India’s Dalits really distrust the Maoist movement of India and Nepal. As the Maoist movement begins to challenge state power in Nepal, and has struck a serious level of alarm in the ruling elite in India, this question has important ramifications for the future of south Asia. The Dalit movement is the largest and fastest growing threat to the status quo, followed at some distance by the Maoists. Interestingly, almost all the Dalit leadership I know, mostly mid level cadre in the BSP, India’s third largest national party and main force in the Dalit liberation movement, are ex-Maoists.
Neo Brahmins: When asked why they distrust the Naxalites, the common term for the Maoist movement, they point out, to start, the fact that almost all the rank and file fighters in the Maoist movement are Dalits or tribals and that almost all the leadership are “high caste”. The Dalits I know have had first hand experience with just how casteist the “Naxalite”/Maoist leadership is.
The Dalit movement exemplified by the BSP cadre I know is firmly rooted in organizing Dalits into community collectives and focused on mobilizing Dalits in exercising their voting rights.
Dalits feel that if the Maoist movement continues to ignore varna/caste while still dependent on Dalits to win power, Dalits are doomed to see their struggle for equal rights and justice betrayed by the new Brahmins, the leaders of today’s Maoist movement.
One fact remains utterly non debatable and that is that India and Nepal remain overwhelmingly a society of villages. Equally non-debatable is that in India and Nepal’s villages, caste rules How the Maoist movement can hope to succeed without even addressing this issue in any real way bodes ill for any hopes the Maoist movement offers any real solutions to the most barbaric, inhumane system of human oppression in the world, Apartheid in India and Nepal
