By TCN News
London: Casteism exists and flourishes not only in India but even in the Diaspora based in UK, where discrimination among Hindus and Sikhs is rampant and a “hidden apartheid” exists here as well, a meeting at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, revealed.
The meeting was organised by South Asia Solidarity Group, CasteWatch UK and SOAS South Asian Diaspora Society, coinciding with the day of action in solidarity with students in India on March 2. The meeting was addressed by Sat Pal Muman, Chairperson, CasteWatch UK and Kavita Krishnan of the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) and former Joint Secretary JNU Students Union.
In his shockingly revealing speech, Munan said that questions about one’s caste are raised in factories where drinking fountains are segregated, in schools low caste children are bullied and in shops cashiers refuse to serve them while in jobs promotion is denied to them.
Munan said that it was after an intensive and long battle that Anti- Caste Discrimination was incorporated in Section 9(5) of the Equality Act 2010 but the Hindu right in UK has sabotaged its implementation.
According to Munan, caste supremacists have gone as far as targeting the MPs who support the implementation of the legislation and have succeeded in manipulating members of Parliament instilling in them the fear of losing votes.
“Our war on Caste has brought these reactionaries together who want to continue to discriminate. I find it difficult to understand why Hindus, Sikhs and Jains in the guise of Dharmic communities are opposing our call to implement caste discrimination legislation”, he said.
Citing the example of the fascist mind-set of caste supremacist Munan referred to a meeting in Leicester wherein Dr Prakash Shah, Reader in Culture and Law at Queen Mary University of London, called Dr Ambedkar “an idiot” while another person, Mr Gautam Sen, warned that Hindu groups would oppose the legislation “to the last drop of our blood”.
In her wide-ranging speech, Kavita Krishnan said that a new awakening is taking place in India and its impact was first noticed in the recent Bihar Assembly elections in which candidates who had made alliance with BJP in the past were shunned by the voters. The death of Rohith Vemula, she said, has exposed the systematic and institutionalised attempts to crush Dalit students in India and this assault has been intensified under the BJP government using groups like the ABVP.
Kavita said that the attempts to muzzle and annihilate the movement by JNU students, large number of whom are from Dalit and poor families, is part of the same systematic pattern which began with the banning of Ambedkarite students.
She added, “This movement has now got a new energy and gone beyond being a student movement. It has also led to an inspiring coming together of multiple Ambedkarite and left perspectives. What we are witnessing now is an all out attack on the Constitution and an attempt to appropriate Ambedkar”.
Kavita said that the insistence of Modi that he comes from low caste background is nothing but an attempt to divert public attention from his crimes committed during 2002 Gujarat Massacre. She said he is mischievously trying to appropriate Dr Ambedkar so much so that he penned an article in Gujarati about Golwalkar in which he lists “some great men of India”; and among them Ambedkar is described as a “modern Manu”, despite the fact that Ambedkar had recommended burning the Manusmriti.
In an expression of solidarity with JNU students participants in the packed hall posed together for a photograph with placards demanding the dropping of all sedition and other motivated charges against JNU students, scrapping of the colonial sedition law and the enactment of a Rohith Act to protect Dalit students.