RSS slams govt for delay in scholarship to Dalit students
a time when the government is going all out to woo Dalits, a senior functionary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) slammed its social justice and empowerment programmes for failing to ensure fundamentals such as timely release of scholarships for Dalit students.
V. Bagaiah, who heads the Samajik Samarasta (social harmony) programme of the RSS— the ideological font of the BJP— said post-matric scholarships that are offered to SC students have not been released for 2016-17, but none of the leaders, including those who represent the Dalits have raised a voice.
“How can a student live (without timely scholarships)? Why can’t the government provide land to the landless, what stops them?” he told HT on the sidelines of the function organised to mark the 126th birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar. He said the failure to ensure funds for education and health care, and allowing diversion of special Component Plan and the Tribal Sub plan funds indicate the states’ failure to protect the rights of the Dalits.
The BJP and RSS have been on an overdrive to elicit support of the so-called lower castes after being accused by the Opposition of being anti-Dalit, in the wake of the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad Central University and flogging of Dalits in Gujarat’s Una last year.
While the RSS has been campaigning against casteism through ‘one temple, one cremation ground and one well,’ the BJP relied heavily on social engineering by giving lower castes significant representation in the recently concluded assembly polls. The Sangh leader said the presence of political parties that are ideologically moored to Ambedkar have not helped the cause of the Dalits. “Political and social organizations that work exclusively for the empowerment of the Scheduled Castes outnumber others, yet there is no justice for the people from the communities,” he said. Bagaiah who holds the position of joint general secretary in the Sangh, said even Ambedkar used to question what the Dalit leaders have done for their communities and ground realities have not changed.