By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
Notwithstanding reservation in education, job, Lok Sabha and state Assemblies India is yet to produce as towering a Dalit personality as Bhimrao Ambedkar. Fifty-nine years after his death. their condition has not witnessed desired improvement.
Some Dalits have excelled in the field of education and are doing good in various professions, but when compared to the upper castes or even some OBCs their number is negligible. As those hailing from higher castes have progressed many times faster, the gap continues to widen in spite of some efforts by Scheduled Castes.
Though in the year 2015 too much have been discussed, debated and written on Babasaheb, especially between the Constitution Day (Nov 26) and his death anniversary (Dec 6), Dalits find themselves pushed to the margin of politics. The largest Dalit party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, was voted out of power in 2012 in Uttar Pradesh and was wiped out in 2014 Lok Sabha election.
In Bihar the Lok Janshakti Party won six seats in last year’s parliamentary election, and that too only after it joined hands with the BJP.
However, in the recently held Assembly elections, the LJP and another outfit, Hindustani Awam Morcha, led by a former Dalit chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, were decimated as they won only two and one seats respectively.
So it was never so bad in the recent years for the Scheduled Castes, who are still struggling elsewhere in the country.
In this era of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, they are finding it extremely difficult to pay huge sum to educate their children in institutions run by big business houses.
Their entry into corporate sector jobs and MNCs, where there is no reservation, is all the more difficult and the number of government jobs are shrinking. Not only that the SC/ST quota often remains unfulfilled.
We do have a handful of influential Dalit politicians in the county, but they are no match to Ambedkar, whose contribution was not only in the field of Constitution-making. He was a politician, reformer, crusader and intellectual giant.
In this 125th year of his birth, what we failed to discuss is why no one could reach his stature. Yes we produced a great diplomat-turned politician, K R Narayanan, who went to become the President of the country, and man like Kanshi Ram, who brought about a new life into the dormant Dalit politics of 1980s. It was in this decade and in 1990s that Harijan- or Dalit-hunting, as is now called, acquired a new dimension in north India. In retaliation to repeated massacres, several Scheduled Castes, and even Scheduled Tribes, joined various Maoists’ groups.
Braving all odds Ambedkar went to the United States and United Kingdom about a century back to pursue higher education and return to India to rise to the top, though he had to face hurdles throughout his life.
The only real feat Dalits in the post-Ambedkar era has achieved is that they have produced the first woman chief minister––and that too of the most populous state where the stranglehold of the feudal forces are still strong. In fact Mayawati, teaming up with Kanshi Ram, managed to change the whole politics of Uttar Pradesh, though she does not come from any political family.
Ambedkar managed to emerge when there was no reservation in education, job and Parliament or Assemblies for Dalits. He got a little exposure because his father was in the British army and not a typical farm labourer or employed in any menial job.
Yet he had to face resistance at all points and stoutly opposed many of the policies adopted by the founding fathers of the country.
He got elected from Bengal for Constituent Assembly with the support of Muslim League as the Congress party was then opposing him. He was then leading his party Scheduled Castes Federation.
And after Independence, he lost the very first Lok Sabha election in 1952 and was nominated to Rajya Sabha, whose member he remained till his death in 1956.
Today in the 125th year of his birth Dalits are facing another challenge in the field of politics. That comes not just from the upper caste, but from OBCs. Ambedkar might have made Dalits aware of the Brahmanical order, but the SC are finding themselves ill-equipped to take on the numerically strong OBCs, who are filling the space created after the grip of the upper castes got weakened.
Narendra Modi, Uma Bharati, Kalyan Singh, Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav etc are all from this section.
The new political, social, economic and educational challenges faced by the Dalits were not discussed in 2015, the year in which the ruling BJP celebrated his birthday with much fanfare. His death anniversary on December 6 was also observed in a big way though many Dalits still accuse the Sangh Parivar of deliberately choosing this date for the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 so that the Mahaparinirvan––as this date is called––of the architect of the Indian Constitution could be overshadowed.
One may say that India did not produce another Gandhi too. But then we have used the term Gandhi for Lok Nayak Jai Prakash in 1974 and Anna Hazare in 2011. Even Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was called Frontier Gandhi. These figures may not be of Gandhi’s stature, but had the quality of the Father of Nation.
In contrast Dalits are yet to produce anyone to be equated to Ambedkar.
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(Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist. He writes on political, social, national and international issues.)