Maverick Marxist Mollah will float Bengal’s first caste party
Mollah is the first politician in West Bengal to challenge the monopoly enjoyed by the upper castes in the former Left Front as well as in the present TMC.
CPM leader Rezzak Mollah has decided to float a caste based political umbrella called the Association for Dalits and Minorities (ADAM), comprising 12 Dalit and three Muslim organisations. Mollah is the first politician in West Bengal to challenge the monopoly enjoyed by the upper castes in the former Left Front as well as in the present TMC.
Mollah, who is an outspoken critic of the former Left Front government’s chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, will formally announce his decision to float ADAM at Kolkata’s Rabindra Sadan. The announcement will be the first step towards Rezzak Mollah’s new outfit contesting the 2016 assembly polls.
Voice of Muslim Women of West Bengal, Dalit-Muslim Friendship Association, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Castes Employees Forum and the Sundarban Adivasi Jagran Samity are among the several organisations that will fill ADAM’s ranks.
Among the many demands listed by ADAM, improving conditions of backward classes and minorities, equal opportunities, job reservations, stress on English language education and citizenship rights for Hindu refugees from Bangladesh residing in India for 10 years or more, are some of them.
In an exclusive chat with The Sunday Guardian at ADAM’s central Kolkata office, Mollah minced no words. He said, “ADAM will contest the 2016 assembly polls. We want to break the monopoly of the upper castes which has been holding high positions in all political parties. According to a 2011 census, they (upper castes) comprised only 5.12% of the state’s population. Dalits (ST, SC and OBC’s) accounted for 67.84% and Muslims 27.04%, but they hold low positions in all parties and are offered insignificant ministerial departments by parties in power.” According to Mollah, Marxists relegated caste struggle to the back burner in West Bengal. The TMC, he said, “was doing the same and there has been no parivartan (change), except that a Banerjee has taken over from another Brahmin Bhattacharya”.
Presently, ADAM is being run on a shoestring budget. Of the total Rs 70,000 monthly expenses including publication costs of a monthly mouthpiece by the same name, the bulk comes from donations from minorities and backward communities. When asked why he did not raise the discrepancy issue when he was a Land and Land Reforms Minister in the former Left Front government, Mollah said that his pleas fell on deaf ears.