BJP Loving Dalits Is Hard

The bjp’s new found love for dalits is suspect. It seems geared entirely towards courting their substantial vote in the battleground states of up and Punjab.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently grabbed unprecedented media headlines after his extraordinary condemnation of a group of right-wing militants masquerading as cow vigilantes.

On 6 August, while addressing a ‘town hall’ style interaction with an invited audience in Delhi, Modi rebuked the so-called ‘gau-rakshak’ groups branding them as “anti-social” elements, who, according to him, were running “shops” in the name of cow protection. In the same vein, he told the audience that this made him incredibly “angry”.

The PM said, “It makes me angry that people are running shops in the name of cow protection. Most of them are anti-social elements hiding behind the mask of cow protection. I will ask state governments to prepare a dossier on such people as 80 percent of them will be found to be involved in anti-social activities which no society will approve of.”

A day later, the prime minister travelled to Telangana, where he made more comments on the tyranny of cow protection groups, most of whom have traditionally been supporters of Modi’s brand of politics.

However, there were two noticeable changes in Modi’s tone and his choice of words. First, he became unusually specific by identifying Dalits as victims of brutalities committed by gau-rakshaks, while asking violent rightwing vigilantes to stop their violence in the guise of protecting cows.

He said, “I would like to tell these people that if you have any problem, if you have to attack, attack me. Stop attacking my Dalit brethren. If you have to shoot, shoot me, but not my Dalit brothers. This game should stop.”