Bangalore: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar demanded “separate electorate” for Dalit liberation in 1932 which M.K. Gandhi sabotaged through his “fast unto death” (in which he did not die) ending in Poona Pact (1936).
According to M.C. Raj, a noted Dalit intellectual, Dr. Ambedkar reversed his stand on separate electorate and in a resolution of Aug. 27, 1955, he propounded the plural member constituencies.
The resolution said:
Separate electorate or reservation of seats must not be resorted to. It would be enough to have plural member constituencies (of two or three) with cumulative voting in place of the system of single-member constituency embodied in the present constitution. This will allay the fears which the minorities have about linguistic states.
The above resolution was passed on Aug. 27, 1955, at the Federation of SC/ST of which Babasaheb was the president, according to Raj.
Proportional representation: The resolution very clearly says that Dalits do not need any more reserved seats as enshrined in the Constitution of India and do not need separate electorate. It says that what we need is multi-member electoral constituency. The political chariot of Dalit liberation needs to be carried forward from where he left it in 1955. This will be a proportional representation system.
Educated Dalit betrayal of masses:
In a speech delivered in Bangalore on May 26 at an organisation of Dalit govt. officers, M.C. Raj was critical of the educated Dalits. He said:
Dalit intelligentsia has acquired for itself the guilt of leaving the Dalit community to struggle for itself at its own ignorant levels and has expended much of its energy in digging out a space for itself in the mainstream. This has resulted in the distancing of Dalit intelligentsia from its own culture and history and amalgamating into the mainstream Hindu culture and history.
Dalit intelligentsia has miserably failed in providing a direction and guidance to the Dalit youth all over the country. This has resulted in the horrible level of instrumentalization of young Dalit energy by the Hindutva forces to strike at its targets. Such targets of Hindutva are groups of people with whom politics has to make alliances if it has to capture governance of this country.
There is no political thinking at all at the level of Dalit youth. Who must be held responsible for this situation within the community? Often there is no sense of community within the Dalit intelligentsia itself. Each Dalit intellectual is a world of his/her own. This is a clear indication to know that Dalit intelligentsia itself is not sure of where it wants to go, much less where it wants the Dalit community to go and worst of it all it does not know where it wants the country to go. After Dr. Ambedkar, educated Dalits went into hibernation.
M.C. Raj, author of many books on Dalits, is running a powerful Dalit organisation with his wife Jyoti in Tumkur district of Karnataka adjoining Bangalore dt.
After criticising the existing Dalit leadership, he deals at length with Brahminism which is the enemy No.1 of the Dalits. It is Brahminism which has kept the Dalits’, poor, uneducated and as Untouchables.
Why Buddhism not attracting Dalits: Then he comes to the important subject of Dalit religion, a subject that is entirely new and needs our deep thought.
If Dalits are considered victims of Brahminism and Babasaheb had offered Buddhism as an alternative for their liberation, why it is not attracting the country’s Dalit masses? Why even those who went over to Buddhism in Maharashtra and elsewhere are still considered Untouchable by the Hindus? These are important questions not seriously discussed, he says.
For example, the May 27, 2007, mass conversion of nomadic tribes of Maharashtra did not provoke any anger from Brahmins. Rather Brahminical agents like Dalai Lama and S.N. Goenka and many others fully blessed it, the Brahminical toilet papers gave it full coverage and lionised the leader of the show. Why?
M.C. Raj says:
To escape from this indignity our people went to different religions. This was made easy by the absence of any written document to give them a common and collective identity. Those who went to other religions are considering themselves as superior to the Dalits under the pretext of the new religious identity that they have assumed. Absence of an established religion of their own has hampered Dalit participation in national politics from an empowered position of strength.
If Dalit communities had their own religion with a specific religious identity, M.K. Gandhi would not have gone on a fast unto death. Gandhi’s major contention was that separate electorate would divide Hinduism. If Dalit people had their specific religious identity, Gandhi would not have been able to float this perverted discourse in the political arena.
Then M.C. Raj comes out with an important statement:
Dalit politics cannot make much headway without a Dalit religion which provides the instruments and mechanisms of internal governance. It is at this level that Dr. Ambedkar’s feeling of brotherhood/sisterhood will be realized fully.
It is not that Dalit communities did not have a religion at all. They did have their ancestral religion based on worship of the earth and worship of the ancestors.
M.C. Raj suggests a religion with a distinct cultural identity which must be entirely hostile and different from Brahminism or Hinduism. He is very critical of the male-dominated Dalit movement.
The present efforts at movement building begin somewhere in the middle of character formation for Dalit young men. Dalit young women are completely left out of even this marginal effort. Dalit movements have not cared even a little about the need for developing women leadership in the community.
This is because they conveniently sideline the historical truth that women have been the best managers (governing the community) of the affairs of the community. They refuse to accept the fact that male leadership in the Dalit community has only reinforced its thralldom to Brahminism.
