Political goodwill reaches to the Dalits only when the elections are around

The Election Commission has postponed the date of voting for the election to the Punjab Assembly from February 14 to 20. By itself the change is not noteworthy; a mere administrative exercise. Politically, however, the significance is not lost on anyone in the country. It is a curious display of unity amid diversity by all political parties to set aside their electoral differences to ensure that the election date does not come in the way of a section of Punjab's electorate conducting an important religious ritual. The deferred election date allows a particular Dalit community to visit Varanasi on the occasion of Guru Ravidas Jayanti on February 16. The ‘Ravidassias’, as the followers of the mystic poet-saint are called, mostly inhabit Punjab's Doaba region and their numbers have a say in 23 Assembly constituencies. Dalits comprise 32 per cent of the State's population. Over a third of them are concentrated in the Doaba. And over 60 per cent of Doaba's Dalits are Ravidassias. This is the political context to the ‘humanitarian’ gesture by the political parties. After the deferment, the parties are in a race to take credit for it. The prize is such. In a multi-cornered election, anybody bagging the maximum support of the Dalits can dream of an edge in the 117-member Assembly.

Would not the Dalits be wondering why the goodwill of the political parties does not reach out to them when elections are not around? The Dalits, for whom the election date was changed because their votes count, otherwise complain of indifference from these very parties. They are certainly on the path to emancipation because of affirmative actions like reservation, but are as vulnerable today as before to casteist attacks in terms of a ban on entry into temples, sporting a moustache, riding a horse, using cremation grounds and the like. The National Crime Records Bureau tells us that a Dalit in India was the victim of a crime every 10 minutes in 2020 and the situation was no different in 2021. Dalits are attacked for the silliest of excuses — beaten up for wearing leather shoes in Gujarat, paraded naked for swimming in a well in Maharashtra, even killed for sitting cross-legged during a temple ritual in Tamil Nadu. They are subjected to gross and inhuman insults like being urinated upon. In a case from Bihar a month ago, a person who lost a village election blamed the Dalits for his defeat and forced a Dalit to lick spit as punishment. Dalit women and girls are molested, raped and killed at whim. Dalit politics takes centre stage whenever elections are around and sympathy to their cause replaces the usual indifference. If the deferment of the Punjab election date is not to be construed as merely a gesture with a selfish motive, political parties must proactively address discrimination and violence against Dalits and not dismiss them as an embarrassing relic of the past.