Casteology Wins, Ideology Defeated!

Casteology Wins, Ideology Defeated!

Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - One Hundred FIFTY

Palash Biswas



A political party committed to ending oppression of the downtrodden by upper castes has taken an absolute majority of state legislative seats in Uttar Pradesh.A political party with socialist leanings has regained power in India's most politically influential state. Meticulous poll planning by Mayawati - especially the strategy of wooing Brahmins and other upper castes in a big way in a rainbow coalition helped add to her traditional vote base of Dalits and Muslims. Indian shares bucked weak global markets to gain 0.18 percent Friday, boosted by signs one party would win an outright majority in an important state election and data showing moderating inflation and strong industrial output.

The 30-share benchmark BSE index rose 24.93 points to 13,796.16, although only 11 components gained. The index fell 0.99 percent on the week.

"I think both the Uttar Pradesh elections and lower inflation numbers would have given comfort to our markets," said Jayesh Shroff, a fund manager at SBI Funds Management.


India's most prominent Untouchable leader pulled off a surprise election victory in the country's most populous state today, stalling the political ambitions of the Gandhi family's heir apparentwhile the country's ruling and main opposition parties both lost seats. Thus, India paid homage with full pomp and honour on Friday to the "martyrs" who battled British rule 150 years ago in the country's "first war of independence".Mayawati, who uses only that single name, leads the Bahujan Samaj party, which looks set to sweep the polls in Uttar Pradesh, a northern Indian state of 170 million people and the country's most important bellwether of public opinion.The result was a lesson for Rahul Gandhi - the son of Sonia Gandhi who runs the ruling Congress party - who spent a month criss-crossing Uttar Pradesh but in the end could only hold on to his 25 seats.However,the results were not expected to hurt Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's central coalition as the Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also fared poorly, disproving exit polls that had forecast an improved showing. Now, the impact of this unexpected result on next Presidential Election has to be seen. As Mayabati has got the trump card, Congress or BJP should not have any say.


Shouting "Mayawati Zindabad" and "BSP Zindabad", the BSP backers took to the streets in virtually every town and city across Uttar Pradesh.So the results of the Uttar Pradesh elections are out, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has made a stunner of a win.Pre-poll surveys and exit polls had forecast the BSP to emerge as the largest party in the 403-member assembly but it was not expected to win a majority on its own.

On Friday, as counting of ballots neared a close, the party had won 204 seats of the 397 declared, NDTV said.With Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati poised to return to the helm in Uttar Pradesh, the state's bureaucracy, especially those who were known to be close to outgoing Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, are nervous.


It is post-Ambedkar dalit movement against post modern manusmriti! They have changed their tools. Why should not we! Politics is Shining Super power India's largest industry, it is the state's corporate sector, and it is a key avenue of employment. Political analysts described the UP result as a "bolt from the blue". Why?On the other hand,the victory of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which represents India's former 'untouchables', analysts said, could indicate that the state was moving away from divisive, caste-based politics and had voted for a new, broader coalition. As early trends showed BSP surging ahead in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the BJP chose to keep its cards close to the chest on the issue of joining hands with Mayawati's party to form the next government. Why? They may strike any deal and you don`t have any question to ask. All morality is reserved for the Dalits!

With UP election results defying every analysis, exit poll, survey and forcast, it is clear that Casteology wins in contemporary Indian Polity and Ideology is finally defeated. hindutva have lost its face in UP. We have seen how ideology works in recent times to annihilate the Dalit Rural India, its life and livelihood. Expressing her gratitude to the people for their support, Mayawati paid tribute to her mentor and BSP founder Kanshi Ram and architect of the Constitution B.R. Ambedkar and said that her party would provide a government that would root out injustice and crime. Uttar Pradesh is a chronically poor rural backwater that would be the world's sixth most populous state if it were a nation. Less than half its women can read or write their name, but it has also produced most of India's prime ministers.The Congress used to have a combination of Muslims, Dalits, and forward castes when it used to win elections after elections.

It was social engineering and ideology which boosted the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to victory, declared a triumphant BSP chief Mayawati who is poised to become chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time.Dressed in her favourite pink salwar-kameez, Mayawati said at the press conference at the BSP party headquarters here after paying floral tributes to life-size statues of Dalit messiah B.R. Ambedkar, her mentor and BSP founder, the late Kanshi Ram.

'A big social change has taken place in Uttar Pradesh and all sections of society has supported the party. Our chalking out a carefully planned strategy has brought this success,' a beaming Mayawati told a crowded press conference as cameras whirred and photographers clicked.

Condemning the action of former minister Mohamed Azam Khan, who was shown by TV channels shredding official papers before leaving his office after the party's defeat, she said the Director General of Police has been asked to probe the matter and she would do the needful after taking oath as chief minister.

She thanked the Election Commission for conducting a free and fair poll and appreciated the role played by all commission officials.


Ambedkar as the maker of the Indian Constitution, provider of the present order, a Bodhisatva, a constitutionalist, a messiah, a saviour, an SC leader, a liberal democrat, a staunch anticommunist, a reformist allergic to revolutions of whatever kind and thus, in a nutshell as the bourgeoisie liberal democrat par excellence. Barring Dadasaheb Gaikwad and the movement of the Dalit Panthers for a while post-Ambedkar leadership failed to pay any attention to the material aspects of life and mystified the problems of dalits. To take one example, while political power was a means for Ambedkar, it appears to be the end for Kanshiram.

In a captive polity and economy, ruled by coradors of corporate Imperialism, ideology fails to help common Indian masses. Finally, Indian society speaks out. We have caste in our blood. Masses do not understand ideology, but they do understand caste very well. Rearrangement of forces in accordance of social realities apart from so called ideology always helping the rotten brahminical dominace and Zionist Imperialist MNC Rule, have open the doors of State Power for UP dalits under the leadership of a pragmatic leader like Mayabati!

This casteology has to be understood! Since , it is clear ideology, Left or Right has failed to change the society accordingly.Thirty years on, BSP politics has gifted Mayawati a unique political situation.In UP, Mayawati, as everyone knows and as the successive elections results have proved, has undisputed hold over the Dalit votes.In the last election in UP, she secured 98 seats out of 403 seats with 23 per cent of the vote share.In UP, Dalits constitute around 21 per cent of the electorate and it stands to her credit that she is able to transfer her share of votes to any candidate or party she chooses and that too at her price.In the past, slogans like Tilak, taraju aur talwar, unko maro juthe char ('Brahmins, traders and the warrior caste should be kicked') used to be the mantra of electoral success when Kanshi Ram, her mentor and the founder of BSP, took his movement to the economically poor and socially condemned Dalits, who were in search of a leader and a political party.She thinks quickly, changes tack quickly, and is mindful only that the Dalits are still backing her.


The people of Nandigram have set an example before the country by resisting the Left Front Government's move to acquire land for a chemical hub compelling it to backtrack, a leader of a LF ally said today.

"The unrest at Nandigram was caused by the Front Government's move to acquire land for a chemical hub. But the people have not parted with their land. The people at Nandigram have set an example by resisting the move," PWD minister and senior RSP leader Kshiti Goswami said.

Addressing the state conference of the party's trade union wing, UTUC, Goswami accused the West Bengal of arrogance.

With West Bengal`s ruling Left Front and the Opposition Trinamool Congress agreeing to hold a peace meeting on Nandigram, the East Midnapore district administration is likely to convene an all-party meeting today to prepare the ground for the peace initiative.


Villagers detain two Posco employees


In an ugly twist to the face off between Posco-India and the people of Paradip area where the company proposed to set up a 12 million tonne steel plant, three employees of the company were detained by the villagers of Gobindpur when they had gone there to canvas for land acquisition for the project this afternoon.All the three employees were locals and were from the Kujanga office of the company, about 20 km from Paradip. The vehicle they were traveling has also been damaged, sources said.Meanwhile, latest reports said, one of the three detainees, a lady executive named Rosalin Parida along with the driver of the vehicle have been released by the villagers.The other two employees, who are still held captive by the villagers in Patna village, neighbouring Gobindpur under the Dhinkia gram panchayat, were Pranabananda Das, public relations officer of Posco's Kujanga office and Debasish Swain, an executive.
It may be noted that Posco, which is facing stiff resistance from the local people on the issue of land acquisition for its project, had recently initiated steps for direct negotiation with the villagers to buy the private land within its site following the government advice to this effect. The company required 4004 acres land for the project, of which 3566 acres are
government land and 438 acres private land.

The wave on which Mayawati rode to power in Uttar Pradesh could bring in its wake seminal changes in the way politics is done at the Centre and in the countryside. Political analysts said by combining the underprivileged with the Brahmins, the BSP leader has transcended the politics of caste and vested in the dalits the leadership of the SC-Muslim-Brahmin social combine that had kept the Congress in power for decades.The emerging scenario reinforces the possibility of regional players growing beyond home states and navigating coalitions at the Centre.

It was as results poured in from different parts of the state indicating that the party could form a government on its own. Jubilant party workers burst crackers and distributed sweets and hugged each other as every favourable results brought a roar of cheers. Carrying BSP flags, party workers had started gathering near their leader's residence at Mall Avenue since early morning as if they knew what was in the offing.

In fact, the gain for the BSP is in a way loss for the BJP, which had emerged as the champion of the upper castes in the post-Mandal, mandir phase.


As we see in West Bengal, despite being ruled by left over three decades the Dalits and underprevileged classes have no sapce in life or livelihood.On September 29, 2006, four members of a poor peasant dalit family in Khairlanji village in Bhandara district of northeast Maharashtra were brutally killed in planned mob violence. The women members, mother and daughter were raped, sexually assaulted. All the members were paraded naked and tortured and assaulted on their private parts. Only the father, who was away, working in the fields, escaped this horrible fate. Neither the administration nor the media has taken steps that behooves an institution of a democratic civilized society as local women continue to agitate. Committee Against Violence on Women files this note.


Then, friends, what is the use of this bloody Ideology which may not help us in any way?

think!

Just Think and decide!

Let us formulate similar casteology whereever peoples resistance fail to express itself in the so called democratic set up!

If the Brahmins ruled India for thousands of years enslaving the rest of the population, why should we not have uppercast support to destroy their dominance. mayabati has exactly done the same with surgical precision!

Rather it may be analysed how Congeress and BJP, SP and Left failed to maintain Brahminical supremacy in COW Belt, which could not be revived by the extremist Hindutva!

If the Brahmins and other uppercaste are ready to allow adequate space for others and more importantly, accepts Dalit Leadership as they accepted in UP, a new wave of social changes may be expected henceforth!

Is a brhmin leader like Ms Mamta Bannerjee in bengal ready to accept Dalit leadership sacrificing her own political ambition to overthrow the Marxist capitalist Brahminical MNC Raj In bengal?

Rabindranath Tagore, the man who coined Indian Nationality, knew well about Dalit Emergence as he belonged to an outcast Peerali Brahmin community and his family led Brahmo samaj.

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's central relevance for securing the Indian democratic revolution. Although the dalits have wrested significant gains in various domains of social life during the last five decades, the relative gulf between them and non-dalits seems to have remained the same if not actually increased. On the other hand the emerging world order signified by the process of globalisation is bound to change the grammar of oppressed peoples' struggles all over the world. The dalits too, therefore will have to wage now and in future a revolutionary struggle at one and the same time on two fronts marked by the caste and the class.

Rabindranath Tagore, who died in 1941 at the age of eighty, is a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal. Anyone who becomes familiar with this large and flourishing tradition will be impressed by the power of Tagore's presence in Bangladesh and in India. His poetry as well as his novels, short stories, and essays are very widely read, and the songs he composed reverberate around the eastern part of India and throughout Bangladesh.

Rather Rashi,the play, writtenby Tagore in 1932, is set in the time when caste system was its height. Tagore's vision was perhaps prophetic when he "signalled" a social change - an upheaval brought about by the Sudras - the fourth caste. This is reflected in the chariot (during the Rath yatra called the Mahakaal - lord of time/Shiva), which does not move when pushed, by the Brahmins and kshatriyas. The rope of the chariot symbolises the bond of human relationships. These relationships in the course of time had undermined the role and rights of many and kept them suppressed. To a certain extent the chariot is an allegory for the division of society into different castes and sections.Caste is like a malaise, which only seems to spread its tentacles further coming down as does from the Vedic times. Though times have changed - the caste system as an "evil" has not withered away. On the contrary, it has lead to further "fragmentation" of society. It is a well-known fact that Brahmins and kshatriyas were at the top of the caste hierarchy and used this to oppress people. So when they try to push the chariot it does not budge. This sends signals of worry down the common people who try to appease the Gods in vain. It is finally the Sudras who are successful in moving the chariot.
This play Rather Rashi seems relevant even today on account of caste acting as a single divisive factor to a large extent, which leads to strife and tension. We are facing the brunt of it all - communal riots, child labour, political tensions - all deep-seated evils in the social fabric of the country. Rabindranath did come from a Hindu family—one of the landed gentry who owned estates mostly in what is now Bangladesh. But whatever wisdom there might be in Akhmatova's invoking of Hinduism and the Ganges, it did not prevent the largely Muslim citizens of Bangladesh from having a deep sense of identity with Tagore and his ideas. Nor did it stop the newly independent Bangladesh from choosing one of Tagore's songs—the "Amar Sonar Bangla" which means "my golden Bengal"—as its national anthem. This must be very confusing to those who see the contemporary world as a "clash of civilizations"—with "the Muslim civilization," "the Hindu civilization," and "the Western civilization," each forcefully confronting the others. They would also be confused by Rabindranath Tagore's own description of his Bengali family as the product of "a confluence of three cultures: Hindu, Mohammedan, and British".

The BSP's strategy of wooing Brahmins and other upper castes in a big way in a rainbow coalition helped add to its traditional vote base of Dalits and Muslims. The BSP may ultimately not need support from other parties to run a government. Scores of BSP workers celebrated and danced outside the residence of their leader and future Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati. Stunning its rivals, Mayawati's BSP scored a spectacular victory in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.Her party secured an absolute majority on its own to end 15 years of coalition politics in the state.The ruling Samajwadi Party suffered severe losses, winning 97 seats. The BSP, which always campaigned on an anti-upper caste plank in its two decades of electoral politics, fought the polls this time without any allies and won 203 of the 396 seats for which results were declared.

Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who won from both Gunnaur and Bharthana, conceded defeat in the wake of his party's drubbing and resigned in the afternoon


In the 2002 assembly elections, the BSP had won 99 seats while the Samajwadi Party bagged 143. The BJP was third last time too, winning 88 seats and the Congress had secured 25 seats.The Ajit Singh-led RLD had won 15 seats and the CPI-M one seat. Others accounted for the remaining 32 seats.Mayawati's strategy of sewing up rainbow coalition, particularly wooing Brahmins and other upper castes, appeared to have paid rich dividends to BSP in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, results of which were out on Friday.In her strategy that is seen by political observers as one of the biggest attempts at social engineering in recent years, the BSP supremo shed her image as only a dalit leader and and aligned with upper castes, against whom her party had in the past carried out a consistent campaign.Casting aside her 'anti-Manuvadi' stance, her pet theme against upper castes, Mayawati ensured substantial number of tickets to Brahmins and also others while keeping her dalit votebank intact.

With polling in one constituency countermanded, the half-way mark for a simple majority in the 403-member assembly will be 202. With BSP no longer requiring its support, Congress said that it will play the role of opposition in Uttar Pradesh.Set for a fourth term as chief minister, the 51-year-old Dalit leader unseated her bitter rival Mulayam Singh Yadav and delivered a body blow to the BJP's hopes of building on its string of victories in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Mumbai corporation.Chief campaigner Rahul Gandhi's electioneering appeared to have helped the Congress only retain its existing number of seats. The party is placed fourth, winning 21 seats and leading in three more.The Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal, with its clout in western UP, managed to retain its hold by winning five seats.

UP to get single party govt after 14 years

Uttar Pradesh will usher in single party rule after 14 years with the thumping victory of the Mayawati-led BSP bringing coalition politics to an end.

BSP reached the crucial 202 mark in the 403-member House as the results of the assembly polls were announced today.

Riding on the Ram wave, Kalyan Singh led the last single party government when BJP assumed office on June 24, 1991. The government was dismissed on December 6, 1992 by the Centre following demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya.

The assembly elections in 1993 saw Samajwadi Party and BSP fighting the polls together and had won 175 seats. Though the BJP had won 177 seats, the Congress and the Janata Dal extended support to the SP-BSP alliance which resulted in anointment of Yadav as the Chief Minister of the state.

The SP-BSP government was short lived and the two parties turned bitter foes after the attack on the BSP supremo Mayawati in 1995 following her withdrawal of support to the SP government.

The assembly polls, that followed soon after were held under the President's rule in 1996 saw BSP forging an alliance with the Congress and bagging 67 seats while the Congress had to contend with only 33 seats.

The BJP had in 1996 won 176 seats and emerged as the single largest party but yet it could not form the government as no party was ready to support it.

The BJP and BSP, however, stitched an alliance about seven months after the polls on the basis of six monthly rotational formula.

BSP leader Mayawati became the Chief Minister for the first six months but later broke the alliance throwing the state into political turmoil once again.



A Dalit Voice piece

" Casteology" replaces ideology: That is why all over India caste-based parties are coming up only because the SC/ST/BCs Ñ the country's three most oppressed segments ÑÊhave found in them better response. Since caste (jati) is nothing but an extended family, a people belonging to a jati find themselves more at home in their jati party.

Lalu Prasad's RJD, Mulayam's SP, Mayawatis BSP, Sharad Pawar's NCP, Ramdoss' PMK are prominent caste-based parties. A coalition of such parties is ruling in the Centre and in the states like Maharashtra, Karnataka etc.

As parliamentary democracy wakes up more and more oppressed people, more and more caste-based parties will spring up. This is natural in a country like India where every ideology has failed including Marxism and the only ideology that gave confidence to the deprived destitutes is "casteology", if we can coin a word like that. And a coalition of different castes and communities will rule the different states on the principle that each caste and community should gets its share of human rights in proportion to its population.

The future political setup in India will be mainly caste-based as the oppressed sections are losing faith in the existing party formations and the governments they form. We are happy the Brahmins, the principal component of India's ruling class, have also finally realised this supreme Truth and getting ready to form their jati party. Wonderful.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/jan_a2005/editorial.htm
Caste based discrimination still prevalent in India, says ILO report

Caste-based discrimination maybe abolished by law in India but it remains a major cause why backward classes, especially the Dalits, remain confined to menial tasks like manual scavenging and removal of dead animals, a latest report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on discrimination in the job sector has said.

Affirmative action has been able to assist only a small number of Dalits in finding formal jobs but has failed to provide even and equal opportunities to all, the report added.

"Violence, discrimination and segregation are a daily experience for millions of men and women in several regions of the world. But the practice (of discrimination that is rooted in caste or similar systems) is most widespread in South Asia, particularly in India and Nepal," the report, titled 'Equality at Work: Tackling the Challenges' remarked.

The report, a follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, was released in New Delhi by the Union Labour and Employment Minister, Oscar Fernandes, on Thursday.

The report added that Dalits are generally not accepted for any work involving contact for water and food for non-Dalits or entering a non-Dalit residence. "Thus, they are excluded from a wide-range of work opportunities in the area of production, processing or sale of food items, domestic work and the provision of certain services in the private and public sectors," the report said, adding their situation is further impaired by limited access to education, training and resources.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=25c6d65f-1c3e-4d0c-845a-1a2e84f184fa&&Headline=Casteism+still+prevalent+in+India%2c+says+ILO+report


Theorising The Dalit Movement: A Viewpoint

But, of course, Dalits can no longer be excluded. The Constitution and laws of the land are now, in principle at least, fully inclusive. Untouchability, once the clearest manifestation of social exclusion, is now illegal and the practice of it in any form is a punishable offence. Over the past five decades there have been many determined efforts to make the principle of inclusion effective, starting with reservation of seats for Dalits in legislative bodies and subsequently in educational institutions and public services. And by a variety of objective criteria, the condition of Dalits today is far better than what it was in the past.
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2223/stories/20051118000407000.htm
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0041-977X(1992)55%3A1%3C154%3ADASPIM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R
http://www.gla.ac.uk/sociology/units/anthrop/dalit/sisoc.htm
http://cssaame.com/issues/18_1/RACINES.pdf
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/may2005/article.htm
http://www.navayana.org/content/reviews/vijayprasad-DDL.htm
http://www.sephis.org/pdf/rnsrawat3.pdf
http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-ilaiah050304.htm
http://pd.cpim.org/2006/0129/01292006_surjeet.htm
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=dalit
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1121
http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Dalit-tribal/mandal-2.htm
http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2004/Smith,%20PJ.pdf
http://www.kent.ac.uk/clgs/documents/nsflt_abstracts.doc
http://www.dalitnetwork.org/go?/dfn/blog/2006/06/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1831106.stm
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2318/stories/20060922003902500.htm
http://www.dalits.org/charter.html

The State of Dalit Mobilization:
An Interview with Kancha Ilaiah

(This is the transcript of an interview with Kancha Ilaiah, a Dalitbahujan intellectual and professor of Political Science at Osmania University in Hyderabad. Ilaiah is author of the recently published book Why I am Not a Hindu. The interviewers are Chris Chekuri and Biju Mathew. The interview was conducted in July 1997.)

http://www.foil.org/resources/ghadar/v1n2/ilaiah.html
Dalits, Panchayat Raj And
Power Equations

By Goldy M. George

09 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org

Creation of Panchayat Raj is perhaps the best transformation in democratic India to realize the participation of ordinary people in power sharing. Amendment of Article 73 of the Constitution was envisioned as the best among decentralization polity in democracy. Theoretically Panchayat Raj would mean the power distribution from a stringent centralized set-up to a decentralized one, gazed with radical change both at the level of delivery of goods and in the social composition.

After the new generation of Panchayats have started functioning several issues have come to the fore, which have a bearing on human rights. The important factor, which has contributed to the Dalit situation vis-à-vis the Panchayat system, is the nature of Indian society, which of course determines the nature of the state. The Indian society is known for its inequality, social hierarchy and the rich and poor divide. The social hierarchy is the result of the caste system, which is unique to India. Therefore caste and class are the two factors, which deserve attention in this context.

At another level it is essential to look into the question: who are the victims of the social system and nature of the state? They are women, the Dalits, Adivasis and the poor. How can the process of decentralization through strengthening the democratically elected local bodies tackle these issues along with defining rural development in compressed way? Whether the decentralization process and the decentralized institutions increase human rights violations or enhance the possibility for respecting and observing human rights?
http://www.countercurrents.org/george090507.htm

Theorising The Dalit Movement: A Viewpoint

Anand Teltumbde

INTRODUCTION

The Dalit movement, in the familiar sense of organised resistance of the ex-untouchables to caste oppression, may not be traced beyond colonial times. However, in a wider sense of the struggle of lower castes against the hegemony of Brahminical ideology, it has to coexist with the history of caste itself. The broad framework of caste remaining the same, the Dalit movement could also be seen in a historical continuum with its previous phases. In another sense, it could be taken as the articulation phase of the numerous faceless struggles against the iniquitous socio-economic formation ordained by the caste system, that has occupied vast spaces of Indian history. By any reckoning it seems to have done well in identifying its friends and foes, putting in place its strategies and tactics and more importantly, carving out a space for itself in every sphere. It kept pace with the changes taking place in socio-political sphere during the colonial times and thus displayed significant learning during this phase. However, it could not do so thereafter when it had to consolidate its gains particularly in the context of substantial changes that befell during the post-independence times.
http://www.ambedkar.org/research/THEORISING%20THE%20DALIT%20MOVEMENT.htm

The Bhopal Declaration and a Tribal Fishworker’s Cooperative
C.N. Subramaniam

In January 2002, the government of Madhya Pradesh hosted a conference on the Dalit movement in which leading Dalit intellectuals participated and adopted the so-called Bhopal Declaration. A few weeks before that a contract between the government of Madhya Pradesh and a cooperative of dam displaced tribal fishworkers had lapsed and the government was procrastinating in renewing the agreement. Finally when the government did agree to renew the contract the terms were so harsh that the cooperative has found them unacceptable.

These two events which are apparently unconnected provide an insight into both the actual issues before the dalit movement and the real face of the government of Madhya Pradesh.
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv8n1/bhopal.htm


Complying with an Election Commission order, the BJP has issued a public condemnation of an anti-Muslim CD released by its state leaders ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

''The party has no hesitation in doing so. In consonance with the stand that the party had suo motu...the party categorically declares that it does not approve of the contents of the said CD. It strongly condemns the same,'' it said in a statement.

However, the statement was prefaced by a caveat that it reserved its right to challenge the jurisdiction of the three -member Election Commission to pass such an order when the BJP has questioned its quorum due to the participation of Navin Chawla.

The party also cited submissions it made to the Election Commission that it had acted immediately after a row erupted over the disc and removed a state party spokesman from his post.

With the poll panel having rejected BJP's demands to exclude Election Commissioner Navin Chawla from the hearing of the CD case, the BJP maintained that its condemnation of the disc does not amount to giving up its right to challenge any derecognition order passed by a bench that includes him.

Last week, the Commission reserved its decision on demands for derecognition of the BJP and asked it to come out with a public condemnation of the video.