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There are people who deface Ambedkar statues almost on a periodic basis. What do you think about that?
There are two things — this is a systematically organised campaign with vested interest — it has been reported in Maharashtra before every election. Defacing a statue is a way to incite people. Second, Ambedkar has become an icon and is very popular these days, which is causing jealousy among the dominant sections in society. Ambedkar’s evolution, from his portrait being hung in the parliament from not too long ago, today, he finds a place even in people’s homes. The education system has failed as a means to eradicate caste. A country doesn’t become a nation if there is no sense of homogeneity, without equality – Ambedkar was right. How can we become one nation, if caste violence and untouchability continue to exist, or if 30,000 children are dying of malnutrition every year? All this is happening because of Manu’s ideas about fate. This dangerous idea is internalised and passed down from one generation to another.Have there been attempts in the past to bring Manu’s statue down or did you feel the need to write the letter to Sonia Gandhi only after the BLM movement?
See, we were the first people to file a petition in Gujarat High Court to abolish manual scavenging practices in 1996 after which the national agitation began. I, myself, have been fighting caste violence for over 40 years in Gujarat and I’ve seen violence from very close quarters, one of my own colleagues was shot dead in 1986. So all of this is ultimately connected to the ideology of the avarna. There’s a reason why Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti in 1927 — it is a symbol. When I used to go to the villages as a young boy, I found that all the names for the Dalits were derogatory. When talking about how one should name a child, the Manusmriti says that upper castes should name a child in a way in which reverence is exhibited and for lower castes, the name should be contemptuous. So here, the scripture and the statue are not just symbols, these are symbols that reinforce that ideology.So when the George Floyd incident happened, I drafted a public letter to Donald Trump and it had more than 4000 signatories. When Trump came to Ahmedabad and visited the Gandhi Ashram, the government built a wall to hide the colony just outside it that consisted mainly of Dalits and poor people. When the Chinese Premier had come earlier, they had covered the entire slum with a green net, but when Trump came, they actually constructed a wall. After protests, they lowered the wall but it remained. So, I connected all these incidents, felt that Black lives and the Dalit lives face a similar kind of situation. And when the protests started there, the first thing that came to my mind was that statue of Manu. And so I decided to write the petition.
Are you optimistic about Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party paying heed to the petition?
By just writing a petition or an open letter, nobody listens. So we have a systematic campaign going on. First, we collected signatures from all over the country and over 700 people have signed. Now we are having a missed call campaign to get support, it was launched only two days ago but by this morning (July 1) we had over 9000 calls coming in, I think it will go up to one lakh within a week. Besides this, on August 15, in 1000 avenues across the country we will get women to hoist the flags. Manu has said that women are an inferior race and that they are born to serve men and there is also an obnoxious law detailing what should be done if women ‘break the rules’. The caste violence, gender violence or the systemic poverty that we have is all a promotion of Manu’s concept of karma — which is that the sufferings of this life is a result of one’s karma and therefore, you one cannot look at it as a violation of one’s right.In the letter, we have informed the party that we will wait till August 15 for them to pass a resolution at their party office in Rajasthan and Delhi and, as a state, they should decide to remove the statue. If they don’t respond to us, we will be forced to look at other modes of agitation. We have also asked them to file an application for an early hearing of the Rajasthan High Court’s stay order on the removal of the Manu statue which has been pending for 31 years.
A stay order for 31 years? Could you tell us the details of this case?
All the judges of the Rajasthan High Court had resolved and passed an order agreeing to have the statue removed because of the protests that took place in 1989, when the statue was erected. But before the order could be implemented, Acharya Dharmendra, from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, applied for a stay and it was granted by a single judge. And for the last 31 years, only one hearing has taken place on the matter. The last time a hearing took place was in 2015 but the lawyers created such a hungama, that no hearing could take place. If this can happen in the High Court, what will happen in the villages? This is highly concerning and that’s why the letter calls this an attack on the constitution.The Confederates described their ideology as being centrally based “upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition”. These men, however, were in politics. Do you think Indians will ever be able to draw a parallel here?
There are differences between race and caste but the underlying anger which is within Black minds, exists in Dalit minds as well. That’s what we saw in Una, when the four boys were thrashed in public, the issue got attention across the country. So the anger is there — how can the country promote such a thing so brazenly in a democractic setup even after 71 years?Now, the facts and statistics that are coming out shows that even in the US this anger was building up. When WEB Du Bois started the movement many years ago, there were hardly any takers, people were scared because of police brutality. Not many people know there was correspondence between Du Bois and Ambedkar, they wanted to come together and raise the issue of discrimination together. After Du Bois, there was Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the anger started to grow.
People began to get more vocal after they got to know the extent of the violence that was taking place. Now with social media and the digital space, there is scientific data available. So in the US, they’ve found this is not a single incident, in the last 5 years, there have been 5000 murders. There are people who have been keeping track of every single incident, that is something that we did 32 years ago in Gujarat, documenting every single incident that happened. In Gujarat, the Scheduled Caste population is 7.01 percent but representation in jail for those convicted both of major or minor crimes is 32.9 percent. This pattern replicates across the country. On the other hand, when we look at the implementation of the SC, ST (Prevention Against Atrocities) Act, the conviction doesn’t go up to more than 5 percent. Now, when it is against Dalits, the conviction rate is high because there are judicial prejudices – this is systemic. But, students and the younger generation cannot tolerate this anymore. That’s why the language is changing, the articulation is changing and there is renewed anger. 32 years ago, when we were saying these things people would listen, but ask – what can we do? Now, that is changing.
How have the land reforms led to the increased anger among the oppressed?
In Gujarat, two Acts were brought in — The Gujarat Agricultural Lands Ceiling Act, 1960 and The Gujarat Tenancy and Agricultural Land Act, 1948. They were the most revolutionary Acts brought in post-Independence. It stated that 3.75 million acres of land would be made available to Dalits and tribals in Gujarat. Now, 54 years after its implementation, government figures say that they have been able to give just one-third of the land, that is 12.5 lakh acres of land. But even this is not true because when we were working with the villagers, we got complaint after complaint from them saying that they have land in their name but don’t possess it. When I go and teach in colleges and Universities, the first question to me is: Sir, but for how long can we have reservation? That has become a focal point, no one looks at land reforms. Nobody looks at the violence and inequality in society.Two years ago, two women Kantabai Ahire and Sheela Pawar blackened Manu’s statue in protest. They, unfortunately, continue to battle criminal charges in court, but what was your reaction to this incident?
These two women had gone there with a plan to give a petition to the Registrar of the High Court demanding that the statue removal matter be heard earlier. But when they got there and saw the statue, all the plans went haywire (laughs) and they decided to follow their own conscience. With their bare hands, they blackened the statue. In my experience, I have found that the anger among women is much more than men. Both Dalit and Tribal women suffer the most. That is where the feminist movement in India has failed — it has failed to address the caste violence on women. I’m the biggest supporter of feminist groups and I’m a part of many too but this is something that I tell them too. That is what the parliament is here for. But no politician wants to open their mouth about the Manu statue, it is a very small matter but this shows what their ideology is. To win an election, they choose not to become reformists. In our letter, we’ve asked Gandhi to also withdraw the cases against these two women.White people are coming out in large numbers to support the Black Lives Matter movement and they are also taking responsibility for their actions and the actions of their ancestors and are promising to change to provide a safer environment for their African-American brethren. Do you feel we will ever see a day where something similar would happen here?
I’m very hopeful because I have seen change coming through. This is how I see it: 40 years ago, it felt like we were taking one step forward and three backward and now, I feel we’re falling only two steps behind. As a 17-year-old boy when I went with my professors to the villages, I saw with my own eyes how men from dominant castes would enter any Dalit house and do whatever they wanted with the women. Nobody would protest, even their husbands would be helpless. It is something that tore me apart but my professor had told me then: Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. He told me to first learn, listen and understand. It took me more than 10 years to understand this. I understood that people have limitations and they are helpless but today things are different. Today, because of reservation, many from the younger generations have been able to get jobs and become assertive of their rights. That’s why young people who have mustaches or put a ‘Jai Bheem’ sticker on their bikes are getting attacked.
A huge section of the OBC community are falling behind some Dalits too and this has become new grounds for violence. But I work with them on a day-to-day basis and I speak to them and today, those are the people who are giving those missed calls (to support the removal of the Manu statue).
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