indicate that the BJP is likely to lose significantly in these states too, ceding 12 seats in Rajasthan, six in Jharkhand and four in MP.

The Left parties are likely to increase their tally from 10 to 19 in these five phases. Other parties gaining seats are YSR Congress in (YSRCP) Andhra Pradesh and Trinamool Congress (AITC) in West Bengal, where BJP may also increase its tally.

The projections take into account the discontent against the Modi government on various significant issues like aggravated farmers’ distress, unemployment, lack of increase in wages, industrial slow down, increase in corruption and the communal ideology of the ruling BJP (and RSS) which has laid siege on minorities and dalits/adivasis, fostering violence against these deprived sections. Swings against the Modi government have been tempered to account for discontent against state govts. run by opposition parties wherever necessary.

The continued slide of NDA as the election process inches across the country indicates that on May 23, the results are likely to throw up a severely depleted NDA, with insufficient numbers to form a government.

[Data analysis by Peeyush Sharma and mapping by Glenissa Pereira]

Courtesy: News Click

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Image Courtesy:The Indian Express

In a fascist regime, power is generally centralised in or around one person, and such a rule unfailingly tries to convince us that it is in our best interest to be “taken care of”. The fascist always elevates his own nation and people above others to establish a false sense of superiority. They try to establish the supposed supremacy of their race, heritage, history, or scriptures. They openly suppress opposition within the nation; any dissent or protest is met with crushing force. In a fascist regime, regressive nationalism takes centre-stage. It is a nationalism that is narrow in approach, propagating a parochial patriotism. The fascist always dictates, personally or through the party, — eventually killing the spirit of democracy. They use democracy as a rubber stamp. Unfortunately, we are becoming the victims of such a fascist regime that is trying to gather strength using a mix of new and conventional means. The Indian National Congress has also been decidedly fascist in the past. The Emergency, Operation Blue Star, and press censorship are some of the irrefutable instances of its fascist attitude. But today’s situation is somewhat different. It has correctly been summed up by the well-known sculptor Anish Kapoor: ‘India is being ruled by a Hindu Taliban.’

The present government and its associate organisations have mastered the art of dubbing anybody in the country ‘anti-national’. When about 100 distinguished people, decided, individually, to return their national awards to protest against the cultural and communal intolerance of the establishment, they were described as part of a ‘manufactured revolt’, implying the influence of the Congress. But when this slander did not cut any ice, and the protest created international impact, they were labelled anti-nationals. This label is a useful weapon because it can easily be used to exploit public sentiment. Two ridiculous arguments were put forward at the time of the award return in 2015. The first was that the return of awards embarrassed the nation internationally. Actually, the movement created goodwill, in response to people of conscience raising their voices against injustice in a working democracy. The second reason presented for branding them anti-national was that by returning awards, they had insulted the State of India which had given the honour. This idea was disseminated from all possible platforms, and at the highest possible decibel level, to malign the awardees. But the fascists again failed, because the writers and artistes didn’t throw away the awards. They simply returned them in a dignified manner and for a compassionate cause. They only wanted the killers of Kalburgi and those of Dabholkar and Pansare (and later Gauri Lankesh) to be arrested and punished. They were not an organised group at that time, and almost every awardee responded to his or her conscience. There was no campaign to create a group. Unlike the sympathisers and supporters of this government, none of the awardees spoke against the minorities or the majority, nor did any of them try to divide society on a religious, caste or regional basis. No author/artiste/filmmaker ever showed any sign of intolerance and none of them stooped to the level of online trolling that they had to face. This trolling was supported, if not sponsored, by the fascists.

Media is always managed by the fascists and it was done very skilfully. A number of channels began labelling the writers, film makers and painters as ‘sickulars’. Gradually, the present government raised jingoism to a level where anybody speaking against the BJP Government became anti-national. The cacophony of this so-called ‘anti-nationalism’ paved the way for its cruel use against Muslims and Christians. If you eat beef you are anti-national. If you don’t say ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, you are anti-national. The rulers openly declared that they will not pursue the Congress policy of Muslim appeasement, but the ‘development of all’ was practically absent. Instead, they continued trying to provoke Muslims in different ways. To keep their caste-Hindu vote bank intact, they gradually began equating Muslims with Pakistan. Thanks to their rants and contrary to reality, Muslims, anti-nationals and Pakistanis are established now as inter-changeable terms. Rabindranath Tagore had the last word on such a narrow nationalism in a 1908 letter to his friend, A M Bose: “Patriotism can’t be our final spiritual shelter. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”When Einstein equated nationalism with measles on the face of children, he was talking about a situation that is exactly equal to ours.

I believe that the so-called patriotism or nationalism of the present dispensation is just a veil on the face of fascism. It is just a veil with which they wish to fool the public and sweep the polls. It is time that we unveil them. It is time we reveal and see their real face by casting our votes wisely.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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