Anand Teltumbde
During the
state sponsored carnage of Muslims in 2002, Dalits in Gujarat were unduly
defamed having performed the role of foot soldiers of the Hindutva forces.
These were stray incidents in Ahmedabad wherein Dalits were spotted in the
crowds that attacked Muslims but there were several other instances that
surfaced later all over the state in which Dalits had sheltered Muslim families
daring the Hindutva marauders. But media in its characteristic way sensationalized
the former and completely ignored the latter. Dalits who are always seen with
jaundiced eye, became more despicable because of this canard. Intellectuals and
commentators waxed eloquent for years thereafter in their stereotypical
analyses of what appeared as sinister development without caring for the facts.
These highbrow analyses feigning empathy and concern for Dalits only served to
deepen hatred for them. In this negativity lay a positive implication that the
upper castes and Dalits might henceforth have amicable relations in Gujarat
eliminating the possibility of any caste conflict in the future. Mere glance at
the facts would show how removed these commonplace notions and intellectual
commentaries were from the ground reality in Gujarat.
The recent
incident in Thangadh, a small town in Surendranagar district of Gujarat, in
which three Dalit youth lost their lives as fallout of a minor clash between
them and an upper caste community called Bharwad is a case in point. The clash
occurred as a result of an argument over auctioning of stalls at an annual fair
organized by the Thangadh municipality. According to newspapers, a Dalit youth was
beaten up by the Bharwads on Friday after which the Dalits filed a complaint
against them with the Thangadh police station. The following night, the two
groups clashed near the police station. The local Police intervened and fired
upon the crowd seriously injuring a 16-year old boy Pankaj Amarsi Sumra, who later died
in a hospital in Rajkot. News of the death sparked outrage among Dalits in
Thangadh who took to the streets demanding that a complaint be filed against
police officials responsible for the death. With tension in the town, police
officials called in reinforcements. On Sunday afternoon the police again opened
fire on the agitating Dalits injuring three Dalit youths. They were rushed to
the Rajkot civil hospital where Mehul Rathod, 17, and Prakash Parmar, 26, died.
The condition of the third, Chhana Vaniya, 25, was critical.
These are
the broad facts of the case. The incident is reminiscent of a similar incident
that took place in Paramkudi, a taluka place in Ramnathpuram district in
distant Tamilnadu poignantly pointing to the pan Indian reality of caste
conflict, and that the situation in Gujarat was no different than the atrocity
prone Southern Tamilnadu. In Paramkudi, there was a long history of conflict
between Pallar, a second most populous Dalit community and the Thevar, the
local upper caste community not very dissimilar to Bharwad in the instant case.
Other details of these two cases run strikingly similar [see, Author’s report
of the fact finding: Killing Pallars To Propitiate Thevars, available online- http://www.countercurrents.org/teltumbde301011.htm.] As in the
Thangadh incident, a 16-year old Dalit boy was hacked to death by a group of Thevars
on the previous day, in a nearby village. The next day, large number of Dalits
gathered at Paramakudi as planned to pay homage to their leader, Emanuel
Sekaran, at his memorial on his birth anniversary. Emanuel Sekaran was brutally
murdered 54 years ago in a conflict with Muthuramalinga Thevar, the leader of
Thevars, whose memorials and anniversaries are patronized by the state.
Although Dalits knew about this murder, they had maintained normalcy required
for the solemnity of the occasion. However, the unusually huge police posse
positioned there indicated that the state had different plans for the day. The
plan unfolded into police suddenly opening fire and unleashing brutal
atrocities over the day eventually killing in all six Dalits and injuring
scores of them.
The
similarities between Than and Paramakudi go beyond these incidents. Bharwad
community in Gujarat is not highly positioned to be called an upper caste.
Traditionally its vocation was shepherding and still it is predominantly
pastoral, only a small section of it being agriculturists and significant
numbers being farm labourer. They are so backward that a section of them living
on the edge of the Gir forest rather are included into Scheduled Tribe.
Likewise, Thevars
also are not placed high in caste hierarchy and were almost at the lower end of
the shudra band. So much so that in colonial times they were classed as the
criminal tribes by the colonial rulers. There is a profound lesson contained in
these episodes like numerous others that today the conflict of Dalits is not
with the well entrenched upper castes, habitually identified with Brahmins by Dalits but with these backward castes, whom they fondly include
as their allies in constructing ‘bahujan’. In both cases a teenage Dalit boy is
murdered on the previous day (coincidently Saturday) and the police firing
takes place on Sunday resulting into a major toll of Dalit lives. The police
bias in both the cases is palpable, and is responsible for the bloodshed.
Massive Dalit protests that followed these incidents led by social activists
and not by the mainstream leaders also was a common feature across both.
In such incidents, the police
come out with their own stories to justify their actions. As in Paramakudi, the
Police in Thangadh claimed that both sides clashed with sticks and sharp
weapons on Saturday and hence they had to intervene. They claimed to have used
tear gas shells before a sub-inspector K P Jadeja opened fire. The activists
denied it and claimed that Jadeja fired without any warning whatsoever and only
at Dalits. Proof of the pudding bears out their version as there was no injury
on Bharwad side. Moreover, after the skirmish between two communities the
police had suspended the fair and there was no reason for firing at 11.30 in
night on people who were returning home. The activists claimed that Jadeja did
it only with casteist prejudice against Dalits. On Sunday afternoon, the police
claimed that the angry Dalits clashed with Police and hence they had to open
fire in self defence. The CID investigation, ordered by the government in
response to the massive agitation Dalits proved that it was a pure lie.
Another stratagem common to all
such incidents is Police arresting Dalits and slapping cases on them, with
serious charges like attempt to murder. In the infamous incident of police
gunning down 10 Dalits in Ramabai Nagar in Mumbai in 1997, while the sub
inspector Manohar Kadam, whose guilt was variously proved not only in the
courts but also by the Gundewar Commission instituted by the Maharashtra government
to probe the matter, never went to jail and was rather rewarded with
promotions, the Dalit boys who protested against the police firing were harassed
for more than a decade fighting cases against them until the court acquitted
them. In Thangadh also the Police arrested Dalit boys and slapped serious
charges against them. It is only because of the intensity of protest Dalits
displayed that the government has relented and released them. Notwithstanding
the fact that it is an election year and Narendra Modi would ill afford to
displease Dalits by not conceding their reasonable demand, the credit still
goes to Rajesh Solanki (Raju) of the Council for Social Justice (CSJ) for
mobilizing people around it in an unprecedented manner.
The Thangadh episode surely
refutes the negative characterization of Dalits of Gujarat that they patched up
with the rightist forces. It also exposes the hollow claims of Narendra Modi
that his regime takes good care of Dalits, Adivasis and even minorities. The
matter of Adivasis, who have been Hinduised over the years is well known to
people and what his regime did to the Muslims is still getting exposed through
courts. Dalits were the only people whose contradictions with the regime had
not come so much in limelight, notwithstanding the ongoing struggle of the
veteran activist Valjibhai Patel of the CSJ. If one takes a look at the
atrocity statistics, the Modi regime only scores average among the states and
union territories ranking tenth highest in the list of 35. As per the Crime in
India 2011 report, there have been 1063 registered crimes against Dalits in
Gujarat in which there were 12 murders and 45 rapes. Modi’s hyperbole about
Dalits in Gujarat turns out as hollow as his developmental claims. He will have
to account for the blood of Dalits spilled in Gujarat quite like anyone of his
ilk elsewhere.
(Dr Anand Teltumbde is a writer
and civil rights activist with CPDR, Mumbai.)
