Gloomy silence and frustration, anger and anarchy led Vilas Ghogre, a revolutionary poet, to commit suicide in the aftermath of the desecration tragedy in Mumbai. He was Dalit by birth and Marxist by orientation. The poet ended his life in an act of metaphysical rebellionan act of protest against the social conditions in which he found himself. He could not escape the cycle of hope and defeat, the conundrum of caste and class struggle. Vilas' life epitomised the plight of Maharashtra's Dalit movement.The stagnant Dalit militancy was shaken up by the event of July 11 in which police gunned down 11 neo-Buddhists, who were protesting against the desecration of a bust of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. The Dalit outcry that followed was directionless and leaderless. The political leadership stood discredited and the Republican Party of India (RPI) was proved unable to match aspirations of its cadres. Caught in the diverse ideological trends, the Dalit movement in Maharashtra continues to exist, like a powerful horse without a bridle, because the social and political conditions never allowed it to get spent.The non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra has confronted two major ideological streams almost simultaneously, more intensely than any other parts of the country. In the initial phase, it was the creation of Indian nationalism through the anti-colonial struggle, which had a definite Hindu overtone. This was overlapped by invading Marxism and its class categorisation, which influenced the non-Brahmin movement to a great extent but could not absorb it completely.The emergence of Marxism in India as theory of liberation was mechanical in its application of historical materialism to Indian society and refused to accept any other social category other than class. For Marxists, all social relations including caste, was historical in the sense that it came into existence, changed and would come to an end. And it was material in the sense that it had a solid economic base in production relations. The cultural aspects of the caste system was ignored in the process.Paradoxically, the influence of Marxists led to ideological divisions in the anti-caste movement in Maharashtra. The Ambedkarite movement was founded in this background. Cultural assertion by overthrowing Hindu religious hegemony remained the dominant theme of the movement. A considerable part of Ambedkar's writing was on economic issues but they were not integrated to the historical and social interpretation of caste structure. He viewed social and economical oppression as two separate issues. This becomes clearer in his article Mukti Kon Pathe, (What path to liberation). The Ambedkar-led mass conversion to Buddhism was a cultural revolt against what was essentially economic and social deprivation.The Republican Party after the death of Ambedkar continued to face the same questions. There were leaders like Rajabhau Khobragade, R.S. Gawai and B.C. Kamble who thought the Indian Constitution was the strongest weapon the Dalit masses ever had. On the other hand, leaders like Dadasaheb Gaikwad were ``Marxist to the core'' and declared that the Dalit would lead the toiling masses of India to a complete liberation.The militant agitations like the land liberation struggle were taken up by the Republican movement during Gaikwad's leadership. The Naamantar era and the years of Dalit Panthers also remained riddled by caste/class conundrum. A known Maharashtrian thinker on caste question, Sharad Patil, forwarded his theory of Marx- Phule-Ambedkar in an attempt to create a comprehensive framework for mass movement in the caste-ridden society. However, his efforts to create symbiosis did not go a long way in practice and the contradictions between caste and class struggle continued. With the 1974-75 split in the Dalit Panthers, the movement which threw up most of the present day Dalit leaders in Maharashtra, also had the same undercurrent.In fact, the emergence of Dalit Panthers was a promising change in the Dalit movement of Maharashtra. The Dalit Panthers sought to relate to the Black Panthers of USA in their style of functioning. Phule had dedicated his book Slavery to ``Negroes militant people of the United States''. Raja Dhale, Ramdas Athawale and Naamdeo Dhasal emerged as young leaders. However, the activities of the movement remained confined to the renaming of Marathwada University and ``using'' the Atrocities (prevention) Act, designed specially to prevent atrocities on Dalits.Even as the class struggle was caught in its own contradictions, the caste struggle in the Naamantar era slid into mere symbolism. The issue of renaming the university was itself a symbolic one, that appealed to the Dalit population, mainly the Mahar community, at the level of cultural pride. Buddha and Ambedkar became the symbols of the movement rather than their philosophy becoming a guiding force. Symbols rather than ideas came to dominate people's thinking. Here lie the roots of repeated desecration of statues and related upheavals in Maharashtra. This was the third such incident in the past one year.The movement based on symbolic issues was destined to irrelevance with rapid economic changes that swept through the country during the last one decade. And so did the Dalit movement with the Congress regime renaming the Marathwada university by prefixing Dr Ambedkar's name to it. It was an act of snatching an issue from a movement which had thrived on it for almost 12 years. The harsh economic realities led Dalit masses to general political struggle of the relatively deprived classes while the distinct neo-Buddhist identity, which was deliberately created as a part of cultural revolt, prevented them from sharing their aspirations with those on the receiving end of the market economy.Meanwhile, the Hindu cultural nationalism was on the upsurge. There have been concerted efforts to draw parallels between Savarkar and Ambedkar. And the division between Hindu Dalits and neo-Buddhist was widening. The Mahar community, which is considered to be the Brahmins among Dalits due to its educational superiority, was left alone holding Dr Ambedkar's flame while the sub-castes and Hindu Dalits were absorbed by parties like Shiv Sena in Konkan and Marathwada and the BJP in Vidarbha.The conundrum continued. Ambedkarites explored possible ways out: from the RPI to the Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party and from BJP-Shiv Sena to the Akhil Bharatiya Senaan outfit floated recently by underworld don Arun Gawli. A large number of Dalit activists have been drifted towards Gawli is a fact that the RPI leaders do not deny.However, the political drift of neo-Buddhists is expected to stop with the desecration tragedy. The death of Ghogre and 11 Dalit youth may intensify the ghettoisation of the Mahar community which constitutes over 50 per cent of the total Dalit population of the State. In fact, the predominance of Mahars in the anti-caste movement was one of the prime reasons for the complete failure of Kanshi Ram in his efforts to build a caste-based political formation in the State at the beginning of his political life. Even later, Maharashtra remained untouched by the increasing influence of his Bahujan Samaj Party in Northern India. That the Republican movement of Ambedkar has virtually been reduced to a movement of a religious minority, namely neo-Buddhists, is a fact that Maharashtra's Dalit leaders would not like to accept.
