By Payal for TwoCircles.net
All Photos courtesy Nayan Jyoti
A year ago, four Dalits were publicly beaten, stripped and humiliated by Gau Rakshaks in Una, Gujarat when they were removing a dead cow from the streets. The Gau Rakshaks, who were emboldened by the support from the BJP, went on to make a video of the incident and circulated it widely. What followed over the next one month was, without a doubt, one of the biggest Dalit uprisings in the recent times against the atrocities committed on members of marginalised communities by Hindutva goons. Between August 4 and 15, nearly 1 lakh people from various parts of the country participated in rallies and protests held between Ahmedabad and Una. On its first anniversary of the Una uprising, the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch had decided to organised the Azadi Kooch, which aims to not only remind everyone that atrocities continue unabated against Dalits, but also seek answers from the Gujarat government over the failure to deliver on its promises made last year.
On Wednesday, as RDAM under the leadership of Jignesh Mevani decided to take out a rally from Mehsana to commemorate the struggle, it seems that little has changed: after denying them permission to start their rally, Mevani was subsequently detained along with student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, Patidar leader, Reshma Patel and scores of other protesters. Mevani is leading a 7-day march from Mehsana to Dhanera to mark one year of the Una flogging incident. The police had earlier cancelled the permission to the march from Mehsana. At the conference organised by RDAM yesterday in Ahmedabad, Mevani had asserted that the march will proceed as planned and he was ready to be detained by the police. Before their arrests, the public meeting was joined by the ongoing farmers’ rally Kisan Mukti Yatra led by activist Yogendra Yadav and others. Both Yogendra Yadav and Kanhaiya Kumar had addressed the public meeting earlier in the day.
What was even more worrying was that VHP workers, in front of the police, targeted certain people. Farhan Ahmed, a member of All India Students Association (AISA), who is present at the spot, “Today I was almost lynched by the VHP workers. What happened exactly that some of the activists were detained including those who are from Delhi and me and Comrade Shivprakash Aisa and Comrade Mokhtar Aisa were in the second police Van and suddenly some of the VHP workers came asking about #Kanhaiya but they didn’t find Kanhaiya and then they asked who is from Delhi and I was alone from Delhi so they targeted me. They said you are from Delhi, we have seen you when you were giving a speech. After few seconds they tried to drag me. But then Advocate Shamshad Khan Pathan called police (to) stop them,” he said on his Facebook timeline.
Jignesh Mevani also talked about the role of Sanghi goons. “Azadi Kooch has been attacked; I, Kanhaiya Kumar and Reshma Patel along with several other friends have been detained by the police. There was an attempt to attack me when we were on our way. One Sanghi tried to run over a bike on me,” he said on his Facebook timeline.
The rally took off on Tuesday, July 11 in Ahmedabad with a press conference organised by Jignesh Mevani-led Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch. Besides Mevani, the other speakers at the conference were Anil Chamaria, Dalit Activist & Drafting committee member, MASUKA; Professor Ratanlal, University of Delhi, Raza Haider of Not in my name, Ashok Bharti, Dalit Activist, Bhavna Ramrakhiani – Community Organiser, Reshma Patel, Patidar leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, former JNU student leader among others.
The Ahmedabad event saw a participation of over 700 people from all over the country. The conference started with the screening of two short films – one depicting the Una incident and the other, the spate of mob lynchings that have occurred in the country in the last year since the Una incident. The brutality of the attacks seen on the screen left the audience stunned for a few minutes in the packed hall. The family members of Akhlaq and Pahlu Khan – two victims of mob lynching who paid with their lives for their crime of belonging to the Muslim community were also present. The conference started with a two-minute silence observed to pay respect to the victims of the militant attack on the Amarnath pilgrim in Kashmir yesterday.
In his introductory remark on July 11, Mevani said that he believed that the last year’s rally was as significant as the Mahad Satyagraha by Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1927. He emphasised that the demand, as last year, was not only about the dignity of the Dalit lives but also about the need to raise the economic question of providing land to the Dalits. He said that the terror of the “cow vigilante” groups has only grown in intensity, and has resulted in 33 deaths in one year. He also talked about a need for a unity among the Muslims and Dalits who are both facing the brunt of the increased polarisation in the country. Mevani also said that the issue of land has exposed the casteist nature of the state. He has been working on the issue of allotment of land to the Dalits in Gujarat in his capacity as a lawyer for the past few years. Last year’s rally also raised the demand of allotting 5 bighas of land to all Dalits in the state so that they could leave the menial jobs of skinning dead animals and scavenging and lead a dignified existence. So far, according to Mevani, the land had been allotted to the Dalit families on paper but they are still waiting to get possession on lands that exist only on paper.
Both Mevani and Kanhaiya reiterated that they will not allow this mad spate of killings going on in India today and called for the larger unity of the people to defeat the regime of hate practised by the Modi-led government. Kanhaiya ended his speech by saying that this is not Modi’s Gujarat but Gandhi’s Gujarat and all forces must join hands to send out this message to the people trying to break the country into fragments.