JUly 30, 2016

Cow Politics in Modis Land

Dalit outrage in Gujarat has exposed the hypocrisy of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

he 11 July public flogging of four Dalit men with iron rods

in Gujarats Una town for allegedly killing the cow they
were skinning is an incident that would probably have
disappeared in the list of atrocities that people born Dalit in this
country are compelled to face virtually on a daily basis. The local
newspapers might have reported it; the police, who were silent
bystanders, would have dragged their feet to register a case; and
the perpetrators of the crime would have walked away. The crucial
difference is that this occurred in 2016, when the men beating the
Dalits operated under the supreme arrogance and confidence that
what they were doing was part of their righteous duty. As gau
rakshaks, protectors of the cow, they had taken the cue from the
party in power in the state and the centre, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), that any action taken to protect the cow was justified,
even if it meant taking the law into their hands. That their arrogance finally led to their undoing, when they uploaded a video of
the beating on social media, was happenstance; without that
Una town would not have been in the news, politicians of all
hues would not have rushed there to milk the political fallout of
the incident and the Dalit victims would have returned to their
wretched existence of a life where there is no hope of any justice.
It would also not have exposed the extreme physical brutality
that is virtually routine in the case of atrocities against Dalits.
While the attention drawn to the ghastly Una incident has
resulted in six arrests and the suspension of six policemen, what
was not expected was the reaction from Dalits across the state.
They have come out in large numbers to protest, they have flung
carcasses of dead cows in front of police stations and government
offices and they are refusing to continue skinning dead cows, a
task that is done exclusively by Dalits. Even Prime Minister
Narendra Modis hometown of Vadnagar saw a Dalit demonstration with slogans directed against him. This had never happened in all the 12 years he ruled Gujarat or since he became
Prime Minister. In effect, this has blown the lid of the famed
Gujarat model and exposed the deep caste divide that continues with Dalits leading a largely separate and marginalised existence. Even if Gujarat has not witnessed the vicious caste riots
like the ones that paralysed the state in the 1980s during the
anti-reservation agitations, the fissures in Gujarati society along
caste lines have remained as strong as before and the criminal
justice system continues to let them down. According to data
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

JUly 30, 2016

vol lI no 31

assembled by the website IndiaSpend, in 2014 only 3.4% of

crimes against Scheduled Castes in Gujarat led to conviction;
the national average was 28.8% that year.
The political fallout of Una on the BJP in Gujarat could be
significant. In the past, the party did not go out of its way to woo
Dalits in the belief it did not need their vote, as they comprise a
little less than 8% of the population. Today, with elections coming up in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Punjab, and later in Gujarat, it
cannot afford to alienate them leading to a possible consolidation of an anti-BJP grouping comprising Muslims and Dalits. It
might be too early to conclude that this incident in Gujarat is the
beginning of the unravelling of the Modi juggernaut, for there
are two distinct aspects of Dalit consolidation. One is the more
spontaneous expression seen after Rohith Vemulas death in
Hyderabad in January this year and the recent developments in
Gujarat. These protests stand out for their novel and different
approach to a shameful reality that Indians refuse to confront:
the entrenched caste bias at every level of our society. How long
such expressions of anger and dissent can hold without being
taken over by mainstream politics remains to be seen but what
needs to be noted is that they are happening.
The second is the fillip these Dalit agitations are giving to established Dalit politics. Thus, Mayawati is able to use the Una incident, in addition to the fallout following BJPs Daya Shankar
Singhs derogatory comment about her, to her advantage as UP
warms up to the forthcoming assembly elections. The Congress
in Gujarat will no doubt try to capitalise on the Dalit agitation to
regain some of its lost support base. What will be equally interesting to watch is how the BJP handles these developments. So far
the two men who should have said something about the Una
attack, Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, have maintained a studious
silence. The latter is clearly allowing Gujarat Chief Minister
Anandiben Patel to face the flak in the hope that she will flounder
and perhaps fall. The former appears so intent on projecting
himself as a world leader that he doggedly refuses to be drawn
into local affairs, even if they have serious political ramifications
for his party. What is evident already is that the BJPs grand plan
to build up support amongst Dalits in UP is crumbling. This is
not surprising. The inevitable fallout of the cow politics that the
BJP and its ideological fraternity are pursuing with such vigour
is the alienation of not just Muslims but also Dalits.
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