Beginning
June 3, Dalit activists from Gujarat have planned a series of public meetings across the state starting with
June 3 at Zanzarka, about 110 kilometres south-west of Ahmedabad, to protest against the alleged failure of elected Dalit representatives to speak up against the attack on Dalits in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Home to Rajya Sabha Dalit BJP MP, Shambhunath Tundiya belongs to Zanzarka, and is considered among Gujarat Dalits their dharmaguru. Said to be belonging to the Garoda community – loosely called “Dalit brahmins” – Tundiya has his religious seat in Zanzarka.
Forwarding a detailed programme of the public meetings, Martin Macwan, founder of Gujarat’s top Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust, which is coordinating, said, these are being organised to “expose” the political conspiracy of silence in the wake of increasing number of caste attacks after the BJP came to power in India, and now in UP.
A leaflet distributed to mediapersons wondered why – despite slogans like ‘Ambedkar Murdabad’ and ‘Ravidas Murdabad’ in Saharanpur, ransacking of the Ravidas temple, chopping a Dalit woman’s hand, torching of 56 Dalit houses, two Dalits gunned down and 17 others suffering serious injuries – Dalit elected representatives from Gujarat have remained silent.
After Zanzarka, a public meeting will be held at Gadhada in Bhavnagar district, on June 6. This constituency is represented in the Gujarat state assembly by social justice and empowerment minister Atmaram Parmar. Parmar is believed to be the main person behind the Government of India ban imposed on foreign funds to Navsarjan Trust in December 2016.
Similar questions would be posed by protestors at different spots where the march goes: Rajkot (June 7), Kadi (June 8), Ahmedabad (June 9), Idar (June 10), Dasada (June 12), Patan (June 13), and Vadodara (June 16).
At the meetings in all these cities, marchers will questions Dalit representatives on what action they have initiated against cow vigilantes -especially with regard to demands for a ban– following the Una incident of July 2016. Questions will also be raised on the silence if the establishment -government and elected representatives- on the the Sanjay Prasad Commission report on the 2012 Thangadh police firing in which three Dalit youths were gunned down. Especially why this report is still not public.
Other questions to be asked are: Dalits face social boycott and are forcibly displaced from their own homes, why are Dalit leaders and elected representatives silent? Manual scavenging practice continues in Gujarat even today, sanitary workers die because of asphyxiation in gutters, why are they silent? How much agricultural land has been allotted to the Dalits in the area /constituencies where these leaders are elected from?
To be held under what has been called Stop Selling Ambedkar Committee, the six page leaflet, prepared for the programme says, “For quite some time, planned efforts are on to suppress Ambedkar’s ideology and Dalit movement.”
Protesting against the effort of saffron outfits to to project Dalit icon BR Ambedkar as a Hinduist, it recalls that it is he alone who organised mass burning of Manusmiriti and converted to Buddhism during the later days of his in order not die as a Hindu.
“There is an effort to project him as anti-Muslim by distorting what he said. Just as Buddhism was destroyed by calling Gautam Buddha as the eighth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, a well-planned conspiracy is on to destroy the ideology of Ambedkar”, the leaflet claims.
Citing how the ruling BJP in UP is undermining Ambedkar, the leaflet said, even at the provocative Ambedkar Shobha Yatra, took out by BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal Sharma, only slogans like “Jai Shri Ram” and “Yogi Yogi” (for UP chief minister Adityanath Yogi) were shouted.
Currently, says the leaflet, Uttar Pradesh police is seeking to find a link between Dalit protesters in Saharnpur led by the Bhim Army with Naxalites, wondering, “The government is thinking of using the National Security Act against the Dalits. The National Security Act will not be used against those who attacked the Dalit locality for five hours with guns, swords and petrol bombs!”
