The recent incidents of violence against Dalits in India show that the Hindu majority which elected the BJP thrice is not just against Muslims, but also against the lower castes. The violence shown in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh betray the BJP as being dedicated to caste-ist politics. Indeed, this means that the whole of India is caste-ist, and that the venom against Muslims is not because they ruled India under the Mughals, but because they are outside the caste hierarchy. Indeed, those Muslims who are descended from converts from Hinduism, had committed the crime of trying to escape the bonds of the caste system.
In Maharashtra, Somnath Surywanshi, a Dalit activist, died in police custody. He had been arrested for taking part in the protests against an earlier desecration of a replica of the Constitution, which had been next to a statue of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, a Dalit who headed the committee which drafted the Indian Constitution. Though the issue is seen as one of pro- and anti-Constitution activists, it is clearly on Dalit and anti-Dalit lines, Dalits are demanding punishment of the policeman responsible for the death of Mr Suryavanshi. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has visited the area, indicating that the matter is becoming a partisan football. In UP, a Dalit boy, 17, was invited to a birthday party, where he was stripped, urinated upon, and forced to lick his own spittle off the ground. This was all filmed and then posted on the Internet. He then committed suicide. One is not only aghast at the crime, but also the mental poverty of those committing it. The BJP has done nothing to alleviate this deprivation, because it wishes to keep on exploiting it.
India has now experienced more than a decade of BJP rule, and the caste-ist nature of its Hindu extremism are becoming clear. Not for it the lip service of the Congress, whose Mahatma Gandhi said the Dalits were to be called Harijans, which was a name for devotees of Krishna. Pakistanis can count themselves lucky on a lucky escape, in that Pakistan was created, for otherwise, they would have suffered similar constant humiliation. After all, it is not a matter of having carved out a separate homeland. Dalits never did such a thing. Indeed, such Dalit figures as Dr Ambedkar bought into the Indian project. Little did he know that Nehruvian socialism was just a cover for Hindu caste-sim and extremism.
