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Thursday, August 25, 2011

[ZESTCaste] ‘Fascist forces are running Anna movement, indoctrinating young protesters’

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ws230811LOKPAL_BILLIII.asp

Posted on 23 August 2011
CURRENT AFFAIRS
LOKPAL BILL PROTEST

'Fascist forces are running Anna movement, indoctrinating young protesters'

Jan Lokpal is anti-Dalit, OBC and Muslim, say activists, calling for a
"Save Constitution" rally on 24 August

Arpit Parashar
New Delhi

Shabnam Hasmi

Activists opposing Anna Hazare have now started pointing out that the
RSS and the Right-wing forces have hijacked the anti-corruption
movement to 'undermine the Constitutional guarantees' to the people of
the country in order to further their fascist agendas. They have
organized a "Save Constitution" rally on 24 August at India Gate and
have invited "Dalits, OBCs, minorities, progressive and democratic
people," to participate. The rally will march to Parliament.

The activists are also holding Anna responsible for misusing his right
to protest saying he is trying to set a 'dangerous example' by saying
that he will not end the fast unless the Jan Lokpal Bill is passed.
Indian Justice Party chief Udit Raj said: "Dr Ambedkar said in the
Parliament on 29 November, 1949 that fast and satyagrahas were
dangerous for the democracy, which is now proving to be correct. The
way the Jan Lokpal Bill is worded it will destroy the delicate balance
of Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. A Lokpal who is not elected
by the people is more likely to be whimsical, corrupt, casteist and
partial."

Raj alleges that the involvement of Right-wing forces has the Dalit
community worried about the nature of the protest since "in the future
Anna-like people could as well sit on a hunger strike and demand that
the reservations for Dalits and OBCs should be done away with." "

Country needs strong consensus on Lokpal Bill: PM
Congress begins bid to 'liberate' Anna from team of 'neo-liberals'
Is RSS running the Anna show?

Shabnam Hashmi who heads the organisation ANHAD (Act Now for Harmony
And Democracy) says the movement has been stage managed by the RSS and
the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) since the very beginning. "It has been
clear in the symbolism through the kind of leaflets that have been
distributed across the country. The involvement of new-age gurus like
(Sri Sri) Ravishankar and Ramdev proved that it is a plainly
Right-wing agenda."

The Janlokpal Bill itself is anti-Muslims and anti-Dalits in nature.
Only a democratic institution can provide equal representation and
justice to Muslims, Dalits and the tribals," she added. "Dalits and
OBCs have had no say in this movement and the Jan Lokpal has no
provisions for their inclusion either," said Udit Raj.

Udit Raj

Social Activist Madhu Chandra questioned Anna Hazare's motives and
political background saying: "He said that the Constitution needs to
be rewritten. The Hindutva forces see the Constitution as a threat to
their agenda and so want that it be rewritten."

The role of the media in portraying the Anna movement has also been
criticized as activists say it is only for the sake of 'billions of
rupees through increase in TRP rates' that has led to unprecedented
coverage. "This is what has mobilised the masses," says Hashmi, "and
led to their involvement in a highly misleading movement".

Chandra said the mass mobilisation was due to frustration against
corruption among the youth but cautioned that these youths, mainly
from the middle class, were getting indoctrinated by Hindutva forces.
"They are exploiting their sentiments and targeting these young minds;
instigating them to protest against the democratic values of the
Constitution," he said.

Dalit thinkers and writers have already decried the movement as a
Manuwadi and anti-social justice upper caste uprising which will only
infringe upon the rights of the Dalits, OBCs and minorities. "The very
presence of groups like the Krantikari Manuwadi Morcha shows that it
is a casteist right-wing movement," added Chandra.

Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.
arpit.parashar@tehelka.com

------------------------------------

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[ZESTCaste] How ‘creamy layer’ Dalits have betrayed Ambedkar’s vision

How 'creamy layer' Dalits have betrayed Ambedkar's vision

R Jagannathan Aug 24, 2011

How 'creamy layer' Dalits have betrayed Ambedkar's vision

Caste is not a curse only in Hinduism. It pervades Islam, Christianity
and Sikhism in India.AFP

One of the big red herrings strewn across Team Anna's path is the
alleged Dalit cause. From assorted Leftist intellectuals to Dalit
groups, it has become fashionable to take potshots at Anna using the
Dalit bogey: where are the Dalits in your anti-corruption cause? By
implication, they want to say: if there are no Dalits with you, your
cause itself must be wrong.

Udit Raj, a Dalit activist, claimed the Anna group's Jan Lokpal Bill
was against the constitution: "If Dalits have achieved anything, if
you see any diversity today, it is because of the constitution,
Parliament and bureaucracy. You cannot discredit the constitution." He
wants to present a Bahujan Lokpal Bill of his own.

Sure, he's welcome to it. The more the merrier.

Chandra Bhan Prasad, another Dalit writer, who has written for
Firstpost, elaborates: "SCs see everyone questioning parliamentary
process as villain. The scepticism started the day he (Anna)
questioned the integrity of electoral politics."

Point taken, Mr Raj and Mr Prasad. Maybe Anna should figure out ways
in which his anti-corruption campaign can be more inclusive, since it
can be nobody's case that corruption does not affect Dalits.

However, what Mr Raj and Mr Prasad should be introspecting over is
whether Dalits themselves have done what they should to protect the
constitution fathered by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.

Dalits have let down Ambedkar. They have elevated him to god and
forgotten his lessons and exhortations. Reuters

This is what Ambedkar said about the constitution and its primacy:

However good a constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because
those who are called to work it happen to be a bad lot. However bad a
constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are
called to work it happen to be a good lot. The working of a
constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the
constitution. The constitution can provide only the organs of state
such as the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The factors
on which the working of those organs of the state depend are the
people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments
to carry out their wishes and their politics. Who can say how the
people of India and their parties will behave? Will they uphold
constitutional methods of achieving their purposes or will they prefer
revolutionary methods of achieving them?"

We can read two meanings into this: one is that Anna should work
within the limits set by the constitution and parliamentary processes.
But equally, since the worth of the constitution depends on the people
administering it, Anna & Co may be right to question whether the
people running the parliamentary processes are doing it right.

But more, important, one wonders if Ambedkar himself would have
approved of what the Dalits are doing with the constitution and
democratic processes.

A public interest litigation (PIL) filed by one group of Dalits in the
Supreme Court shows that Dalits are often their own worst enemies. In
fact, they have done everything to subvert the constitution and a
Supreme Court judgment which holds that the "creamy layer" must be
excluded from reservations.

The PIL, filed by a Dalit from the Balmiki community, claims that
barely five to 10 communities from the scheduled castes and tribes
(SC/ST) have cornered all the benefits from reservations – when there
are 1,677 Dalit communities needing those benefits. The court on
Tuesday sought responses from both centre and states.

The PIL mover, OP Shukla, wants to exclude the Chamar, Mala,
Mahar, Meena, Dusad, Pasi and Dhobi communities from the list of SCs
because they have already benefited from it. "A select 5-10
castes/tribes among the target group have become financially so strong
(as) to be compared with the higher castes of society. Therefore,
further empowering them by way of giving them continued and further
reservation will amount to unjust enrichment and will amount to
violation of constitutional provisions," The Times of India quoted the
Shukla's PIL as saying.

While political Dalits like Udit Raj and Chandra Bhan Prasad would
like to believe (correctly) that upper caste oppression remains the
main challenge, one doubts if Ambedkar would have approved of Dalits
who stop thinking about their own downtrodden segments.

A report in The Pioneer says the court relied on the findings of two
committees which went into – the Lokur Committee of 1975 and the Usha
Mehra Commission of 2008 – to issue notices on the PIL to centre and
states. The petition, while pointing out that not excluding the creamy
layer would make the scope of Articles 341 and 342 (under which the
SC/ST lists are compiled) arbitrary and unequal.

The report also talks of a 1990s Haryana report which concluded that
just one Dalit caste was cornering all the reservations benefits. In
Bihar, Nitish Kumar set up an extremely backward SC commission which
recommended the exclusion of four castes from reservations (Dhobi,
Chamar, Dusad and Passi), but courts have substantially stayed its
implementation.

But Dalits are also fighting another battle among themselves that goes
beyond the creamy layer argument. This relates to the exclusion of
Dalit Christians and Muslims from obtaining the benefits of
reservation. While Hindu groups have opposed this for communal
reasons, Dalit groups have been divided on this, when there is no
socio-economic justification for this exclusion.

A 2008 study by Satish Deshpande and Geetika Bapna, which studied the
condition of Christian and Muslim Dalits, came to this conclusion:
"There can be no doubt whatsoever that Dalit Muslims and Dalit
Christians are socially known and treated as distinct groups within
their own religious communities and that these groups are treated as
'socially inferior'."

Caste is not a curse only in Hinduism. It pervades Islam, Christianity
and Sikhism in India. There is thus no basis for excluding them from
reservation benefits. Their numbers are estimated at around three
million.

But so-called "Hindu" Dalits are opposing their inclusion, fearing a
squeeze in their own entitlements.

The conclusion is obvious: by focusing on surface issues like whether
Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement is anti-Dalit or whether the
film Aarakshan is fit to be screened, the "creamy layer" Dalits are
essentially trying to shift the spotlight away from their own efforts
to continue cornering the available quotas. They are thus doing the
same things they accuse the upper castes of: exclusion of the poorest
of the poor.

Let's go back to Ambedkar, who says we must not be "content with mere
political democracy." He wants social democracy, too.

We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well.
Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it
social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of
life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the
principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and
fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They
form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the
other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be
divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor
can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity.

Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over
the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.
Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few
over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual
initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become
a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce
them.

In short, this is as much a critique of upper caste Dalits walking
away with all the benefits of reservations as it is about upper caste
people trying to exclude Dalits and OBCs from advancement.

This is what, I believe, Ambedkar would say today, if he were alive:
"We need reservations to improve the lot of the depressed classes. On
that there can be no two opinions, though it makes me wonder why we
have not managed to lift ourselves up even 60 years after we gave
ourselves reservations. I thought we could do it in 10 years, but that
hasn't happened for various reasons. Upper caste opposition and
exclusion strategies are certainly one part of the answer. But surely,
some of the fault must lie with us. Why have we not reviewed the
reservation scheme to check why it hasn't worked for us? Why is one
section cornering the benefits of reservation all the time? I look
forward to the day when the Depressed Classes will not need
reservations to educate ourselves or get a decent job. That is our
goal. But right now we need to introspect and ask ourselves whether we
are our own worst enemies."

Dalits have let down Ambedkar. They have elevated him to god and
forgotten his lessons and exhortations.

------------------------------------

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[ZESTCaste] Dalits stage protest against Jan Lokpal bill presented by Team Anna

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_dalits-stage-protest-against-jan-lokpal-bill-presented-by-team-anna_1579350

Dalits stage protest against Jan Lokpal bill presented by Team Anna
Published: Wednesday, Aug 24, 2011, 21:22 IST
Place: New Delhi | Agency: IANS

Hundreds of Dalits Wednesday gathered at India Gate and marched
towards Jantar Mantar to protest the Jan Lokpal bill proposed by
activist Anna Hazare and his team.

Under the banner of "Samvidhan Bachao" (Save constitution), the rally
was organised by Indian Justice Party president Udit Raj.

"We won't let the Jan Lokpal bill break the constitution formed by Dr
Ambedkar. How can we trust a panel which is above the prime minister
and the chief justice of India?" said Dheeraj, a businessman.

Delhi Pradesh Valmiki Sanghathan chairman Lal Chand, who also
participated in the rally, said, "I want to ask Annaji when people
were driven away from Maharashtra where was he? What is the guarantee
that the panel will be corruption free?"

The protesters also charged the civil society of being anti-Dalit.

"Civil society is also against the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes,"
said another protester.

"It's not that we are against the bill on corruption, it's precisely
that none of the SC/ST members are part of the panel which is not
giving any priority to the minorities," Udit Raj said.

Some people in the rally also blamed Anna Hazare, who has been fasting
here over the issue since Aug 16, for planning a conspiracy along with
the Bharatiya Janata Party and against the Dalits.

------------------------------------

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[ZESTCaste] Dalits call Anna stir 'upper caste'

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/dalits-call-anna-stir-upper-caste/1/149069.html

Dalits call Anna stir 'upper caste'
Poornima Joshi | New Delhi, August 25, 2011 | Updated 06:23 IST

The anti-politician feeling generated by Anna Hazare's agitation,
combined with Arvind Kejriwal's association with the Youth for
Equality, the organisation that spearheaded the anti-reservation
agitation in the AIIMS, has triggered a sense of unease among
parliamentarians belonging to Dalit and backward communities.

Dalit and OBC MPs on Wednesday lamented the "attack on the supremacy
of Parliament and the Constitution". From BJP's Hukumdeo Narain Yadav
to JD-U president Sharad Yadav and Lok Janshakti Party president Ram
Vilas Paswan, there was a sharp attack on what the MPs said was an
attempt to "undermine the Constitution".

This happened on a day when Dalit leader Udit Raj of the All India
Confederation of SC/ST Organisations led a march of around 500
activists from Jantar Mantar to India Gate against Hazare's agitation.
The rally brought peak hour evening traffic to a crawl in central
Delhi.

"Anna must clarify his stand on several issues before he speaks about
the Jan Lokpal Bill," Raj said. The protesters said Hazare's protest
was as "upper caste movement that has little to do with the oppressed
classes of society". Udit Raj's supporters criticised Team Anna's Bill
for leaving out of Lokpal's ambit NGOs, media and the corporate
sector.

Like them, the Dalit MPs too felt that the Jan Lokpal Bill assumes
supremacy of an unelected panel over legislature, executive and the
judiciary. This has instilled a fear among MPs belonging to weaker
sections who perceive Hazare's stir as an upper- caste movement.

Narain Yadav, a Lok Sabha MP from Bihar, expressed his unhappiness at
the " exclusion" of weaker sections from the debate at the BJP
parliamentary party meeting.

JD-U president Sharad Yadav received applause from the treasury as
well as the Opposition benches when he said corruption in society was
linked to the caste system and couldn't be eliminated through a law
alone.

"No law can prevent corruption that is inherent in Indian society
because of the caste system. Unless there is social justice,
corruption will continue to plague the system. When the drains are
flowing with sewage, how will sprinkling a bit of DDT help? You need
to clean the drain," Yadav said in the Lok Sabha.

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[ZESTCaste] Dalits protest against Jan Lokpal bill

http://www.sify.com/news/dalits-protest-against-jan-lokpal-bill-news-national-liyvkjdidha.html

Dalits protest against Jan Lokpal bill
2011-08-24 21:10:00

New Delhi, Aug 24 (IANS) Hundreds of Dalits Wednesday gathered at
India Gate and marched towards Jantar Mantar to protest the Jan Lokpal
bill proposed by activist Anna Hazare and his team.

Under the banner of 'Samvidhan Bachao' (Save constitution), the rally
was organised by Indian Justice Party president Udit Raj.

'We won't let the Jan Lokpal bill break the constitution formed by Dr.
Ambedkar. How can we trust a panel which is above the prime minister
and the chief justice of India?' said Dheeraj, a businessman.

Delhi Pradesh Valmiki Sanghathan chairman Lal Chand, who also
participated in the rally, said: 'I want to ask Annaji when people
were driven away from Maharashtra where was he? What is the guarantee
that the panel will be corruption free?'

The protesters also charged the civil society of being anti-Dalit.

'Civil society is also against the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes,'
said another protester.

'It's not that we are against the bill on corruption, it's precisely
that none of the SC/ST members are part of the panel which is not
giving any priority to the minorities,' Udit Raj said.

Some people in the rally also blamed Anna Hazare, who has been fasting
here over the issue since Aug 16, for planning a conspiracy along with
the Bharatiya Janata Party and against the Dalits.