Opinion Against Dalits?

Sunday’s protest by Dalit groups in Ahmedabad wasn’t just the second major warning to the BJP, after the Patel quota agitation, from a poll-bound bastion. Dalit outfits had gathered to express their anger at the flogging of a Dalit family for skinning a dead cow by gau rakshaks in Una. Nor can the Narendra Modi government afford to neatly cast the entire onus on the state government — even the resignation of Chief Minister Anandiben Patel is unlikely to contain the Una fallout. The BJP must look the reality in the eye and acknowledge the formidable challenge that gau rakshak vigilantism is sharpening for the party. After the eruption in Hyderabad earlier this year following the suicide on campus of Rohith Vemula, Dalit unrest in Gujarat may be adding up to a potent reminder to the party: It is failing to persuade India’s most marginalised that its government is committed to giving them their rightful due in its promise of “sabka saath sabka vikas”. In fact, in recent days, cow protection goons have framed a stark opposition — Dalit versus cow — and if the NDA government, at the highest echelons, does not reach out to the Dalits in this troubling moment, it would be seen to stand with the gau rakshaks.

Despite its remarkable strike rate in the reserved constituencies, the BJP has long had a Dalit problem. Of course, the party adapted with considerable agility to the imperative of social engineering to cobble the numbers in a divided polity, and has courted Dalit groups with verve — its repertoire has included gestures like the special Parliament sitting the Modi government held late last year to commemmorate Babasaheb Ambedkar. But it is no secret that the Sangh Parivar’s world view is a homogenising one, in which the emphasis on Hindu unity has historically discomfited large sections of the Dalit population, which have seen it as hostile to their independent assertion and empowerment. For a while, in 2014, the Modi wave, which flattened out several social divisions and straddled many faultlines, also seemed to swing considerable Dalit support the BJP’s way. But two years later, the festering contradictions are resurfacing.

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The gau raksha project that has picked up pace under the watch of the Modi government could unravel the gains made by the BJP vis a vis the Dalits. More importantly, for a large section of India’s disprivileged, it threatens to drag down the public discussion to issues of security and safety yet again at a time when a new generation, more empowered by education, urbanisation and technology, is slowly but surely finding a new political voice and vocabulary. At a larger level, the loud Dalit anger, in Ahmedabad or Hyderabad, is a message to all parties, not just to the BJP, that there will be a stronger blowback now for the old atrocities and discriminations. And that the old tokenism will not be enough to make it go away.