Golana: Price for justice... when Darbars wanted to teach Dalits lifetime lesson

Paying homage to victims at Golana

By Gagan Sethi*
Eight years of continuous engagement, which included setting up of forestry cooperatives and conscientisation work among the youth, helped us infuse a sense of confidence and self-respect among the Vankar Dalits of Golana village, situated off Bay of Khambhat.
Thanks to these efforts, the community had begun to stand up for its rights. It had begun to identify the entitlements the Dalits should get and also how they were deprived of their rights because the existing socio-political setup.
An application for allocating land had been sent to the mamlatdar of Cambay, as Khambhat was called then. It was the same land that had been encroached upon by the upper caste Darbars of the village.
In official records, it was a government land, set aside for housing for the weaker sections.
The mamlatdar acted in favour of the Dalits. He did this despite political pressure. We believe he had orders from the then Kheda district collector, Ravi Saxena, to do his duty, and not act under pressure.
I distinctly remember how Saxena admonished an MLA in his chamber in our presence. Saxena told the MLA not to bang and shout in the collector’s chamber, as it wasn’t the Gujarat legislative assembly.
On January 26, 1986, the feudal landlord Darbars of Golana village, unable to bear the loss of social power, brutally attacked Dalit households. Four of our colleagues were gunned down on the spot. Eighteen others were badly wounded. Several houses were set on fire.
Darbars thought that they would teach a lifetime lesson to the Dalits, so that the oppressed community didn’t raise its head again. Little did they know that times had changed, and that the community had galvanized itself into a united front. The media stood with us, and we forced the then chief minister, Amarsinh Chaudhary, to visit the place.
For months Golana remained a symbol of Dalit struggle. It was a pilgrim spot for Dalits across the state. The then district development officer, DJ Pandian, now chief secretary of Gujarat State, took special care to see that the District Rural Development Agency granted a housing programme to the Dalits under the Indira Awas Yojana.
The state agreed to our demand for a special public prosecutor, and we got the appointment of renowned advocate RK Shah with his full team to support the legal battle. Ten persons were sentenced to life.
It is quite another thing that the case finally took 13 years to complete in the Supreme Court.
We learned from the trial how justice often remains beyond the reach of the common victim.
One would need strong institutional backing and huge resources to prove a case in favour of the victim in the court of law.
In this ambivalence was born the dream to set up Centre for Social Justice and Navsarjan, so that access to justice is within the reach of the excluded and the victims of systemic injustice.
—
*Founder of Janvikas & Centre for Social justice. This article first appeared in DNA

Comments

The golden crop: How turmeric is transforming women's lives in tribal India

By Vikas Meshram* When the lush green fields of turmeric sway in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, it is not merely a spice crop — it is the golden glow of self-reliance. In villages where even basic spices once had to be bought from the market, the very soil today is yielding a prosperity that has transformed the lives of thousands of families. At the heart of this transformation is the initiative of Vaagdhara, which has linked turmeric with livelihoods, nutrition, and village self-governance — gram swaraj.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

False claim? What Venezuela is witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat

By Manolo De Los Santos The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility. In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines: One . The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution. Two . Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandone...

The selective memory of a violent city: Uttam Nagar and the invisible victims of Delhi

By Sunil Kumar* Hundreds of murders take place in Delhi every year, yet only a few incidents become topics of nationwide discussion. The question is: why does this happen? Today, the incident in Uttam Nagar has become the centre of national debate. A 26-year-old man, Tarun Kumar, was killed following a dispute that reportedly began after a balloon hit a small child. In several colonies of Delhi, slogans such as “Jai Shri Ram” and “Vande Mataram” are being raised while demanding the death penalty for Tarun’s killers. As a result, nearly 50,000 residents of Hastsal JJ Colony are now living in what resembles a state of confinement.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Search This Blog