Casting a Veil

What we miss by ignoring Maratha caste politics in the Bhima Koregaon case

- PRAMOD MANDADE AND FIRDAUS SONI

THREE YEARS AGO, ON 1 January 2018, an annual gathering of largely Dalit visitors to the memorial of Bhima Koregaon, near Pune, was attacked by mobs led by Hindu-nationalist organizations. For several weeks, these organizations had been trying to rouse the area’s Maratha population against the Dalit Buddhist community. A day after the violence, Anita Sawale, an anti-caste activist who was present at the gathering, filed a first-information report identifying the mobs as followers of the Hindutva leaders Manohar Bhide—who calls himself Sambhaji Bhide—and Milind Ekbote.