One Full Vote and Half a Life

THE ANSWER TO PERSISTENT DISCRIMINATION AND INJUSTICE DOES NOT LIE WITH OUR POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, IT DOES WITH A MORE EMPATHETIC CIVIL SOCIETY

IN APRIL 2018, MORE THAN A DOZEN DALITS lost their lives when they descended on the streets to protest a Supreme Court order, diluting certain provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. With no credible research data to back its assertion, the court had, in its concluding observation, referred to “misuse” of the Act by “vested interests”. An order, passed on March 20, 2018, had set guidelines to prevent said misuse, banning, for example, a provision that allowed arrest on complaint, and allowing anticipatory bails for the accused. For Dalits, this was a low blow. They had not expected this from the country’s highest court, especially when they had never veered from the path of non-violent, constitutional methods of resistance, as advocated by their guiding spirit Dr B.R. Ambedkar. In early October this year, the Supreme Court rolled back the March 2018 order and removed the earlier directions, but Dalits and tribals did not celebrate this important milestone as a victory. The wound from the earlier court action was deep and the scars have remained, making it hard to repose the same faith in the judiciary once more.

For Dalits, these crossroads are familiar landmarks. They have encountered many on their hard journey to secure basic human rights, on their slow, gruelling progress from being cast off as ‘untouchables’ to becoming equal citizens, if still only on paper. Their enemies have been way more powerful. During colonial rule, they fought discriminatory laws besides society at large. They faced prejudice in all walks of life, not excluding religion, and even in the supposedly holy scriptures. In the modest panoply of weapons at their disposal—including education, reservation, even the rejection of the enslaving faith—the most powerful were legal instruments handed by the Constitution. But even those hard-won constitutional guarantees are now at risk. At the new crossroads in their epic journey, Dalits find that their last-resort legal protections are also vulnerable.

On the political front, rather than throw in their lot with an openly, avowedly Dalit party like, say, the Republican Party of India, they found it expedient to go mainstream. Despite adoring Ambedkar as a demigod, they went with mainstream political parties rather than risk isolation. But there are grave concerns now about the strategy of political integration.

Even though the NDA won most SC/ ST reserved seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, which gave them an edge-majority, government data confirms that atrocities on Dalits and tribals increased during their first term (see: Bhed-Bharat, published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, 2019, Ed. Martin Macwan). What is most troubling is the

IN THE MODEST SET OF WEAPONS DALITS POSSESS, THE LEGAL ONES ARE THE MOST POWERFUL. BUT EVEN THOSE HARDWON MEANS ARE NOW RECEDING