Has Dayashankar scored a self-goal for the BJP by abusing Mayawati?

All the work towards dalit outreach over the last couple of years have now gone waste

The efforts made by the Sangh parivar to reach out to dalits have been phenomenal. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) announced a countrywide programme inviting all savarna VHP activists, no matter where they live, to ‘adopt’ one Dalit family and treat them as an extension of their own family – which means mingling with them, sharing meals, water and celebrating festivals.

Rather cattily, Surendra Jain, VHP leader told Business Standard in an interview that merely eating the odd meal with dalits would not reassure them that they were part of the great Hindu family. He was possibly referring to highly publicised lunch that BJP chief Amit Shah shared with a dalit family in UP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking at the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Dicci) had said he knew the pain of being socially excluded. The outreach to Ambedkar is too well known to be recalled here. 

 

The Rohith Vemula suicide and the way Smriti Irani handled the episode – neither asking the Vice-Chancellor for an explanation nor intervening to end the dalit student boycott of Hyderabad Univesity was the first marker that the BJP was saying one thing about dalits but felt differently about them.

Now, Dayashankar Singh’s remarks that Mayawati was no better than a prostitute, has once again exposed the party’s hypocrisy. It was Arun Jaitley, a Brahmin, who apologised publicly for the remark: not Bandaru Dattatreya, a dalit. The dalits, if they needed convincing, are now absolutely certain that the BJP just does not mean what it says about them. The way violence against dalits in Haryana was handled only reinforces this feeling.

In Gujarat too, the same sentiment prevails. Dalits resent strictures on eating beef. Even worse, working with dead animals, including cows, is the profession of many of them. The Gujarat events have struck a common chord with the Jatavs of UP, also engaged in the same profession. Mayawati, who belongs to the chamar caste, has identified closely with what happened in Gujarat.

Obviously this will have its impact in the UP election. All the BJP can say is ‘sorry’ – which simply doesn’t cut ice. All these developments will have the effect of pushing the BSP into the arms of the waiting Congress: just as the note of a semi-warning struck by Amit Shah about the Muslims in the Bihar elections (Pakistan will set off crackers if we lose the elections).

Thakurs in UP are not the most important caste, numerically. Nor are they the biggest exploiters of dalits – it is the intermediate castes like the OBCs whom they are more afraid of. If there was an exodus of dalits from the Mayawati camp, that will now stop: she will be seen as their greatest benefactor and leader. BJP has shot itself in the foot in a way that it is unlikely to recover from it.