‘You’re an Untouchable’: The Apathy of Dalits in Gujarat

Dalit Scholar Kumud Pawade in her autobiography quoted a phrase ‘What comes with birth and can’t be cast off by dying- is that caste?’ Even 65 years after independence, this socio-political rhetoric seems so prudent when we look into the current pathetic condition of Dalits especially in the state of Gujarat. It is true that even after so much of efforts, pan-India we’ve not been able to remove caste inequalities from our society. But in majority parts of the country atleast there is an effort, which clearly and very evidently missing when it comes to Gujarat. For Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate national issues are of prime concern but in that bid for over so many years now, he even failed to acknowledge the apathy of dalits in his own state. For him the society is a homogenous entity, but that society filled with homogeneity seems to have no place for poor dalits in Gujarat.

All this amidst Modi and his party’s tall claim of development and projecting him as an OBC leader as he proudly announced himself in UP rallies. But while this OBC wears designer clothes, dalits in his own state are so prone to discrimination that even to get a haircut, they need to travel miles. While they BJP have identified Muslim votes as his biggest hurdle, they seem to have forgotten that they still aren’t assured of the support of people placed low in the caste hierarchy of India. Consequently, as Modi has taken a headlong plunge into politics of inclusiveness, the Dalits in his own state seem to have taken it upon themselves to battle caste discrimination, with their CM failing to intervene.

In a report by DNA, the dalits' entry into the village temple of Goddess Meldi Ma was met with severity by the 'upper' caste villagers who restricted entry of over 13 dalit families from paying obeisance to the deity. The dalits' entry into the village temple of Goddess Meldi Ma was met with severity by the 'upper' caste villagers who restricted entry of over 13 dalit families from paying obeisance to the deity. The incident was reported with the police with the help of Navsarjan trust, an NGO working for the marginalised people. Matters turned sour when some dalit families wanted to enter the village temple. Not surprisingly, though Khoda Koli, the husband of sarpanch Jasuben Koli and the deputy sarpanch Samant Koli were arrested, they were later released on bail.

On September 2^nd of this year, minor Dalit girl was gang raped by at least five villagers in Khandiya village in Chuda Taluka of Surendranagar district. As per Police investigation report, accused Ravirajsinh Zala, Dasrathsinh Zala, Rajbha Vakhatsinh, Natubha Vakhatsinh and Vinodbhai Solanki allegedly raped daughter of Budhabhai Valmiki  on outskirts of Khandiya village. She was again raped in Village primary school. She was later taken in Dhandhuka and again raped. Later two accused left her at relatives home. While she informed her parent about incident, she was taken to nearest Government hospital and later shifted to Surendranagar Civil hospital. Girl’s parent has filed a case against accused.  The police are conducting further investigation and hunting for ran away accused.

Another Indian Express report refers to the mass conversion of Dalits in Saurashtra to Buddhism to escape the stigma of belonging to a lower caste, once considered untouchables in India. Explaining why 60 families in Vishal Hadmatiya village converted to Buddhism, 65-year-old Dahya Vaghela tells The Indian Express: “Local barbers refuse to give me a haircut or shave, saying that he will not get any upper caste customers. So I have to travel all the way to Junagadh. We also have a separate temple,” he says. The story goes on to explain how Dalit children are not allowed to sit together with upper-caste children while eating and upper caste villagers not visiting tea stalls run by Dalits. Dalits contributes a meagre 7 percent of votes in Gujarat and hence is not a political force to reckon with. “Dalits don’t have the numbers to directly influence an Assembly poll, so they generally tend to go with the majority community. The religious conversion, if any, will not affect their political affiliation,” Jetha Solanki shamelessly, Dalit leader and BJP MLA from Kodinar, told Indian Express.  However, discrimination against the Dalits has been a reality buried in Gujarat’s development clamour for a while now.

In a survey conducted in 2011, where 200 Dalit children and 65 Non-Dalit children were interviewed in 12 villages in Gujarat and Rajasthan, it was revealed that more than 90 percent of Dalit children have faced discrimination while procuring medication at government hospitals clinics. More than 80 percent of Dalit children have faced discrimination while trying to avail something as basic as pathological tests. Another report about Saurashtra from April this year points out how in Saurashtra itself Dalits faced an acute water crisis as they are not allowed to draw water from the Narmada. The reservoir that supplies water to some of these villages was also never connected with the Narmada water pipeline. Fearing backlash from the upper castes the Dalits mostly kept mum till the water shortage became unbearable and they had to complain to the deputy collector of the district.

Dalit leader and writer Kancha Ilaiah, in an article questioning the how fit the Gujarat model of development is, says that a state like Andhra Pradesh has far more beneficial policies for SC/STs and OBCs and the government spends decidedly more on the development of backward tribes than Gujarat. He points how that the caste hierarchy in Gujarat continues to be so strong that no strong political enterprise was ever encourage or given leeway in the state, even under the chief ministership of Narendra Modi, himself an OBC member. Ilaiah says: “The Gujarat government’s apathy towards tribals, leave alone minorities, speaks volumes. In fact, there is no evidence that Modi allowed capable leadership to grow which would allow them to assert themselves. For example, the tribal and dalit intelligentsia in Andhra Pradesh emerged from quality residential schools and colleges that the state government initiated way back in the 1980s and ’90s. Modi’s government did not initiate such educational projects for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes.”

Just yelling at rallies about change and projecting himself as an OBC candidate just for the sake garnering votes, then I’m sorry Mr. Modi, you can’t fool the people of this country. If the Dalits in Modi’s Gujarat continue to face the heat of caste supremacy, it is not long that they have to face a strong rebellion against the establishment. So if he boasts so much about his so-called model of development which as I earlier too have said is not at all inclusive, this is another group of minority which made no place in the development of the state. Also, if the country indeed is looking for a ‘change’, the clean-up should start from the grassroots – a sizable part of which seems to have fallen in the wayside of the country’s contemporary political narrative. So the larger question that looms large in the horizon is if growth is not inclkusive and not for all, then at the end of the day, whose Gujarat is it?

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Divided We Stand, Together We Fall

There is a popular saying in politics that while Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely and that is precisely what is the case with the BJP in the national capital. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been making tall claims since their poster boy Narendra Modi held a massive rally in Delhi. How much charisma Modi holds outside Gujarat is yet to be tested as wherever he has campaigned till now outside Gujarat, BJP has never won a single seat. However regional politics cannot be dictated by national leaders and it’s a well-known fact that in Delhi, BJP’s poster boy is not Narendra Modi. Then the question arises, who is it?

It is an interesting paradox that the otherwise articulating BJP has gone quiet with their CM candidate in Delhi while speculations tend to creep in. The reason behind it is nothing but a leadership vacumm which is now haunting the BJP in the national capital. Sheila Dixit was already a tall leader to reckon with and the dramatic entry of Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP wouldn’t have been in any better time. Crushed between the two juggernauts, the BJP is clueless and hapless as to how to go about it. Delhi is like an armed fortress, winning which gives you an extra edge in national politics and with the current political dynamics, it seems like Sheila Dixit is going to continue as the sole queen.

However on the other side, grappling with infighting and factionalism, the BJP is desperately search for an escape route. This became evident with senior BJP leader Harsh Vardhan’s name doing the rounds again as the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate in Delhi assembly elections even as a number of senior state leaders have conveyed to the central leadership their unhappiness over the style of functioning of Vijay Goel. Sources in Delhi BJP said a sizable number of party leaders are of the opinion that BJP must have a chief ministerial face to take on charismatic Congress’s Sheila Dixit. Expressing their opposition to Delhi BJP chief Goel, several leaders of the party’s Delhi unit have conveyed to the party’s central leadrship that they will not resist any move to declare Vardhan as the Chief Ministerial candidate.
Interestingly, unfazed by reports of a possible projection of Mr. Vardhan as a front runner for the CM’s post, Delhi BJP President Vijay Goel pitted himself as a widely acceptable face for the Chief Minister’s chair and reiterated that his popularity has been refelected in many opinion polls. He claimed that he has strengthened the party to a great extent and said that a decision based on the issue will be taken by the Parliamentary Board on the basis of opinions of the pary workers as well as that of the public. If sources are to be believed, all of the 14 district presidents today met Nitin Gadkari and expressed their support for the candidacy of Mr. Goel for the top post. 

According to a tweet by Executive Editor of Headlines Today and Aaj Tak, he tweeted ‘Vijay Goel holding 'Shakti Pradarshan' of 200 mandal & block workers at 11AM tomorrow to ward off any attempt to sideline him.’ If true then the BJP would be falling into a big embarrassing situation ahead of the assembly polls next month. Meanwhile the BJP top brass has been jolted by a threat of open rebellion by Mr. Goel, who is learnt to have told senior leaders that he will not work for the party if Dr Harshvardhan is projected as the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming polls. He went into active damage control mode moments after reports emerged that the BJP is deciding to project Dr Harshvardhan as the party's face for the Delhi Assembly Elections.

The first round of ticket allocation for the Delhi elections is scheduled for 20 October and the party is likely to take a decision on whether to project a chief ministerial candidate before that. Senior party leader Arun Jaitley is abroad at present and a decision is expected to be taken after his return. The Delhi Assembly Elections are also a matter of prestige for Narendra Modi who has recently been appointed the party's prime ministerial candidate for the next general elections. A setback in Delhi will be seen as a personal loss of face for Modi and the Gujarat Chief Minister is keen that the party put its best foot forward in the Delhi elections. The RSS, which is another important stakeholder in the BJP's decision making process, is of the view that the party should have a leader with a clean image as its chief ministerial candidate but the Sangh does not want infighting to mar the party's chances. Frentic efforts are now on to find a way of breaking the deadlock. The BJP is otherwise known for commenting a lot on other party’s leadership vacumm is today itself facing a storm in their own house and they seems to be no solution to it. With the assembly elections less than a month, it would be interesting to observe which way the wind blows in the national capital.

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MP Stampede: No lessons learnt?

On the auspicious occasion of Dussherra last Sunday, as the entire world celebrated the triumph of victory of the good over the evil, the demons seemed to have conspired against the pilgrims in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. About over 125 devout pilgrims died in yet another stampede at a religious gathering, some in the crush of an estimated five lakh people and others jumping into a river, numbed senseless by panic following rumours that the bridge was about to give way.But the irony is that a few thousand kilometres away from that very place, the combined and dedicated efforts of both the state as well as the central government was able to undertake the biggest evacuation in the history and being successful in saving millions of lives about to be crushed by nature’s fury called Phailin.

While conviction and dedication showed to the rest of the world that we’re no less than anybody else in handling crisis, utter ignorance and lack of seriousness by the Madhya Pradesh government left behind a big blot on the face of our country not only internally but globally too. There are several things that the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government could have learnt from the steady stream of stampede casualties at religious places, but then it’s obvious now that state governments and temple authorities responsible for managing such large gatherings and especially on special occasions give little thought to crowd management. And that’s precisely why being a pilgrim in India becomes such a big curse. 

Almost seven years back the very same site had witnessed a disaster, when 57 people died on the ninth day of the same festival. The bridge did not exist then and pilgrims had to use boats to reach the temple. The river was flooded when a large quantity of water was released from reservoir upstream without prior warning. No action was taken against the persons responsible for that act and seven years later no lessons seemed to have learnt by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan led government in Madhya Pradesh.

As per official sources, the death toll in Sunday’s stampede at the Ratangarh temple in Madhya Pradesh could cross 125, as divers were still busy fishing out bodies from the Sindh River. Eyewitnesses said pilgrims panicked when a tractor dashed against the railing of the bridge and it felled. Rumours that the bridge was going to collapse triggered the stampede. Some devotees were crushed to death under the feet of fellow worshippers, while others drowned after jumping into the river. The police had allowed many tractors and trolleys on the 750 metre bridge which led to a long traffic jam. It was the tractors running on the narrow bridge that caused the disaster. The Ratangarh temple is located in a remote forest area in Datia district. It took quite some valuable time for the news of the stampede to get out. Datia, which is the smallest district in the state, does not have enough police personnel to deal with the tens of thousands of people who gather for such occasions. This time around the District collector was on leave and even the divisional commissioner was on an overseas visit.

However what has blown everyone away is the recent revelations post the stampede at the Ratangarh temple, that villagers and survivors have claimed that they were witness to policemen dumping bodies of pilgrims into the river to water down the death toll of the tragedy. According to the report which appeared in today’s Times of India, eyewitnesses even accused the police had stealing money and valuables from the bodies before tossing them off the bridge. “I was there at the bridge during the stampede and I have seen policemen dumping over two dozen pilgrims, some of them alive, into the river,” said Geeta Mishra, 55, a resident of Bhind, in the Times of India report. This is indeed a very serious allegation put forward by the survivors and cannot be ignored. And if indeed such a shameless and cowardly act has taken place, then each and every policemen involved must be punished.


Though on pen and paper, last year the state government constituted a statutory authority for fairs and pilgrimages, which is expected to ensure adequate arrangements for the organisation of such fairs. However the very same authority entrusted with the safety of pilgrims has ended up as a centre for political rehabilitation and promotion of the BJP’s political agenda in organising pilgrimages under the Chief Minister’s aegis during this election year to reap political brownie points. The saddest part and arguably the biggest fault of the state government is the non-deployment of enough police personnel for such a large convergence of pilgrims which is an annual affair. For a recent jamboree of the workers the ruling party ensured deployment of at least 5,000 policemen including 12 IPS and 60 State Police service officers. While for Ratangarh a force of 60 was considered enough to handle the traffic of over 150,000 visitors.

What is really tragic about the incident is the grim realization that we have learnt nothing from similar tragedies earlier but no lessons seemed to have been learnt. So what works?  Preparedness does. That is the biggest message from Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The 1999 super cyclone caught everyone off guard, exposing the weakness of governments to respond quickly to a natural calamity of high magnitude. Alert to their own inadequacies, both the states and the centre have been preparing themselves well. The National Disaster Management Authority, which has grown with experience from different calamities across the country, was fortunately not a disaster this time. It has been busy training officials at ground levels on ways to handle the situations arising out of a calamity, and it helped. It helped that the much-maligned Indian Meteorological Department was accurate in its forecast of the cyclone, its course and extent. It allowed time for the administrations in both the states to react. And the both the UPA government at the centre as well as the state governments of Odhisha and Andhra Pradesh deserve a pat at the back. Mr. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, are you taking a note atleast this time around?

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Why choosing Narendra Modi and BJP is dangerous?

Before I start, let me quote the Preamble of our Constitution for the better understanding of the entire issue. The Preamble of our great Constitution states, ‘WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens JUSTICE LIBERTY EQUALITY and FRATERNITY….’ And it goes on. The reason why I started with the core of the Indian Constitution is because the citizens of this country needs to be awaken about the true spirits of our constitution that our forefathers left behind for us.  Today there is a lot of hullaballoo about the return of BJP and their poster boy Narendra Modi pitching for the PM’s post and many people angry with the current government because of anti-incumbency, inflation and a lot of  other reasons. But have you ever thought how dangerous the alternative that some people are proposing could be to the cultural fabric of the country?

Today if we are considering the BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi to be a messiah who’ll move his magic wand and all the problems would be solved instantly, then I’m really sorry that’s not happening. Whereas the truth is that he himself is not being able to handle a lot of crisis in Gujarat which he is elected for in run up for the top most and had instead created a mirage of development. But we’ll touch upon on that part later. In regard to the core principles of our Constitution, choosing Narendra Modi or the BJP would be dangerous precedent. How is it linked to the core principles of our constitution? Let me decode it to you for your convenience.

BJP politics of saffronization and the bizarre logic of Hindu dominance backed by the Sangh Parivar are not unknown to us and Narendra Modi being an erstwhile Pracharak of the RSS is no exception for it. When we talk about the core principles of our Constitution, the BJP and especially Narendra Modi fails in all grounds. Under them, India won’t be a SECULAR country in its true spirit and I don’t think I need to tell you the reason for that. The Ayodhya Massacre and Gujarat Riots are still fresh in all our minds. Nor it would be SOCIALIST as the BJP and Narendra Modi have always backed big corporates often at the cost of poor farmers. The issue of giving away lands in throwaway prices to the Tatas and the Adani Group is most prominent in today’s time. Given Modi’s style of running a state as an Autocratic ruler, it’s a big question how DEMOCRATIC the functioning of our democracy would be. And when these three grounds are at fault, obviously India wouldn’t be a SOVEREIGN REPUBLIC in its true essence.

Never quite thought of all these right? But this is not the end. In Modi’s Gujarat, not all citizens have the Right to JUSTICE LIBERTY EQUALITY and FRATERNITY. The victims of the 2002 riots haven’t stilt gotten justice yet in Modi’s Gujarat nor is there any sort of equality between the majority and the minority. And when the state government has a draconian law in which you need to take permission before converting your religion, what kind of liberty do you expect? Fraternity which in other words stands for brotherhood is nowhere close to Modi’s divide and rule policy. So when we talk about the core principles of our Constitution, Modi fails in all grounds. How can you elect a person who tends to be a threat to what our Constitution propagates?

Many people tend to compare the BJP and the Congress on the same page. But how fair the comparison is? If you ask me, it’s in no way a fair comparison. Let me tell you why. Three thousand Indians died in the violence that Advani’s. Ayodhya gambit produced. In his autobiography Advani absolves himself by saying little violence happened in the areas his Rath Yatra had visited, but he is aware of the fires he lit. He led a fired-up mob to the mosque and then expressed suprise when they razed it and he was unable to stop them. Modi’s aide and his deputy home minister, Amit Shah, said in a recent interview to rediff.com’s Sheela Bhatt that the violence in Gujarat was inevitable given the massacre at Godhra. In his words: “The BJP has nothing to do with the riots of 2002! The riots were the reaction of the people to the Godhra incident. The reaction was so huge that the established machinery could not meet the challenge of these spontaneous reactions.” What he doesn’t say is that it is that the BJP over the decades had so polarised the state that a single incident led to a state-wide orgy of revenge. The reason that so much anger and bitterness and hatred exists in Gujarat is because of the divisive language and policies of the BJP. These remain unchanged in the era of Modi but have been papered over by the second aspect to his image.

Congress is often accused guilty for the massacre of Sikhs, but it must be acknowledged that the party has tried to make up for all the allegations made to them. Under Sonia Gandhi, we have had a magnificent gesture to Sikhs in the face of Manmohan Singh. His two terms as Prime Minister have done much to heal feelings of Sikhs and non-Sikhs offended by the way the community was treated in Delhi. The other way to judge how effective Congress’s outreach to Sikhs has been is to observe the politics in Punjab. The fact is that the Congress has made its peace with Sikhs there. To see this we need to only go through the names of Punjab’s legislators. Of the 46 Congress MLAs, 33 are Sikh (on the other hand 10 of the BJP’s 12 MLAs are Hindu). It is the Sikhs who elected Congress to government twice in Punjab after 1984. How different this is from the BJP in Gujarat, where no Muslim has been given a BJP ticket to contest in three Assembly and two Lok Sabha elections under Modi. The record shows that it is not wise to see the BJP and the Congress as being alike, even if Modi’s popularity has convinced many to see it this way.

Modi recently said that shauchalay (toilet) should precede devalay (temple). What he tend to forget is that a couple of years ago, Jairam Ramesh, the then Union Minister of Rural Development, said that toilets are more important than temples. When Ramesh had made his statement, Sangh activists – Modi associates – urinated and kept urine bottles in front of Ramesh’s house. BJP spokespersons accused Ramesh of destroying the fine fabric of faith and religion in the country. Now that Modi made the same statement, those spokespersons are silent, although Praveen Togadia criticised him. Other Sangh members have kept mum on the issue. Many commentators have come forward to uphold Modi’s statement saying that it represented the soft side of Hindutva and would help the BJP increase its electoral strength and that’s what we called double standards.

Before we conclude, let’s look at the tall claims and criticism that he made during his recent rally in Delhi. In his speech Modi merely made false assurances of bringing in a stronger Lokayukta as the party itself has failed to do so in Gujarat, where Modi is the Chief Minister. The Delhi BJP is making tall claims of bringing in a stronger Lokayukta if they come to power, while its national leadership is not even willing to introduce a Delhi-like Lokayukta system in Gujarat. A number of Gujarat ministers, MLAs and councillors have been indicted by the Lokayukta but even after the court’s intervention, nothing has been done. Recently Delhi Power minister Haroon Yusuf alleged that Modi had been stating that power rates in Gujarat were Rs.1.50 but he did not mention that the rate was applicable only for 30 units. Once you cross that, the bill goes up substantially. “Modi is just trying to fool the people. In Delhi, if you consume power till 200 units, you pay only Rs. 2.70 per unit and at least 61% of the population here falls in this category,” he added. In Gujarat as per social indices, it has the highest school dropout rate, high malnutrition deaths compared to other states and low availability of safe drinking water. So now the decision lies in the sane wisdom of the people of this country in the upcoming 2014 general elections.

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