Today, Dalit politics is taking charge of various affairs in their own hand and extending their terrain of struggle rather than limiting it to political power or religious conversion.
At present, a new swing in Dalit politics can be easily noticed in the way Dalits have raised their voice against violence towards them. They have devised modes of struggles, the kind of alliances forged, and the nodal concepts and norms appeal for action. While old methods of doing Dalit politicspaternalism, quotas, sub-caste appeal, conversion, bahujan (including sarvajan)are still active, more in a client-patron mode, Dalits are taking more and more charge of affairs in their own hands.
Some features of this turn are remarkable: caste is back into reckoning; for networking and communication, the use of social media has increased; left politics and its limitations are under examination; Babasaheb Ambedkar has reinforced his presence as the flagpole; there is a highly literate Dalit leadership deeply aware of historical injustice and electorally decisive numbers in support; an idea of Brahmanism is highlighted as the enemy; a search for a new civil society-state axis is on; and a new form of concepts and slogans are being deployed as the battle cry. Dalits have started developing layers of folklore and alternative nationalist imagery to forge skilful use of signs, symbols and representations.
All these features are part of the Dalit movement at one time or the other, it is their combinatory which is proving itself fatal. Above all, this commotion is situating itself on the ground of India’s distinct democratic politics, utilising its resources as much as possible. For this movement, there is no single political party at the head although many political parties will have much at stake in it.
Reaction to Violence
The atrocities on Dalits were largely limited to police records and the bulky records of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes for long. But cases like a suicide note by a research scholar, Rohith Vemula, that stated ‘My birth is my fatal accident’ seems to connect the whole issue with a bad taste of caste of a dalit son. The incident is being identified as the squeezing the life of youths by the institute management on account of caste and special identity. Dalits felt that the opportunity to right to use the legal and institutional resources of a democratic polity has gone and relocate them into a caste grid, consigning all their effort, again in Vemula’s words, to ‘immediate identity and nearest possibility’. Their life prospects are much lower to those of its other beneficiaries. This sense of ‘unfair inclusion’ connects them to the vast numbers in the Indian subcontinent who are kept in Ambedkar’s cryptic phrase, ‘outside the fold’.
According to Valerian Rodrigues, ‘The denial of access to equal opportunities and rewards is not merely economic but ways of life, and abilities to define one’s own and collective futures’. Such a state of affairs may not be played out in the open but built into the common sense of everyday life. Therefore, Dalits tend to fill those levels that are not important, prone to routine and fake rather than inventive and decisionmaking. In institutions of higher education, Dalits fill social sciences and humanities that are able with very little institutional expense or vision, and can generate very few sought after jobs or opportunities.
The effect of land improvements and agricultural transformation has pushed Dalits and social segments similar to them further to the restrictions. There is a new dependence ranking at the workplace rather than enablement and companionship.
The Hindutva agenda of inviting all Hindus to the feast table but assigning lower castes to their predetermined places has further aggravated the sense of being unsolicited. ‘The fatal accident of birth’ connects all the sites that have witnessed Dalit upsurge recently, from Tughlakabad to Una, from Hyderabad to Udupi. But it also occurs between skilled and unskilled, organised and informal, rural and urban, and male and female labour.
Modes of Struggle
The social relations, in which Dalits are struggling, are not merely against external domination like capital, caste or power, but also against rejection of their very humanity.
With the movement, Dalit are widening their terrain of struggle rather than merely limiting it to political power or religious conversion. Given this task, there are new elements in place in Dalit struggles: the social media does not become simply a site to network, but also to inform, to criticise, to assess as well as redefine concerns. In fact, the social media is supporting today as the backbone of the new Dalit growing as could be seen in the solidarity movement with Rohith Vemula across the country, in ‘Azadi Koon’ (March for Freedom) from Ahmedabad to Una in Gujarat, or the ‘Udupi Chalo’ walk that brought thousands of Dalits from various parts of Karnataka to the temple town, Udupi.
Various marches and rallies across distant villages and small towns have united people physically and emotionally and there are slogans emphasising pride in being a Dalit, with a sub-caste enumeration as an add-on, not infrequently. There is a rebirth of folklore, sites of violence have changed into pilgrimage, traditional musical instruments of Dalits have thrown up fusion with rhythmic dances of great power and self-confidence, and broadsheets, songs and street plays, evocative posters and imaginative slogans challenge dominant opinion and sensitivity. Women and men are helping each other in this struggle, something that the late Sharmila Rege portrayed in her writings. Ambedkar makes a rich and ideal presence across such performances, and there is almost none beside him in importance. In present scenario, sites of Dalit rallies are crowded with a rich display of books and publications, a widespread practice in Left rallies of yore.
Cleavages between Dalits and backward castes, Dalits and Muslims, and the gender divide have come in the way of improving the democratic dividend from their devastating numbers. The positive support of Dalits to the backward castes in the Mandal protest did not create long-term political alliances. The Dalit and Muslim alliance never materialised on the ground at any point of time in right sense. And, less said the better so far as the alliance between backward castes and women is concerned.
The slogans in the Dalit movement these days indicate a softening of position: the banners read, and slogans echo: ‘choice of food’, ‘right to land’, ‘Swabhiman’ and ‘Atmabhiman’ (self-respect), ‘Azadi’ (freedom) and ‘dignity’. They decided to take oppression head on to assert their own self-hood. Dalits also seem to assert the equality of women and choose the kind of life they wish to live and never accept moral policing on them by the Hindutva brigades. The murder of Mohammad Akhlaq by a local Hindu mob on the charge of storing beef at his house in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, has become an important matter in Dalit struggles, woven around the right to food. As a result, the bonding among these large number of associations of these groups and communities are found.
The current Dalit movement has appealed for the registry of norms while explaining and justifying its objectives and actions has much to separate it from its previous expressions. It is more of human dignity and worth, and one’s ability to achieve one’s best as per the potential should achieve the high ground. Identifying freedom to one’s birthmarks, or social structures, institutions, partialities and interactions is a state of affairs today which is seen as new form of dependency.
From the time of Jyotirao Phule and Iyothee Thass, the term Brahmanism that Dalits have employed to rally against a specific mode of dominance has acquired new meanings of sustaining a social order based on graded inequality, servility and deference, and self-aggrandisement at the expense of misery and inhumanity meted out to others. Even, India’s so-called modern and democratic institutions are recognised as sustaining a Brahmanical allowance. The central concerns of Muslims, women and backward castes are supposed as being consistent with these concepts and norms.
The new Dalit politics senses that it holds the key to some of these concerns and strivings while there is much that unites the social groups and communities computed above, there is much that divides them too. There is a need to fill the gap and to build a bridge, and Dalits are yet to reach out to Adivasis in a meaningful way.