The Gujarat caste war, the Marathwada massacre of untouchables and the series of caste riots in Bihar had received wide publicity in the press. Every party tried to make political capital out of the agony of the victims Newspapers had sent special correspondents for an on-the-spot inquiry. Every political party submitted its own report blaming the other. The Scheduled Caste Commission of the Government of India then headed by Bhola Paswan Shastri had come out with its own recommendations.
Ministers had given their own version of the incidents at Parasbigha, Dohia, Pipra etc. Editorial writers have come out with their comments. But not one has suggested a lasting solution to this recurring problem in the countryside. Fed up by the failure of the ruling class and the Government, the untouchables are finding their own solution by embracing Islam.
It is however admitted by everybody that the victims of these “caste wars” were the untouchables who both class-wise and caste-wise occupy the lowest place in India. Being the poorest of the poor, they are mostly landless agricultural labourers depending on the mercy of the landlords and the vagaries of nature, all agricultural labourers may not be untouchables but untouchables are mostly landless agricultural labourers. Since there is no machinery to implement the minimum agricultural wages, these farm hands continue to be the victims of the worst exploitation all over India. Barring perhaps Kerala, nowhere minimum agricultural wages are enforced. It is not possible to enforce it because these labourers are not united and there is no political will also. Surplus labor has led to severe unemployment and this in turn to excess supply which the landlords exploit to their advantage.
Caste-wise also the untouchables form the base of the Hindu social pyramid. In every village these untouchables are segregated as part of the least publicised Indian apartheid. Their plight is worse than that of the Blacks or Negroes. So, economically they are the weakest and socially the lowest. And yet they form a sizeable population in the countryside, particularly in Bihar and UP
They are tolerated as long as they are meek and submissive. But once they start asserting as it happened in Gujarat Marathwada, they will have to face grave consequences Prime Minister Indira Gandhi herself admitted in Parliament recently that – ipra killing of untouchables was because they insisted on payment of minimum wages. This was the immediate cause for the carnage all over India.
From this we can make out that under the existing scheme of land reforms agricultural labourers have no place Even in the most radical States like Kerala and West Bengal, agricultural labourers are not benefitted by the land reforms So much so, land reform has turned into a big joke. While the proportion of owner-cultivators declined every year, an additional 1.5 million are converted into landless labourers every year. Their number increased from 18 p.c. to 30 p.c. of the rural population between the 50s and the 60s. That means the rural areas are getting pauperised and the landless labour, mainly the untouchables, are bearing the brunt of this poverty. Even some land-holding untouchables sold their lands and swelled the ranks of the army of farmhands. Official statistics confirm this.
That means these untouchables have neither the support of the Government nor the village. Everybody is hostile to them and with the increasing awareness of their rights, it is quite possible that these untouchables will have to face greater fury from the landlords who are fully armed with the police on their side. Therefore, we expect more such Gujarat caste wars. This is the peculiar problem facing the Indian agriculture. I am really sorry to note that not a single social scientist, economist or journalist has come out with any solution to this peculiar problem faced by the Indian landless labourers even when they know full well that the Indian Government is not interested in this.
According to me under the existing agricultural system wherein we have a huge surplus of landless labourers the latter have no place in it. The surplus agricultural labourers in each village or panchayat should be shifted to the nearest urban centre and provided jobs in small- scale industries or absorbed elsewhere.
Such a shifting of population serves two important purposes. Firstly, the overcrowding on the land will be reduced and the land owner will consequently be forced to go in for mechanisation. Farming also will become more economical and productive. Preassure on land will also be reduced. Secondly, such a shifting of population of agricultural labourers (mostly untouchables) would remove the very source of constant friction in the countryside.
In every village untouchables are in a minority. Therefore, their life is always in danger. That is why in almost all villages wherein they have been subjected to atrocities by the upper castes they have fled to the nearest urban centre. Many a time they don’t return. This happened in the 1978 Marathwada caste riots on the issue of renaming a university after Dr. Ambedkar. Hundreds of Dalits who had fled from their native villages have not vet returned Reports from Pipra also say that the untouchables had fled, never to return. This is happening all over India. Urban slums are full of untouchables, all migrated from villages in search of jobs and safety.
But it will be good if an organized effort is made to promote the migration of the untouchables from the villages to the cities where, in the urban anonymity, they are likely to find a more congenial social atmosphere. Reports from Pipra referred to a demand for Dalitastan. It says that this demand was voiced by no less a person than Jagjivan Ram, India’s top most leader of untouchables, atter visiting Pipra village. Ram Dhan, another Dalit leader, also had made a similar demand for Dalitastan. The demand is gaining ground.
Immediately after the 1978 Marathwada massacre of untouchables, the Karnataka Dalit Action Committee, had come out with a demand for a separate settlement and it is gaining momentum. This demand is not new because as early as 1942 Dr B. R. Ambedkar had himself come out with such a demand though he called it “separate settlement” for untouchables. Since then, the problem of untouchables has got very much aggravated and caste riots have become the order of the day. We are glad that the Gujarat caste war has made leaders of untouchables to demand a separate Dalitastan. Pending such a separate homeland we have to work for the destruction of the existing social structure in the village by seeking the migration of untouchables from the rural to the urban centres and thus helping them to abandon their lifestyle. They have to be convinced that the rural landed gentry will never compromise with them as long as caste system remains what it is. Therefore, they have no hope in sticking to their villages.
Why atrocities against Dalits cannot be prevented? Because “majority rule” in India has become the rule of the “majority community”. That is the rule of the caste Hindus. Where is the democracy in India?
The Dalits are demanding a separate State of their own not because they are not willing to live with the caste Hindus. For the past 2500 years they had served the upper castes as their most loyal slaves and servants and even to this day they are serving in different capacities. It is the Hindus who are refusing to tolerate even the slightest progress of the untouchables and therefore it is the Hindus who have forced the untouchables to seek a separate homeland. The Dalits are not to be blamed for it.
Already India is full of little Dalitastans segregated in the outskirts of every village. What the Dalits seek is a consolidation of these ghettoes into a viable unit by transfer of population. This is the only workable solution to save the Dalits from the most organised mass murder.
