In Marathwada’s casteist cesspool, Dalits await unselfish leadership

AURANGABAD, July 17: For six days now, Gangadhar hasn't ventured out of the little tea-shop which has been his home since the summer of '95...

AURANGABAD, July 17: For six days now, Gangadhar hasn’t ventured out of the little tea-shop which has been his home since the summer of ’95. Not far from Ghodegaon in Nevasa taluka, it is like any other roadside tea-shop, teeming with flies and weary truckers on the long haul to towns in Marathwada and beyond.

Gangadhar’s father, a Dalit with uncertain income in Aurangabad and a family of eight, had left him there to work with the other boys who man the shop and are, in return, fed reasonably well by the portly shop owner.

But the 15-year-old hasn’t stirred out of the shop since the night of July 11 when he overheard a trucker tell his master that there was going to be big trouble between the Dalits and the non-Dalits over some killings in Mumbai. It frightened Gangadhar no end. And almost immediately, he went into a huddle.

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The master tried his best to reassure the boy. Nothing will happen to you, he told him. But Gangadhar refused to budge. He now waits for his father. A forlorn figure in one corner of a dusty tea-shop, the eyes peering from a crack each time a truck halts outside.

Nearly 100 km away is the city of Aurangabad where two other Gangadhars mull over all that has transpired since the Mumbai police firing. One leads the Maharashtra unit of the aggressive Dalit Panthers and the other, having retired as a professor, now spends time pursuing all that first attracted him to Babasaheb Ambedkar and his teachings.

Gangadhar Gade, who heads the Dalit Panthers, has had an on-off relationship with the various factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI) which claim to constitute the Dalit leadership.

“The Mumbai incident was a deliberate act. Those behind it knew exactly what the fall-out would be. The desecration of Babasaheb’s statue — and it is not the first time it has happened — was bound to outrage Dalit sensibilities and provoke a reaction. Do you know why we kept quiet in Aurangabad? Marathwada would have gone up in flames if we had over-reacted. We kept quiet. Because this present round of violence is no struggle for principles. It appears to me that the present RPI leaders are out to merely fulfill their personal ambitions,” Gade says.

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“There is no unity in the RPI. Some leaders are soft on the Congress and others on the BJP. These factions, which claim to represent the Dalits, are all getting trapped in the Shiv Sena-Congress war,” he says. “For the Congress, these acts of violence will provide the perfect tool against the Sena. The party is out to cash in on the injured Dalit feelings.” “The Dalits themselves probably realise this. But in the absence of a clear leadership, they do not know who to turn to. Plus the anti-Dalit stance of the Sena is enough to send tempers soaring. The Sena has left no stone unturned to deepen the divide between the Dalits and the Marathas,” Gade says. The Dalit Panther leader is not wrong about the social divide. The caste Hindus, especially the Marathas, have nothing but contempt and a strange aversion for the Dalits. And this is true not just of Aurangabad but the whole of Marathwada. Freed from the Nizam’s yoke, Marathwada remains a cesspool of casteism — even decades after Babasaheb Ambedkar strode like a colossus on the national scene.

Gangadhar Pantawane, a retired professor who many here regard as a Dalit ideologue, says the divide between the Marathas and Dalits deepened after the Marathwada University was renamed Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University in 1993.