Gujarat govt wants industries dept to "handle" pleas to appoint manual scavengers as temple priests

By A Representative
In what should appear as a weird development, the Gujarat government wants the state industries department to handle applications with pleas for appointing the lowest category of Dalits, Valmikis, involved in manual scavenging, as priests in temples. This has come to light in a letter from the chief minister’s office (CMO) to senior Dalit rights activist Rajesh Solanki, who wanted Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel to make the important change. Solanki had pleaded that Valmiki Dalits should be appointed priests in major Gujarat temples.
Revealing this, the CMO says, all pleas on priesthood to Valmiki Dalits should go to the state industries department directly. A copy of the letter, addressed to Solanki, has been forwarded to additional chief secretary, industries, Gujarat government, D Jagatheesa Pandian, with the the instruction to “handle” the plea for priesthood to Valimiki Dalits. Solanki wanted the Gujarat chief minister to come up with two Cabinet resolutions on this.
Solanki said, the first Cabinet decision related to appointing Valmiki Dalits as priests (pujari) in five prominent temples of Gujarat -- Ambaji, Chotila, Bahucharaji, Dwarka and Somnath. The second one was regarding stone laying foundation ceremony (bhumi poojan), with a minor Valmiki Dalit girl formally asked to conduct play the key role. “On July 25, 2014 CMO replied telling me that my both the letters had been forwarded to additional principal secretary, industries and mines”, Solanki said.
Solanki told Counterview, “I reminded Anandiben in my written plea that she had washed the feet of Valmiki veterans at two places, Patan and Ahmedabad, ahead of Lok Sabha elections, saying her effort was a sort of repentance about what the upper caste people had done to them for ages. I also said, now time had come that, as the chief minister Gujarat, she put her agenda of social harmony into practice. And the best way to do this was to adopt Cabinet resolutions giving special status to Valmiki Dalits in religious orders and ceremonies.”
Solanki expressed surprise that instead of taking any decision in the Cabinet, “her office sent my letters to the industries and mines department, which has nothing to do with the subject.” What is particularly “shocking”, Solanki added, is the fact that the industries and mines department was asked to take care of all plea “as per the rules.” This, he added, prompted him to write yet another letter to the Gujarat chief minister, reminding her of why priesthood to the Valmiki Dalits was so important to end untouchability practices.
The letter said, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad and Dr BR Ambedkar had demanded abolition of hereditary priesthood among Hindus, but no political party had so far dared to do this. “For decades, the BJP accused the Congress of playing vote bank politics. The Congress had its own Harijan cell. The BJP formed Anusuchit Jati Morcha. But, the BJP is not different than the Congress. BJP is not able to push social reforms among the Hindus. The BJP is interested only in instigating the Dalits against the Muslims”, Solanki said.
The move by Solanki -- who represents the Dalit Hakk Rakshak Manch (DHRM), a Dalit rights NGO in Ahmedabad -- comes more than a year after the state government under Narendra Modi came up with what was then described as “unique idea” of training manual scavengers in Hindu religious rituals. The Valmikis were learn Vedic rituals at institutions like Sola Bhagvat Vidyapith and Somnath Sanskrit University. Even Rs 22.50 lakh was aside for this in the budget for 2013-14. Critics said, such priesthood meant little to abolish caste-based manual scavenging.

Comments

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

The 'glass cliff' at Galgotias: How a university’s AI crisis became a gendered blame game

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan* “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information.” These were the words used in the official press release by Galgotias University following the controversy at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The statement came across as defensive, petty, and deeply insensitive.

When grief becomes grace: Kerala's quiet revolution in organ donation

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Kerala is an important model for understanding India's diversity precisely because the religious and cultural plurality it has witnessed over centuries brought together traditions and good practices from across the world. Kerala had India's first communist government, was the first state where a duly elected government was dismissed, and remains the first state to achieve near-total literacy. It is also a land where Christianity and Islam took root before they spread to Europe and other parts of the world. Kerala has deep historic rationalist and secular traditions.

When a lake becomes real estate: The mismanagement of Hyderabad’s waterbodies

By Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava* Misunderstood, misinterpreted and misguided governance and management of urban lakes in India —illustrated here through Hyderabad —demands urgent attention from Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), the political establishment, the judiciary, the builder–developer lobby, and most importantly, the citizens of Hyderabad. Fundamental misconceptions about urban lakes have shaped policies and practices that systematically misuse, abuse and ultimately erase them—often in the name of urban development.

Activists warn of gendered impact of VB-GRAMG Act, seek return to MGNREGA framework

By A Representative The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA), along with the Agrarian Alliance and Workers’ Forum of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), has written to President Droupadi Murmu urging her to call upon Parliament to repeal the newly enacted Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025 (VB-GRAMG Act) and restore and strengthen the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Stray dogs, an epsilon (ϵ) problem: Of child labour, and the art of misplaced priorities

By Bhaskaran Raman The Greek alphabet ϵ (epsilon) is used in maths and science to denote a quantity which is not zero, but extremely small *** Since the Supreme Court's interim order on the issue of stray dogs came out on 07 Nov 2025, there have been a range of opinion pieces speaking for the voiceless. Most of them take the stance that there is a "problem" with stray dogs, but that we need a humane solution. I agree with this broadly, but I think we need new terminology to talk about this.

Search This Blog