The evening when Rohith Vemula wrote his touching suicide note and decided to end his life, RSS sah sarkaryavah Dattatreya Hosbale was exhorting RSS ‘volunteers’ in Lucknow to devote the next one year to serving Dalits. It should be a ‘seva varsh’ and volunteers should render ‘seva’ every day instead of every Thursday, he declared.
With elections due in both Uttar Pradesh and Punjab next year, the message was not lost on anyone. With both states boasting a high percentage of Dalits, their support and votes, as Rohith’s letter captured only too poignantly, are invaluable. The RSS, in fact, has appealed to its volunteers to adopt a Dalit family, visit Dalit villages and dine with Dalits so as to “bring them into the mainstream”.
Rohith’s death, however, threatens to upset this bid to appropriate B.R. Ambedkar and win over the Dalits. The suicide could not have come at a more inconvenient time as both the parent RSS and BJP have been working overtime to position Dr Ambedkar as a staunch Hindu and a patriot. Ambedkar, of course, was so disillusioned with Hinduism that he had converted to Buddhism, refusing to die as a Hindu.
Undeterred, however, the RSS has been outspoken about achieving the goal of having “one well, one temple and one crematorium” for all Hindus. It’s a tacit admission of sharp caste divisions still in existence, but it isn’t coming in the way of their attempts to woo Dalits. Dalit activists are unimpressed. Dalit aspirations have gone well beyond wells and temples, they argue, and the real issues relate to discrimination in education and securing jobs.
The RSS better tread carefully. Many think chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement on reviewing caste-based reservations diminished their prospects in the Bihar poll. Besides, by diluting and disinvesting in the public sector, the NDA government is seen by many Dalit activists as hurting Dalit interests. In the absence of affirmative action in the private sector, Dalits can look forward to jobs only in the government and public sector. But by progressively withdrawing from education and health sectors and pursuing disinvestment, the government is effectively closing more doors for Dalits.
Since then, the prime minister has inaugurated an Ambedkar memorial in London and released commemorative coins on his birth anniversary. He also declared that Dr Ambedkar was his ‘guru’ and had Parliament observe the first ‘Constitution Day’ to pay tributes to Dr Ambedkar.
In April last year, RSS mouthpieces Organiser and Panchajanya published special issues on Dr Ambedkar, and RSS leaders, notably Bhaiyyaji Joshi, sought to portray him as one who harboured distrust for Muslims and opposed partition of the country. Joshi, in fact, suggested that Ambedkar was “an opponent of Hindu conduct” but not of “Hindu philosophy”. Others argued that Ambedkar was in favour of ghar vapasi or reconversion to Hinduism.
Union minister for labour and employment Bandaru Dattatreya and HRD minister Smriti Irani may just have queered the pitch by their nudge to the Hyderabad Central University to take action against five Dalit students that led to Vemula’s suicide.
