The ac­tivist dis­misses the pos­si­bil­ity of any change in the so­cial or po­lit­i­cal sta­tus of the Dal­its in In­dia or re­duc­tion in hate crimes against them even with the elec­tion of right-wing ori­ented Shri Ram Nath Kovind as the Pres­i­dent of In­dia.

WWith a Dalit in Rash­tra­p­ati Bha­van, nei­ther the ‘su­prema­cist’ mind­set of the Brah­min up­per class will change nor the caste-based atroc­i­ties against the Dalit Samaj would end.

When the BJP pres­i­dent Amit Shah while an­nounc­ing his par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial choice said that Ram Nath Kovind- a Dalit had worked for Dal­its and poor, his tar­get was clear -lur­ing and woo­ing the large Dalit and down-trod­den vote bank for the 2019 Lok Sabha elec­tions.

No­to­ri­ous for its sin­is­ter anti-mi­nor­ity and anti-Dalit party stance with a clear fo­cus on a Brah­min-dom­i­nated mono­lithic In­dia, the ul­tra right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party is chang­ing col­ors faster than a chameleon with the aim to win over the coun­try’s 16.6 per­cent po­lit­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant Sched­uled Caste pop­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­larly as Mayawati and other such lead­ers lose ground in many states across the coun­try.

Not lag­ging be­hind in com­pet­i­tive pol­i­tics, the Con­gress led UP­A’s  choice Dalit Meira Ku­mar gar­nered size­able votes but the writ­ing was on the wall given the op­po­si­tion num­bers.  Their Dalit card was sure to fail but in­ter­est­ingly brought the Dalit po­lit­i­cal dis­course back into cir­cu­la­tion.

“We have no mis­giv­ings or il­lu­sion that Ram Nath Kovind oc­cu­py­ing top post will end caste-based dis­crim­i­na­tion, ha­tred and atroc­i­ties against Dal­its un­leashed by cow vig­i­lantes, pseudo-pa­tri­ots and so-called up­per caste peo­ple. Nor it would gen­er­ate their gen­uine po­lit­i­cal em­pow­er­ment. It will prob­a­bly re­main only the tale of how he rose from a mud hut to the ram­parts of the Rash­tra­p­ati Bha­van in Lu­tyens’ Delhi.”

The Sikh doc­trine is based on a caste­less and class­less so­ci­ety though prac­ti­cally to­day we are far away from the pre­cept. Cer­tain In­sti­tu­tions like the Guru ka lan­gar stand tes­ti­mony to our neu­tral­ity and so­cial ac­cep­tance of equal­ity and will never go the Manusm­riti way.

We have no mis­giv­ings or il­lu­sion that Ram Nath Kovind oc­cu­py­ing top post will end caste-based dis­crim­i­na­tion, ha­tred and atroc­i­ties against Dal­its un­leashed by cow vig­i­lantes, pseudo-pa­tri­ots and so-called up­per caste peo­ple. Nor it would gen­er­ate their gen­uine po­lit­i­cal em­pow­er­ment. It will prob­a­bly re­main only the tale of how he rose from a mud hut to the ram­parts of the Rash­tra­p­ati Bha­van in Lu­tyens’ Delhi.

Who is to be vig­i­lant from the mod­ern day vig­i­lantes? The Dal­its them­selves. The Dal­its need to be cau­tioned. They should not be car­ried away or swayed by BJP’s Dalit Pres­i­dent. Noth­ing would change vis-a-vis the plight of the Dal­its, who are fac­ing in­sti­tu­tional dis­crim­i­na­tion and a worst kind of vi­o­lence. Kovin­d’s pres­i­dency won’t end this. Ear­lier too we had KR Narayanan as In­di­a’s first Dalit Pres­i­dent, and it too did it change any­thing for the Dal­its?

In a broader con­text, one should not over­look that the post of the Pres­i­dent of In­dia is cer­e­mo­nial. Kovind may be a nice po­lit­i­cal per­son. May be, be­cause nicety and RSS ide­ol­ogy which now runs in his veins, do not go to­gether. 

Pick­ing a per­son from a mi­nor­ity or Dalit com­mu­nity and then por­tray­ing him or her as a sole rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that par­tic­u­lar com­mu­nity has al­ways been a grand de­sign of both the Con­gress and the BJP. Iron­i­cally, in many such cases such “obliged” party con­verts, in or­der to prove their loy­alty, end-up serv­ing their own for­mer mas­ters rather than be­ing true to the let­ter and spirit of the Con­sti­tu­tion and ho­n­our­ing the yearn­ings of their com­mu­ni­ties or re­gional iden­ti­ties. 

“Pick­ing a per­son from a mi­nor­ity or Dalit com­mu­nity and then por­tray­ing him or her as a sole rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that par­tic­u­lar com­mu­nity has al­ways been a grand de­sign of both the Con­gress and the BJP. Iron­i­cally, in many such cases such “obliged” party con­verts, in or­der to prove their loy­alty, end-up serv­ing their own for­mer mas­ters rather than be­ing true to the let­ter and spirit of the Con­sti­tu­tion and ho­n­our­ing the yearn­ings of their com­mu­ni­ties or re­gional iden­ti­ties.”

Sikhs wit­nessed two worst mas­sacres in June and No­vem­ber 1984 when the Pres­i­dent of the In­dia was a Sikh face. Hun­dreds of Sikhs were killed in June by the army and thou­sands were butchered in the cap­i­tal of In­dia in No­vem­ber by fren­zied mobs en­gi­neered by the rul­ing Con­gress. Gaini Zail Singh and Dr Man­mo­han Singh de­spite reach­ing the top con­sti­tu­tional and ex­ec­u­tive posts re­spec­tively could not end the con­sti­tu­tional in­jus­tices to the Sikh peo­ple. The con­sti­tu­tion still con­tin­ues to deny Sikhs their dis­tinct re­li­gious sta­tus and iden­tity.  They never rep­re­sented the Sikh peo­ple per se.

Sim­i­larly, shortly af­ter the Gu­jarat pogrom in Feb 2002, the BJP nom­i­nated a Mus­lim face Ab­dul APJ Kalam for the coun­try’s top con­sti­tu­tional post. Did the suave and able Kalam man­age to de­liver any jus­tice to vic­tims of Gu­jarat mas­sacre or man­age to end the the dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by his own ag­grieved com­mu­nity de­spite his good rep­u­ta­tion and work? Sadly, the an­swer is a big no.

The crux of the mat­ter is that to cre­ate a re­spectable place for them in the ex­ist­ing polity dri­ven by caste and re­li­gious vote banks, Dal­its will have to fight against all odds, in­jus­tices, dis­crim­i­na­tions and in­equal­ity on their own strength, while main­tain­ing re­la­tions and bonds with other op­pressed mi­nori­ties and com­mu­ni­ties.

As re­gards a Dalit Pres­i­dent in the Rash­tra­p­ati Bha­van, does it mat­ter? It is noth­ing but to­kenism.