Saturday, January 13, 2018

Why a 34-year-old Dalit rebel has India’s ruling elite running scared

SAGARIKA GHOSE

A bearded, bespectacled 34-yearold sparks fury among ‘nationalist’ TV anchors. The BJP denounces him as divisive and anti-national, teargas- and water-cannonarmed police stop his public rallies, and FIRs are registered against him for the Bhima Koregaon violence even though he wasn’t even at the site.

Why is the establishment so terrified of Jignesh Mevani? Is it because in a climate of fear he dares to openly and audaciously mock PM Modi? Or, because he’s bringing the roaring power of the gathering Dalit revolution into politics, and posing a frontal ideological challenge to Hindutva? Jignesh is combining a caste battle with a wider class war; he’s attacking the very foundations of so-called Hindu unity and behind him stands a youthful army.

He’s not the first Dalit rebel. In the 1970s, Dalit Panthers attacked caste elitism. But the Panthers soon transmogrified into timid lambs of the ruling class. Former Panther Ramdas Athawale is today a tamed member of the BJP government. “Tilak, tarazu aur talwar, inko maaro joote chaar,” bellowed Dalit activist Kanshi Ram in the 1990s, unleashing fury against upper-caste rulers. The anger evaporated once the Bahujan Samaj Party gained power and allied at various times with the ‘Manuwadi’ BJP and upper caste-led Congress. Kanshi Ram’s heir Mayawati was a powerful symbol of Dalit assertion, but collapsed in a welter of corruption scandals, even destroying Ambedkar’s repeated injunctions against hero worship by building her own statues. The Dalit political leadership constantly failed the Dalit revolution, Ambedkar’s descendants were orphaned. In the vacuum, the Sangh moved in to assiduously cultivate the Dalit vote. As Mayawati reduced herself to a Jatav chieftain and benefits of reservations in Maharashtra flowed mainly to Mahars, other Dalit subcastes were successfully lured into the Sangh fold, often with promises of caste Hindu status. The Ambedkarite revolution was betrayed by its leaders’ moral bankruptcy.

Yet youths like Rohith Vemula who saw themselves as part of the Ambedkarite mission continued to spread awareness of Ambedkar’s gospel in campuses. Dalit bahujan writers like Kancha Ilaiah powerfully articulated the Dalit’s “buffalo nationalism” centred on the black buffalo rather than on the white cow. Dalit intellectuals like Chandra Bhan Prasad praised the British Raj for liberating Dalits from Manuwad. Prasad built a temple to Goddess English, Ilaiah called for the re-writing of the Purusa-sukta, the Vedic hymn that assigns upper castes different places in the divine body but leaves out the perpetually polluted “achhut”.

Into this ferment has exploded Jignesh Mevani. His campaign crucially focused on unemployment and individual freedom. ‘They say Adani-Ambani, we say jobs, they say love jihad, we say love zindabad,’ he yells. Mevani represents the new wave of educated Dalits committed to a no-holds-barred attack on brahmanical Hindutva’s icons like Rama and Dronacharya, demander of Eklavya’s thumb.

Since the advent of the Hindu rashtra, attacks on Dalits have spiked. The assertive Dalit is now daring to keep a pointed moustache like a thakur, Dalit grooms often ride a horse and carry a sword, enraging agrarian middle castes resentful of Dalit success. NCRB data records a sharp rise in crimes against Dalits in 2016 from previous years. Mevani, who shot to prominence after the horrific beating of Dalits in Una by “cow protectors”, is rightfully incensed. He is furiously emphasising the Dalit ideological challenge and counter-culture to hierarchical Hindutva: beef eating and cattle trade as a Dalit way of life, English education as a Dalit right, the right to wear Ambedkar’s prescribed modern dress of trousers and shirt. Mevani refuses to be co-opted. He wants equal space, not sops; respect, not condescension. The caste elite has never been able to accept Dalit pride and Mevani opposes everything Modi represents: cowworshipping Hindutva, big business and clampdown on Constitutional freedoms. Most frightening of all, Jignesh Mevani has just achieved an impressive election win.

He is holding up a mirror to society, once again reminding as Ambedkar did, that without social democracy, political democracy is meaningless. Why is it that with a Dalit President and an OBC PM, India still remains riven by violent caste divisions and a Manuwadi mentality? He’s giving the revolution the angry determined leader it has so far lacked, and aiming to create a cross-class nationwide youth coalition. And in the aftermath of Vemula’s death, Una and rise of the Bhim Army, rebellious youthful crowds are flocking to him. His war cry of Dalit pride, equality and assertion undercuts the united Hindu identity. No wonder the ruling regime is terrified of Jignesh Mevani.