Newly elected independent MLA from Vadnagar, Gujarat has demanded the removal of union minister Anant Kumar Hegde from the Narendra Modi cabinet for abusive and derogatory statements against Dalits across Karnataka. The minister has reportedly insulted Dalit activists who were staging a protest against his statements in Ballari district by calling them “barking stray dogs”. Jignesh Mevani, in a press release issued today has stated that ‘this shows the brahmanical and evil mindset of the Sangh Parivar and its functionaries from top to bottom which has no place for Dalits.’
Mevani has strongly condemned the vitriolic statements recently made by Union Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Ananth Kumar Hegde in various public programmes held across Karnataka targeting Indian Constitution, secularists, writers, Dalits and other oppressed communities.
Mevani states that what the minister has said is clearly a painful assault on the dignity and self respect of the dalits of the country. More over this is an offence under Atrocities Act and hence there must be and FIR against him and he be arrested earliest.
All set to be sworn in as MLA in the Gujarat assembly tomorrow, January 23, Mevani in this strongly worded statement has demanded:
“I demand Prime Minister Narendra Modi to drop this man who called Dalits as dogs, from his Council of Union Ministers.
“Clearly Hegde, who is opposed to the Indian Constitution and the values enshrined in it, had no right to continue as a Minister and even the member of Lok Sabha that functions in accordance with the same Constitution.
“I also demand the President of India who himself is a Dalit and a supreme custodian of the Indian Constitution to consider the seriousness of the remarks and disqualify the minister from his Lok Sabha membership.
“I also expect the election commission to take note of these anti-Constitutional acts of the minister and take necessary action to ensure that he is removed from Lok Sabha and also to see that he would no longer contest any elections in future.
“I call upon the Dalits and other oppressed communities to defeat the BJP that views Dalits as dogs in the coming elections of Karnataka.
The young MLA adds in this press note, that, this is not the first time that the minister has made the ‘manuvadi’ (upper caste) agenda of the BJP clear. At a public programme held in Koppal district last month, the minister had said “the very purpose of the BJP coming to power is to change the Constitution of India”. In the same meeting, he had also described secularists as “people who don’t have an identity of their parental blood” and proposed the changes in the Constitution to do away with the idea of “secularism”.
Later on, when there was a big furore against it, BJP tried to distance itself from his statement, and he attempted to cover it up. But some top leaders of BJP justified it by saying that several amendments had been made to the Constitution.
In this context it is important to remember that just a month ago, even the Pejavar seer of Udupi Mutt which openly practices caste discrimination among its devotees had expressed a similar opinion in the Dharma Sansad. The agenda of the Manuvadi-corporatist BJP is very clear. What they are striving to do is to bring amendments to Constitution not to make it more egalitarian, but to replace it by Brahminical social and political order. Ananth Kumar Hegde’s statement reflects the real objective of BJP and Sangh Pariwar.
Minister Hegde is the same person who had encouraged his followers to cleanse the stage with cow urine in his home constituency. Outspoken film actor and critic of Hindutva politics Mr. Prakash Rai has too rightly condemned the religious bigotry of the Hindutva fanatics.
Addressing another meeting in Belagavi on January 16, he insulted writers and intellectuals by terming them a group of people who call themselves as intellectuals only to seek government benefits.
Earlier Ananth Kumar had openly called for the elimination of Islam faith from the world by stating that, as long as Islam exists on the earth, there would be no peace in the world.