Millennium mutinies

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar offered a simple credo to the Dalits in their struggle for basic human freedoms: Educate, organise and agitate.'...

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar offered a simple credo to the Dalits in their struggle for basic human freedoms: 8220;Educate, organise and agitate.8221; Exhorting them to leave no stone unturned in their revolt against centuries-old deprivations and humiliations, he said: 8220;With justice on our side, I do not see how we can lose our battle8230; have faith in yourselves and never lose hope.8221; More than half a century later 8212; five decades of legislation, welfare schemes and political rhetoric aimed at ridding Indian society of its most despicable social practice 8212; that hope is becoming somewhat difficult to muster. Today, even as the country witnesses a chorus of lip-service on the 75th anniversary of the Vaikom satyagraha, there is no escaping the sobering realisation that education, organisation and agitation have often delivered nothing but fresh injustices.

In a medical college in the capital, an unwritten code ensures that students belonging to the Scheduled Castes maintain the requisite ritual distance from theirtwice-born fellow scholars. Bundled into a corner of their high-rise hostel and segregated at mealtimes, they suffer repeated reaffirmations of the very stratification they seek to obliterate as professors commence a viva voce with a query about their caste.

So much for education. Over in Bihar8217;s Jehanabad district, an effort by the Dalits to rally together and secure a minimum wage and the right to wear chappals resulted in the formation of the upper-caste Ranvir Sena. Midnight massacres by the Sena periodically remind the downtrodden about the perils of organisation. And in a village in Visakhapatnam, Dalits are still coming to grips with the wages of agitation. Infuri-ated over the untouchables8217; rebellion against untouchability 8212; by drawing water from the upper-caste well 8212; the village folk have imposed an economic blockade.

Dalits will not be hired, they will not be sold essentials and any upper-caste villager associating with them will be fined. Oh, the Dalits are now welcome to draw as much wateras they want from the well, for the villagers have found themselves another one.

Does this mean that Ambedkar8217;s prescription is a self-defeating one? Far from it. Indeed, India8217;s million mutinies gone awry are an indictment of the half-heartedness that has characterised fifty years of social reform. Simply announcing quotas in jobs and educational institutions will not end ghettoism; simply legislating against untouchability will not accord the Dalits a basic measure of human dignity if it is not accompanied by a concerted campaign to tackle the near total overlap of social and economic inequities.

Still, the fact that Dalits across the country are growing increasingly assertive and standing up to oppression, unmindful of any backlash, offers the possibility of a different future. A future that can only be realised if this assertion finds an echo from a political leadership more concerned with channelising rebellion than with tending a Dalit votebank to shore up its political leverage.