by VIJAY PRASHAD
PHOTO/social media
What vikas means to BJP is that their corporate allies, such as the Adanis, should be free to make money. Modi’s India cannot imagine a future. It’s rooted in a hideous version of the past
It is impossible to miss the brutality. Each day, a video surfaces with an atrocity against Dalits or Muslims or someone else who has a fleeting hold of power in today’s India. The most recent video was brought to light by Gujarat’s new member of the Legislative Assembly, Jignesh Mevani. Mevani tweeted a video that is sure to disturb all but the most heartless. It shows two men flogging Mukesh Vaniya in Rajkot, Gujarat. Vaniya and his wife work as rag pickers. They used a magnet to go through garbage in search of valuables. A factory owner accused them of theft. This is why Vaniya was beaten. His wife escaped to get help. By the time she returned, Vaniya was on the ground, dead.
What makes the incident so horrific is that it can be watched on film. You can hear Vaniya begging for his life. Those who beat him care little for his pain. What they see is a Dalit, a person of no consequence. Mevani’s tweet carried the hashtag – #GujaratIsNotSafe4Dalits. He compared this to the Una incident of 2016, when four Dalits were beaten mercilessly by cow vigilantes. Una is four hundred kms south of Rajkot. This is a belt across Gujarat. The Una incident created an uproar in Gujarat. Mevani, then a lawyer and activist of the Jan Sangharsh Manch, led those protests under the umbrella of the Dalit Asmita Yatra.
What is striking about the incidents in Gujarat is that Dalits are few in the state (7 per cent of the population) and they are comparatively better off than in other states. Nonetheless, over the course of the past decade, the rate of crimes against Dalits is higher in Gujarat than in states with much larger Dalit populations. The viciousness of the anti-Dalit feeling in Gujarat defines the politics of the state. What is noteworthy, and Mevani has noted it on many occasions, is that Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister and the former Chief Minister of Gujarat, has said so little about this brutality. He has remained silent.
Modi’s silence should not be read as silence. It says a great deal that he will not come out and condemn the brutality. The brutality is not accidental. It is part and parcel of the politics of Modi – a politics marinated in hatred of minority communities that refuse to socially buckle to the demands of Hindutva.
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