Apart from several Dalit leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party who have openly expressed their anguish over the suicide of scheduled caste student Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad University, the ruling party’s allies are also seething.
Among the anguished allies include Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan – a senior Dalit leader from Bihar – and his cabinet colleague Upendra Kushwaha, a Kurmi leader and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party member from the same state. While there has been no public criticism from the duo, insiders in their parties say the leaders are unhappy over the government’s handling of the ongoing developments at Hyderabad University.
They feel the government’s poor political management has not only angered Dalits, but has also alienated the youth – two constituencies being assiduously wooed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Paswan, normally the first to speak out on Dalit-related issues, instead fielded son and Lok Sabha MP Chirag Paswan to address the subject. His party also sent a fact-finding committee to Hyderabad to get independent feedback on the sequence of events that led to Rohith Vemula’s suicide.
Although Paswan maintained that his party is yet to take a detailed look at the report, his aides refuted Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani’s assertion that the Dalit scholar’s suicide was not a result of a “Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation”.
“This was very much a Dalit issue …this was amply evident from Rohith Vemula’s letter to the vice-chancellor in which he spoke of providing poison to scheduled caste students,” said a Lok Janshakti Party leader.
On record, LJP leader Chirag Paswan repeatedly said that the suicide should be probed by an independent agency. “This is a sensitive matter and there are so many angles to it,” he said. “Concrete steps have to be taken so that such incidents are not repeated. How Dalits are treated across the country also has to be noted and noticed.”
Changing positions
Some allies also felt that Irani was needlessly combative at a press conference on Wednesday, choosing to justify her ministry’s action and attack the Congress for politicising the issue instead of expressing sorrow over the suicide. “It would have been better if the HRD minister had gone to Hyderabad and met the student’s family members,” said an ally of the National Democratic Alliance. He said that the resignation of the University’s Dalit professors and student anger indicated that the matter had snowballed into a major crisis.
The allies also expressed their disappointment over Modi’s silence and the BJP’s flip-flop on such a sensitive issue. The BJP first claimed that the clash between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad and Vemula and his colleagues in the Ambedkar Student’s Association was borne out of the Dalit scholar’s public opposition to hanging of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict, Yakub Memon. Rohith was dubbed as an “anti-national” who supported terrorism.
The BJP then made matters worse by circulating unofficial reports that Rohith was not a Dalit, thereby implying that he had provided false information about his caste. Smriti Irani’s press conference on Wednesday proved to be the proverbial last straw where she insisted that the Dalit student’s death was not a caste battle and instead attacked the Congress for misrepresenting facts for “malicious gain.” Adopting an unrepentant tone, BJP leaders instead maintained that this incident was a “conspiracy” hatched by their political opponents with an eye on the upcoming municipal elections in Hyderabad, and the forthcoming assembly polls in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
Political setback
The BJP’s changing position on this issue has not gone done well with its own Dalit MPs, who are also extremely upset over its handling of the Hyderabad University incident. They did not agree with the party’s stand that Rohith was “anti-national”, adding that the party’s attitude will drive away Dalits. Union Minister Sanjay Paswan tweeted: “the stake holders of power politics must take serious note of rohit vemula episode or be ready to face wrath, revenge, revolt, reactions” (sic). Several other Dalit MPs from the BJP struck a similar note.
There is a strong undercurrent of concern in the party as this controversy has surfaced just as the BJP is preparing for several state elections in the coming months, while crucial assembly polls in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh are only a year away. All these states have a sizeable Dalit population. And with the Congress also stepping up its efforts to woo the scheduled castes through vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s specially-designed “Dalit agenda”, the BJP has every reason to worry.
Both parties have made serious attempts over the past several months to appropriate Babasaheb Ambedkar’s legacy with the clear intent of winning the Dalit vote. Now, the BJP’s response to the scheduled caste student’s suicide has provided fresh ammunition to the Congress to dub the BJP as “anti-Dalit.”
“The anti-Dalit mindset of the BJP and the RSS has been manifesting itself over the last 20 months in various forms across the country,” Congress communications department chief Randeep Singh Surjewala said.