Have Maharashtra’s political Dalit leaders really helped the cause of Dalits?

In the early years after independence, the Congress, which dominated governments across India, saw the utility of co-opting Dalit society into power structures within the state and at the Centre. This was relatively easy because the party had a background of inclusion and had witnessed Mahatma Gandhi’s efforts to eradicate untouchability, even though Ambedkar may have disputed these methods. The Congress struck a chord with the vast Dalit masses across the country, and not only in Maharashtra.

However, Dr Ambedkar, who was part of the first government of independent India led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, died too early. Only months before his passing away in December 1956 – and barely weeks after converting his followers to Buddhism – he had set up the Republican Party of India to give a political voice to the Dalit masses. Sadly, more than half a century later, that party is highly fragmented with innumerable factions led by men who look out only for their own interests, instead of the interests of their oppressed compatriots.

“Dalit ‘unity’ is not the prerogative of Dalit leadership,’ explains Professor [Ramesh] Kamble [of the Sociology Department at the University of Bombay]. “In fact it is the dominant ruling political interests that decide the questions of whether to unite, or when to unite, for Dalit leadership. The question of Dalit unity or disunity is the making of the dominant ruling political interests. So, the role that the Dalit political leadership can play, as representing the political interests of the ‘Dalits’, is decided not by the Dalit leadership or the concerns of the Dalit masses but by the dominant political elites and their political interests.”

For example, there was a long-standing demand, going back to the 1970s, to name Marathwada University in Aurangabad after Dr BR Ambedkar. Many Congress governments baulked at the measure but then, looking at the intensity of Dalit agitations for the move, Sharad Pawar, who had started the process in his first term as chief minister in 1978, gave in to the demand in 1994. It is not a coincidence that he quickly co-opted firebrand Dalit leader Ramdas Athawale into his government and made him social welfare minister. Athawale went on to become a Member of Parliament, first as a representative of his own faction of the Republican Party in alliance with the Congress, then as an NCP ally.

He had no problems switching sides in 2009 to contest a reserved seat on a Congress ticket. He lost and that propelled him towards the Shiv Sena which, however, could not accommodate his electoral interests. Now Athawale does not have any qualms about representing the BJP in the Rajya Sabha (he is now a minister in the Modi Cabinet). Athawale had lost from the temple town of Shirdi in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections for ridiculing the saffron tilaks of the Hindutvawadi parties. Now he sports one of his own.

As Tushar Jagtap, a Dalit activist and former member of the Bombay University Senate, says, “The Republican Party got fragmented because Dalit leaders were never interested in unity or upliftment of the masses. They were only looking out for themselves. That left Dalits on the fringes and these leaders have become the furthest fringe of the mainstream.”

Athawale’s case is a perfect example of what Professor Kamble describes as the “self-serving political interests of the mainstream”. “The Dalit leadership exists because they fulfil interests of the ruling political castes. Any other orientation by the Dalit leadership leads them to either being ousted from the political canvas or made redundant. Of course, they could be ‘included’ in power without any actual power.”

That is perhaps what was attempted by the RSS – whose star has been in the ascendant since 2014 – at its Shiv Shakti Sangram in January 2016. The BJP’s resounding defeat in the Bihar assembly elections in November 2015 was attributed to its chief Mohan Bhagwat’s proposal to junk reservations for the deprived classes in favour of a more merit-based society.

Merit, however, is evident when all sections of society have equal opportunities; a return to domination by the upper castes, in case reservations are dropped, would once again relegate Dalits to the fringes of society. So it was not surprising when the RSS attempted a course correction by dusting off some unknown members of Jotiba Phule’s “family” and presenting them to the world in their new avatar as BJP supporters.

However, that effort instantly fell flat when, within days, Dalit activists exposed the fact that Dattareya Phule, and his brothers and cousins paraded on stage by the RSS, were not descendants of Jotiba Phule but of his brother Rajaram Phule, who had ostracised Jotiba for his pioneering work on Dalit upliftment and women’s education. Phule did not have children of his own and thus the attempt to create a dynasty for India’s and Maharashtra’s first Dalit reformist pioneer was the RSS’s strategy to be seen as including Dalits in its power structure.

Appropriating Phule was a dire need as Prakash Ambedkar, the grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, after a few initial flirtations with saffron parties, had decided that he was placing himself left of centre and he would have nothing to do with the existing political dispensation in the state.

In fact, he had been needling the RSS for months over its “shastra” (arms) puja, pointing out that the RSS was essentially a Brahminical organisation that should not be dealing in arms, which was an occupation for Kshatriyas (he forgot the Peshwas, though, who were Brahmin warriors, known as the “Sword of the Chhatrapati”). Prakash Ambedkar has been concerned that such an exhibition of arms worship might send the wrong message to the masses, encouraging them to take up weapons; those vulnerable to attacks will not just be the Muslim community whom the RSS targets but Dalits too, who have traditionally not been able to defend themselves against the upper castes, armed or unarmed.

Ambedkar was one of the three MPs of the Republican Party of India – the others were Professor Jogendra Kawade and the late RS Gavai – who had successfully contested an election to the Lok Sabha in 1998 from general seats. Their success was entirely due to the efforts of Sharad Pawar, who was hard put to persuade the “savarnas” to vote for Dalits; usually the reverse is an easier task. This was another classic example of co-opting Dalits to the power structure without actually giving them any power. As Professor Kamble says, “The political careers of various Dalit leaders is testimony to this.”

Excerpted with permission from Maharashtra Maximus: The State, Its People & Politics, Sujata Anandan, Rupa Publications.