By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent
Thiruvananthapuram: The Dalit Human Rights Movement (DHRM) has decided to form a new Dalit movement by the time of the coming Assembly elections, reports say. The DHRM will also reportedly vote against the CPI (M) in the coming panchayat elections.
The DHRM says that by its decision not to vote for the CPI (M), Dalits as a whole will for the first time in the history of the state deny votes to the left parties, who had been receiving their votes and betraying the Dalits for years. Dalits will be lined up against the communist government which presented (the DHRM’s) democratic organisation set-up as terrorism. Thousands of families in the state will line up in the DHRM. The police officers who accused the DHRM of terrorism are now keeping silent as they have not been able to prove the charges even months after raising the accusation. The Home Minister who portrayed them as terrorists should beg pardon. The DHRM state committee also pointed out that the police and goons had acted very cruelly in the Dalit colonies in the shade of terrorist hunt.
The less-known DHRM came to the news headlines when it was said to be linked with the murder of a trader in Varkkala in Thiruvananthapuram. The police, reportedly with the help of goons and political criminals, searched the Dalit colonies for DHRM activists. The raids went too inhuman that all the men in the colonies had to flee leaving the women and children alone. The state police accused the organisation of terrorism and began a terrorist hunt. But the police reportedly have not been able to prove the charges that it had made.
The DHRM has taken the decision at a time when the political scenario in Kerala is undergoing several changes, especially by the arrival into election-politics of new parties and alliances. The Dalits and backward class people of the state had supported the CPI (M) for a long time, perhaps from the formation of the state itself. The other strong party Congress was always the party of the elite. However, the vote-bank of the CPI (M) is eroding nowadays due to several reasons, the major of which could be that the low class people can no longer identify the party as that of fellow-sufferers and fighters for justice. The going back of the CPI (M) from the popular struggles, which had once helped strengthen the party’s base, is opening doors for new organizations which have now become the new voice of the oppressed and of those fighting for their lives. The Social Democratic Party formed by the Popular Front of India has already entered the field of elections by the last Assembly by-elections. The Janakeeya Vikasana Munnani (alliance for popular development) sponsored by the Jamat e Islami has decided to field its own candidates in the coming panchayat elections. Now, the DHRM too is coming to elections, though will be in full swing by the Assembly elections only.