MUSLIM-DALIT ARITHMETIC

in Kapurthala. Congress leader Joginder Singh Mann has demanded that Valmikis be given 50 per cent of the total reserved seats in the elections.

Meanwhile, the BJP’s focus on Dalit votes in Punjab is evident from the appointment of Union minister Vijay Sampla, the party’s most prominent Dalit face in the state, as the new president of its state unit. On May 21, the BJP organised the national executive committee meeting of its SC wing in Jalandhar. Nor did the BJP shy away from attacking its own ally, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), if it meant wooing Dalits. The party’s SC wing president Dushyant Gautam criticised the state government for allegedly diverting Dalit welfare funds.

Not to be left behind, SAD reached out to the Ravidasa community by laying the foundation stone for the Rs 110 crore Sri Guru Ravidass Memorial at Khuralgarh in Hoshiarpur. Khuralgarh is suddenly an important destination on SAD’s electoral map, and Chief Minister Harkishen Singh Badal has declared it will be developed as a “world-class tourist destination”. Critics of the BJP see the party’s new Dalit strategy as a double game—to consolidate Hindu voters to confront the Muslims and to break the perceived Dalit-Muslim nexus. This theory gained currency after the Muslim-Dalit combination paid dividends for Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Maharashtra in 2015. The party put up an impressive performance in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation election, jumping to the No. 2 spot ahead of the BJP and behind the Shiv Sena, winning 25 seats in the 113-seat corporation. Among successful AIMIM candidates were four Dalits and a Hindu OBC.

While the BSP and Congress are open to such a combination in UP, the BJP seems determined to nip such coalitions in the bud. It’s because of this coming together of Muslims and Dalits that the BJP student wing, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, went after the Ambedkar Students’ Association, the Dalit organisation of which Vemula was a member. “Why are these Dalit DALITS IN GOVERNMENT JOBS* INCOME SLABS OF RURAL DALIT HOUSEHOLDS AVERAGE MONTHLY EXPENDITURE URBAN AREAS groups celebrating Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon? A new axis of Islamic forces and Naxal groups is emerging. They are trying to attract Dalits and other marginalised groups of Hindu society,” says Sunil Ambekar, national organising secretary, ABVP. In June 2014, the BJP even tried unsuccessfully to fan a conflict between Dalits and Muslims over removing a loudspeaker from a Dalit temple in Moradabad.

This potential alliance between two political groups is, however, something at the top of the Congress plan for UP as an antidote to the Hindu-Muslim polarisation that allowed BJP’s 2014 sweep. “Our party’s minority and SC wings are working in close coordination,” says Raju.

Incidents such as the BJP-RSS clamour for a beef ban and the 2015 Dadri lynching are also helping the Opposition redraw the Muslim-Dalit nexus. “The BJP will find it difficult to recover from these setbacks,” says Vidyut Thakar, a political analyst from Gujarat. “At the national level, the Opposition seems to be veering towards a Dalit-Muslim-centric strategy against Modi, keeping 2019 in mind.”

Perhaps this is an indicator that the narrative around Dalits or Muslims, who have been just lucrative vote banks for political parties for decades, is unlikely to change. Years of entrenchment of caste and religious divisions have left a mark on Indian society that is difficult to erase. Until this reality is addressed, these communities will remain just pawns in electoral strategies. Perhaps before Shah, Rahul Gandhi, Kejriwal or any other political leader goes for their next meal in a Dalit home, they should answer this: How many meals can a family of five with an income of less than Rs 5,000 afford in a month?

with Uday Mahurkar