The Dalit Trap- Why Every Politician Woo Them But Violence Continue?

Every political party is wooing them assiduously for their vote. But beneath the surface, the prejudicelies intact, spilling over into brutal acts of upper caste violence every time Dalits try to resist oppression.

- Kaushik Deka

It was the perfect photo-op. On June 1, BJP president Amit Shah travelled to Jogiyapur, a Bind­dominated village in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s con­stituency, Varanasi, and sat on the floor to have lunch with a group of Dalits. But while the BJP chief may have temporarily taken over the story ahead of the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, he couldn’t control the narrative. A month later in Gujarat, the home state of Shah and Modi, the police allegedly did not intervene as four Dalit boys were flogged by a group of self­proclaimed “cow protectors” from the Gujarat unit of the Shiv Sena, one of the BJP’s NDA allies. Then, on July 17, in Karnataka, a state ruled by the Congress, whose vice­president Rahul Gandhi has virtually earned his politi­cal chops by posing for photos in Dalit households, nearly 40 Bajrang Dal activists viciously attacked a Dalit family on charges of eating beef. And on July 20 in Bihar, a state ruled by the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal—both vociferous exponents of the rights of backward castes— two Dalit boys were thrashed and urinated on by a mob of upper caste men for allegedly stealing a motorbike. India was still grappling with these caste clashes when Parliament was rocked on July 21 after BJP leader Daya­ shankar Singh suggested India’s most prominent Dalit leader, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, had a char­acter “worse than a prostitute”.

These incidents and the reactions to them point to a larger trend. The abyss between lip service from political parties and the socio­economic reality of India has fuelled a social conflict that is now reaching a flashpoint.