Homemakers, youngsters, senior citizens join protest
MUMBAI: Homemakers with school going children, house help, unemployed youth, blue collar workers and senior citizens were among the many faces of the Dalit agitation that took Mumbai by surprise on Wednesday.
“Every participant in this protest is a common man with no resources. The rich communities and upper castes have no reason to protest. No media coverage was given to the clash at BhimaKoregaon on the day of the incident. News spread because our community showed solidarity on social media,’’ said 71-year-old Nisha Jadhav, a homemaker who had walked from Naigaon to Dadar’s Chitra cinema with her school-going grandchildren to participate in the protest which saw severe tension spread across Mumbai and other parts of the state. There were at least 50 women, and 20 children among the 150-odd protesters, who were at Dadar protest carrying flags and sloganeering for the demands of the Dalit community.
They shouted slogans, unfurled blue flags and halted traffic before moving on.
“It is a sign of inequality that our problems are shown in bad light and only when Mumbai comes to a standstill because of our protests,” Jadhav said.
51-year-old Sangeeta Nikam, also a homemaker living in BDD chawls in Worli, said, “The Maharashtra government is casteist, so we do not believe our protest will bear fruit. I have given up hope that anything will change for Dalits. They want us to remain downtrodden so they can remain in power.”
There were roughly 250 Dalit
organisations that supported the bandh on Wednesday. UP More, head of the Bhim Sena, one of the protesting organisations, said, “We are protesting against decades of injustice.”
More mentioned the murder of a dalit boy, Sagar Shejwal, in Shirdi in 2015 and the murder of a Dalit family in Ahmednagar district in 2013 as past incidents that pointed to ongoing caste atrocities against the community.
He added that the Kopardi rape and murder had also spurred a demand for diluting the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, that was unfair.