Casting a Veil
The Caravan|January 2021
What we miss by ignoring Maratha caste politics in the Bhima Koregaon case
PRAMOD MANDADE AND FIRDAUS SONI
Casting a Veil

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.

This story is from the January 2021 edition of The Caravan.

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This story is from the January 2021 edition of The Caravan.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.