Warning bell for Gandhians: Dalit activist "justifies" Godse on learning Mahatma blackmailed Ambedkar

In what should prove to be a warning bell for Gandhians of all hues, a dangerous trend appears to be taking shape, accelerated amidst a sharp upswing of information explosion, especially through the social media. A senior Dalit rights activist, who has been actively involved in organizing the Valmiki community in Gujarat, put out a Facebook post justifying Nathuram Godse murdering Mahatma Gandhi on October 3, next day of Gandhi Jayanti.
While this activist deleted the post 24 hours later when he was told this would send a "wrong message", when contacted, he told Counterview, "I went to a Dalit rally in Dholka. There I came to know for the first time how Gandhi pressured Babasaheb Ambedkar into giving up the demand for separate electorate for Dalits, allowing us to elect our own representatives to legislatures."
The activist, who has been in the forefront of the fight for the cause of manual scavengers and manhole workers, continued: "Gandhi betrayed us Dalits. This was pretty evident. This angered me. Why did Gandhi, who is called a Mahatma, blackmail Ambedkar like this this? In my angry mood, I began surfing Facebook, and I found on that day a post justifying Godse killing Gandhi. I copied it and posted it on my timeline."

The grassroots activist, who has worked hard to identify manhole workers who died due to asphyxiation, fighting for their legal right to get the Rs 10 lakh compensation, as ordered by the Supreme Court, admitted, "Of course, I didn't know the implications of the post. When brought to light, I deleted it."

A senior Gujarat activist, known for his campaigns on mining issues across India, Ashok Shrimali, also a Dalit, surprised over the extent of hate towards Gandhi could reach, admitted, however, that the "dislike for Gandhi is nothing new. It exists among Dalits in Gujarat, as elsewhere." He added, this comes from "lack of rapport between Dalits and Gandhians."

Dalit activists at a rally in Gujarat

The Dalit rally in Dholka, which took place on October 2, Gandhiji's birthday, was part of a series of similar rallies, organized by the Abhadcched Mukt Bharat Andolan (Untouchability Free India Movement): Mission 2047, launched by well-known Dalit rights activist Martin Macwan, where speakers, who included Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar, asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accept the demand put forward by Dr BR Ambedkar, made 85 years ago, to provide separate electorate for Dalits.
An earlier rally by the same organization, in which thousands of Dalits participated, took place on September 24, 2017, the anniversary of the pact between Ambedkar which "blocked" separate electorate for the Dalits, at Modi's birth place, Vadnagar, pointing towards Gandhi's "betrayal" of Ambedkar.
Separate electorate, as demanded by Ambedkar in early 1930s from the British rulers, was meant to allow Dalits (Ambedkar called them depressed classes) to choose their own elected representatives, with Dalits having two votes -- one for the general candidate and another for the Dalit candidate. Ambedkar believed this was necessary to give proper representation to the Dalits in legislatures, and remove the scourge of untouchability.
Disagreeing with Ambedkar's move, which seemed acceptable to the British, Gandhiji sat on fast unto death, "claiming" it would divide Hindus, the rally was told. On September 24, 1932, Gandhiji broke his fast, reaching an agreement with Ambedkar, under which Gandhiji, as representative of the dominant caste Hindus, assured Ambedkar, as representative of depressed classes, that caste Hindus would take full responsibility for the abolition of untouchabily from India.
On getting independence, instead of separate electorate, the Constitution of India allowed separate reserved constituencies where only Dalit candidates would fight elections, with all adult voters would vote, the rally was further told. This has created a situation, over the years, where Dalit candidates mainly woo non-Dalit voters, as they know that the Dalit votes would be divided between Dalit candidates.
Macwan regretted at one of the rallies, "Even 70 years after independence and 85 years after the Poona Pact, untouchability has remained intact, and successive governments of India have failed to abolish it despite the existence of stringent laws. Reserved constituencies for Dalits candidates has not helped either. Hence the demand to revert back to the demand put forward by Ambedkar to provide separate electorate for Dalits."

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog