Remember Khairlanji, the village in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district that had witnessed a horrific massacre of four members of the Dalit Bhotmange family by upper castes in 2006? The incident created rage among Dalits all over the world and led to massive protests.
Cut to 2026.
How many of us can recollect the equally horrific Dangwas Dalit massacre of May 2015 from Rajasthan? Almost none till the special SC/ST Court in Nagaur district recently acquitted all 40 upper-caste accused in the killing of five members of a Dalit family over a land dispute.
Rising cases of atrocities on Dalits
What does this contrast in our collective memories of the two incidents show? Doesn’t it show loss of our collective social consciousness too? The answer is an irrefutable ‘yes’.
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But admitting this failure isn’t enough. We also need to ask ourselves how and why we have travelled from a state of such high social consciousness to the state of social numbness where violence and injustice have seized to even register, forget matter to us in anyway unless they disturb our own private cocoons.
And Dangwas isn’t an isolated example of this numbness or indifference.
There have been too many cases of atrocities on Dalits in the past 12 years of BJP rule at the Centre and in a majority of states. We have seen Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi being driven to suicide due to institutional discrimination on campuses. We have also seen physical assault and rapes on Dalit men and women in Una, Unnao and Hathras and many other places.
Unlike in the past instances of caste violence, the current spell appears to degenerate into a caste cauldron as an inescapable fallout of the Hindutva’s natural socio-political trajectory
Also going on is the insidious attempt to deprive Dalits of their reservation quota by filling up reserved seats with upper castes under the pretext of “eligible candidate not found” and through lateral entry programmes to saturate top echelons of administration with upper castes.
What’s more, we have seen violent opposition to raising a statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar at the Gwalior Bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court by a section of lawyers predominantly consisting of upper castes.
Caste violence on the rise
As if that wasn’t enough, we have seen former Chief Justice of India BS Gavai seeking blessings from a controversial self-proclaimed godman Bageshwar (Dhirendra Shastri).
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The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics also reveal an increasing trend of caste violence in the country. The latest developments in this regard, however, threaten to end even the semblance of incremental caste assimilation that the Hindu society is trying to accomplish.
The shrill anti-reservation and anti-UGC regulations agitation by upper castes students and youths and the episode involving a “goon” called Swatantra Bhardwaj have removed even the fig leaf covering the obnoxious caste reality in the Hindu society.
Clearly, lower caste Hindus are at the receiving end of the unprecedented caste violence engendered by the inherent upper caste supremacist spirit of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) ecosystem during the last 12 years like they never were over preceding decades after Independence.
Unlike in the past instances of caste violence, the current spell appears to degenerate into a caste cauldron as an inescapable fallout of Hindutva’s natural socio-political trajectory.
Three-pronged strategy
It is this consequence that the Hindutva forces actually desire but without having to pay the political price of it.
And for that they appear to have deployed a three-pronged strategy: 1) relegate the Dalits and Other Backward Castes to the lower echelons of Hindu society; 2) yet command their obedience through either intimidation and violence on one side and buying out their leaders on the other; 3) hoodwink them into believing that their real threat comes from minorities, Muslims in particular.
No wonder we are witnessing a complete surrender before the Hindutva ideology by leaders like Ramdas Athawale, Chirag Paswan and Mayawati. And it is the OBCs, Dalits and tribals, who are being deployed as foot soldiers in violence against minorities.
Rahul has rightly touched the BJP-RSS ecosystem’s raw nerve by repeatedly raising the issue of “90” per cent population versus the cornering of the lion’s share of power and pelf by the remaining “10” per cent
Dalit politicians apart, a deafening silence on the front of Dalit and Bahujan social movements, art and literature is a telling commentary on the intellectual surrender of the Oppressed classes too.
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At the same time, it also betrays revival and emboldening of casteist forces.
The Swatantra Bharadwaj episode provides clinching evidence of it. The fact that he could openly boast in a podcast about how he committed “half-murder” of a Dalit man at the Jantar Mantar Gen Z protest and yet faced no police action, and how he was protected by Delhi Police and politicians Kapil Mishra and Chirag Paswan, shows how the RSS ecosystem has given rise to upper caste vigilantes out to revive the atrocious hierarchical model of Manusmriti.
Hindutva forces, armed to the teeth by none other than the Modi government itself, aim not only to marginalise the non-Hindu minorities but also subsume the social majority within the Hindu community, that is the non-upper castes, with the motive to turn them into silent sufferers of neo-casteism.
Rahul Gandhi’s caste pitch
While volumes have been written about marginalisation of non-Hindus, what’s not being paid enough attention to is the Hindutva forces’ sly resuscitation of the old hierarchical model of Hindu society, camouflaging it with a deceptive empowerment facade.
This is precisely why critics of Rahul Gandhi’s caste pitch in politics go wrong. Rahul has rightly touched the BJP-RSS ecosystem’s raw nerve by repeatedly raising the issue of “90” per cent population versus the cornering of the lion’s share of power and pelf by the remaining “10” per cent. He is imaginatively putting it out as Constitution versus Manusmriti battle. What needs to be understood is that he is not opening the old caste wounds, the BJP-RSS eco-system is. In fact, he must be thoroughly complimented for challenging it.
Also, Rahul’s caste justice pitch also serves as the anti-dote to BJP-RSS communal politics. The more the non-upper caste majority realises that their real fight is for rights within the Hindu fold and not outside of it, the more they will withdraw from their completely unnecessary communal deployment against religious minorities.
Fighting it vs suffering it
Clearly, revival of upper caste supremacy under an inherently Brahminical ideology of the BJP-RSS ecosystem has the potential to at once undo its anti-minority project and also revive the old caste wounds thereby shifting the battle lines to within the Hindu fold.
A successful fight against this Brahminical project would go a long way into burying both the caste and Hindu supremacist ghosts.
A fight in this direction shouldn’t be seen as pushing the Hindu society into a new caste cauldron. The Hindutva ecosystem has already done it. You are left to either suffer it or fight it. And fighting it has better chance of ending it. Those opposed to the RSS ideology have no option not to fight it.
The ghost of neo-casteism must be exorcised by its sufferers once and for all with all the might under their command. It’s now or never that they could save themselves from another spell of humiliating social downgrading.
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