By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Thiruvananthapuram: The Dalit Human Rights Movement is the beginning of a new political culture in Kerala, said famous journalist BRP Bhasker. He was inaugurating the meeting organized in front of the state Secretariat welcoming the party’s chairman Selvaraj who was released from prison.
Mr Bhasker said that Dalits who had been part of the mainstream politics are now organizing themselves separately as the mainstream has not been successful in finding solutions to their basic problems. Selvaraj and CK Janu rose up as the leaders of the people ousted by the mainstream. The Dalits of Kerala have been subject to injustices. The police and anti-social forces were indeed carrying out a Dalit-hunt in the name of the Varkkala murder. The last word on the Varkkala case should be from the court. Human rights need not be denied just because a person has been accused in a case. Dalits and Adivasis are leaving the mainstream because of injustices and this is weakening the mainstream. It is then that they turn against the DHRM and cultural activists, he added.
SDPI state secretary Muvattupuzha Ashraf Moulvi, Solidarity Youth Movement state secretary KA Shafeeq, NCHRO leaders Rene Ilyn and Ibrahim Kutty, and PUCL leader Adv PA Pouran attended the programme.
The DHRM had last day stated that the organisation would enter the field of election politics by the Assembly elections. 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 a living. 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.
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.