Dr. Vivek Kumar

These must be happiest moments for the Dalit leadership, as it has become so powerful that it can lend a helping hand to Sangh Parivar and BJP and thereby to communalism. The politics of erstwhile untouchable castes has assumed this amount of authority, capacity, potentiality and control to influence an agenda of such far-reaching consequences is anybody’s guess. The secular forces have combined Mayawati’s ascendance to UP’s Chief Minister’s post, with the help of BJP and participation of Dalits and Tribals in Gujrat holocaust for declaring Dalit as partners of communalism. They have also argued that the Hinduization of Dalit is now complete. Further, some Muslim religious leaders and intellectuals first tried to prevail upon Muslim MLA,s of BSP to resign from the party. And when they di not succeed in their endeavor they asked Muslim community to socially boycott them.

The whole episode is really painful, pathetic, and impressionistic in nature. In this context, before forming any worldview about any particular political party or any community some fundamental issues must be addressed at length to know the reality.

At the out set let us consider the first allegation leveled by the secular forces against BSP and thereby Dalits that they have given a new life to Communal forces at a time when every one has rejected them. First and foremost let us ask, if today BSP and Dalits are giving life to communal force then, can anybody identify the force which kept them alive in Indian politics for so long? Was it 1967 coalition of Left and Socialist with Jan Sangh in UP? Was it Janata Party experiment in 1977 which gave them deterrent capacity because it was during this period they tasted power for the first time? Can we hold Janata Dal government responsible for the same as it was supported by BJP from one side and Communists from the other? In fact, the Janata Dal led by V.P. Singh and Mulayam Singh yadav, the champions of secularism, contested elections in 1989 with an understanding with BJP. Above all, where will we keep the 25 Parties coalition, supporting BJP to lead the NDA government. If all these forces have lent communal forces a helping hand at different intervals and still being revered as secular then why to blame BSP only?

The second issue in this connection is that why the secular forces have not condemned Farookh Abdullah’s National Conference for supporting communal forces in the same vein as they are condemning the Muslim MLA’s elected from BSP. Similarly, why the secularists did not condemned Shanawaj Khan, Mukhtar Abbas Nakvi, Sikandar Bakht, Seema Rizvi, Omar Abdullaha, for joining BJP? Of all, why the secularists are not asking Afghanistan and other Muslim countries to break diplomatic ties with India as a communal party is leading the Indian government? This means the secularists and Muslim Intelligentsia is playing a partisan role.

Another point related to this is that the secularists are in a way asking Dalits to stand by Muslims in this hour of crisis but will they answer how many times they have asked Muslims to stand by Dalits in their hour of crises? How many times Muslim Community has taken out a protest march against the massacre of Dalits and rape of Dalit women, which is regular feature of Indian society. Further, the discrimination against the Dalits by Muslim is only few paces less than the Savarnas. For instance, the discrimination against Dalita in Minority institutions is the same as is found in the institutions led and dominated by the Hindu Savarnas. Aligarh Muslim University and Jmia Milia Islamia, to name just a few, where not a single seat in teaching staff reserved for the Dalits has been filled, speaks the volume of the discrimination against the Dalits in the aforesaid Institutions. Hence if you are asking someone’s help some confidence building measures are needed. It is all the more important that these measures should come from the stronger of the two parties involved. And it is a fact that even today Muslims are better placed than Dalits in terms of social and economic aspects of life. It is difficult to understand why the Muslims have not come to the rescue of Dalits till now?

Further, the secularist have termed BSP and Dalits as communal because they have formed a coalition in UP with BJP. But the same secularist have failed to identify the ‘ Political families’ where one family member is either in so-called secular party and another a member of a communal party. Anil Shastri is in Congress and Sunil Shastri is in BJP, Aditya Rao Scindhiya, V.C. Shukla , Bhagwat Jha Azad are in Congress and their relatives Vasundhara Raje Scindhya, and S.C. Shukla and Kirti Azad ,to name just a few, are in BJP respectively. One can call their affiliation to different parties as individual’s choice in the democratic country. But this does not justify a families association to communal forces. Can the secular forces term the respective families of the aforesaid leaders as communal and ask for social boycott. If they cannot term these political families as communal then how can they term BSP and Dalits as communal. And of all BSP, which has not joined the BJP from inside, it is just an arrangement for a government while the leaders mentioned above are respected members of a communal party.

Besides, another issue in this context, which needs some reflection, is commitment of the secularist forces for the formation of a secular government in Uttar Pradesh. The point is that if the secular forces were so committed to secularism then why they did not stop BSP from falling in the trap of communal forces. Every one knows that if Congress and Samajwadi Party would have supported BSP then a secular government could have been easily formed. This would have sent dual massage. One it would have strengthened the secular forces not only in UP but also at the National level. It would have dug, according to the secularist, the last nail in the coffin of communal forces. Secondly, by crowing a Dalit woman in CM’s position their commitment towards social justice would have also got highlighted. Again can any secularist answer why it did not happen? Clearly the onus lies on the secularist.

Having said that we come to the solutions offered by secularists for checking the problem of communalism. Are Marches, Dharnas, Fasts, Seminars, and few slogans, Pamphlets sufficient for checking the communal frenzy, which has assumed larger than life image? In this regard we can take lesson from the communalists. They have established permanent institutions where they inject the poison of communalism from the very childhood. They prepare individuals with a set of ideology with years of training. They find it all the easier to indoctrinate their members because Hinduism is the dominant way of life. We can easily say that communalism is the construct of the ‘great tradition’ implemented by the ‘little tradition’. Can anybody claim that the secular forces in India have a common and permanent institution where they can come together and train the individuals ideologically. It has been seen in the past as was witnessed during Gujrat riots also that the secularists act with adhocism. They get-to-gather as and when there is a communal riot and go to sleep as soon as it subsides to awake gain as and when the next riot breaks.

Therefore the need of the hour is to ideologically wean out individuals from Hindutava fold for which we have to have permanent structures and institutions which can provide this facilities to secular forces. As far as fear about the BSP led coalition government in UP is concerned we can be sure enough that the BSP leadership is capable enough to keep the secular fabric of society alive as it has proved in the past. BSP in the two earlier governments (1995 and 1997) checked Hindutva forces successfully and did not allow them to create any disturbance. For example, the BSP forced its coalition partner to restrict a major Hindu nationalist mobilization in 1995 around Mathura Idgah complex, a mobilization that was highly likely to lead violence because it was attracting Hindu and Muslim militants from all over the state to carry out or stop a ‘Parikarma’. The BSP forced the BJP to impose sever restrictions on the event by using State machinery- heavy police barricading etc.

This is not all, BSP has played a more constructive role at grassroots in UP. The party has prepared an ideologically trained cadre base that knows that Hindutva is not his cup of tea. The party in its cadre camps has sensitized them about their own agenda. It has established its own cultural symbols, which are opposed to Hindutva forces. For example the BSP organized a fair in the name of Periyar and reveres him as the emancipator of Dalits. But Hindutava forces hate Periyar as he had garlanded Ram’s statue with shoes and was against Brahminism. That is why today ‘Jai Bheem’ is being pitched against ‘Jai Shree Ram’ and BSP has been successful in weaning out substantial portion of Dalits, if not all, from the clutches of Hindutava forces. Today it is because of BSP that the image of homogenized Hindu whole has broken which Sangh Parivar so meticulously tries to establish. Therefore the secular forces should not worry about minorities in UP till BSP is at the helm of the affairs because it can protect their interest along with the Dalits and successfully check communalism as it has done in the past.