Congress,
Dalits And Elections
By Gail Omvedt
The Hindu
12 June, 2003
A dalit international conference
at Vancouver, a Congress conclave of Chief Ministers in Srinagar: have
they anything in common? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be no. After
the Srinagar conclave finished without a mention of the Bhopal Declaration,
the two seem to be light-years away rather than a few thousand miles.
Over a year and a half ago,
the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, organised a special
conference at Bhopal in January 2002 to adopt a new "Dalit Agenda
for the 21st Century", the first significant governmental response
to the new Dalit consciousness emerging after Durban. And the Bhopal
Declaration, a Dalit-drafted document adopted by the 250 delegates and
nearly ten times that many Madhya Pradesh participants, and accepted
without change by the Chief Minister, was a significant step forward
in many respects. Not only did it include the principle of land ownership
for every Dalit family, but in putting forward the theme of "diversity"
the right of every Dalit to a fair share in resources, power
and wealth it began the process of assuring "affirmative
action" in non-governmental fields, what Dalits are calling "reservation
in the private sector." As a first step, the Madhya Pradesh Government
has begun awarding 30 per cent of all its contracts to Dalit (that is,
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe) contractors, and is taking up other
innovative measures such as providing scholarships for Ph.D. study in
the United States. Land is also being given in many areas, often over
caste-Hindu protests.
However, while the then President,
K. R. Narayanan, praised the programme, the Congress high command remained
silent. So did the Srinagar conclave. It vociferously proclaimed its
secularism, condemning what are seen as policies of "soft Hindutva"
while simultaneously denying that these existed. (This itself had an
anti-Digvijay Singh tone since the press publicity to his anti-cow slaughter
and other measures has assured that the policy is identified with him).
It praised the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, for his bold
arrest of the VHP leader, Praveen Togadia. It sought to relieve fears
about liberalisation policies among the poor by promising to ensure
employment opportunities. It promised reservation "for the poor
among the upper castes". And, it ratified alliances with other
parties, most notably with the Samajwadi Party and with Ajit Singh in
Uttar Pradesh in an effort to check the power of Mayawati and the BJP.
It is not surprising, then,
that Dalits should conclude that the Congress, as a political party,
has nothing new to offer them. This has already been the opinion of
the most militant and conscious section among them those who
support parties such as the BSP, those influenced by Dr. Ambedkar's
life-long struggle with Gandhi and his Congress. Young educated Dalits
now will say, "Congress is the most dangerous enemy," and
when asked about BJP, "Oh, we can handle them!" The Congress,
in this view, has been dangerous because it looks seductively progressive
without in reality being so; its reforms have only resulted from an
effort to check Ambedkar. As the party of Gandhi the Congress, they
argue, has always sought simply to hold Dalits in a Brahman-dominated
Hinduism, and as the party of Nehru, it took a mechanical-leftist perspective
avoiding caste while all the time doing nothing in real terms.
This has led to educated and conscious Dalits being relatively undisturbed
about Ms. Mayawati's understanding with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and
elsewhere.
Unfortunately, these characteristics
seemed to have been reiterated in the Srinagar conclave. The look towards
alliance is made concrete in the context of leaders such as Mulayam
Singh Yadav and Ajit Singh who represent castes that have emerged as
almost the direct enemies of Dalits and with the mockery of an extension
of reservation to the "poor" among upper castes.
Without any real programmes
identified as anti-caste, a secular policy is empty. Few Dalits and
anti-caste radicals would be happy with a programme opposing cow slaughter,
because its overtones of brahmanic orthodoxy affect not only Muslims
but Dalits who have been identified with this in the past and even today.
Yet the positive steps taken by the Madhya Pradesh Government to empower
low castes far outweigh the posturing of Mr. Digvijay Singh as a "sanatani
Hindu". What is disturbing about Congress policy is its failure
to recognise the significance of real, material measures for empowerment.
Promising employment is empty because it fails to specify how the economy
can grow to provide employment, while reservation for the forward caste
poor is a mockery because these poor never face the issues of caste
discrimination and humiliation that equally poor, and bright boys and
girls from Dalits and OBCs face. The Congress, as a whole, has totally
failed to address the issue of caste discrimination in any new and significant
form.
So what should Dalits and
their sympathisers do? A political policy of anti-Congressism alone
is empty; for one thing, whether or not the Congress is the "most
dangerous" enemy, a strategy connected with a long-term programme
of social transformation is needed. The BSP and the BJP are "natural"
allies in a purely opportunistic sense, since the social groups they
easily appeal to stand at opposite ends of the caste hierarchy. However,
the danger is that an alliance (or understanding) with the BJP threatens
to turn parties like the BSP into simply followers, increasing Hindutva
power nationally while giving Dalits only partial access to power. Any
"understanding" with the BJP can be justified at most on a
short-term, tactical basis, not as part of a long-term programmatic
strategy. The problem with the BSP so far has been that it lacks a political
programme aside from that of empowerment, so that it fails to stand
for much to the general public of India. It has become too much identified
with opportunistic alliances, in spite of the real appeal that Ms. Mayawati
has as a daring and assertive woman and not only a Dalit
political leader.
At the same time there is
clearly a need to bring pressure even on those parties the Left,
the Congress which have in the past been identified with the
poor and Dalit masses of India. The Congress has been a broadly left-of-centre
political party, while the BJP may be evolving into a broadly right-of-centre
one. In this sense, it would be Congress and the Left parties that would
be a "natural" ally for Dalits and their political forces
if pressure can be exerted on these parties to transform their
policies. But this is possible only by a clear threat of withdrawal
of support. The option for Dalits and other anti-caste radicals in the
upcoming elections, then, seem clear: support those parties which support
their cause. At present, this means supporting the Congress in Madhya
Pradesh, and opposing it elsewhere so long as there is a general refusal
to adopt the Bhopal Declaration policies.
As for the Congress, its
history is as the party that fought for independence, the party of Gandhi
and Nehru. But part of this has included a forward caste domination
in the leadership, an unwillingness to admit the horrors of caste hierarchy
and atrocities while upholding an oversimplified class-oriented statist
leftism, and an identification with Brahmanic Hindu symbolism. Unless
this part of the heritage is overcome and Congress becomes also the
party of Ambedkar and Phule, it will never succeed in winning back its
hold among the Dalits of the country.