All India Youth Federation (AIYF) leader Kanhaiya Kumar has said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress fielding Dalit candidates for the Presidential elections is being seen by Dalits across the country as nothing but tokenism.
Talking to The Hindu here on Sunday, he said that such tokenism had been practised by the Congress and BJP earlier too by making Zail Singh, K.R. Narayanan, and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam occupy the Rasthrapathi Bhavan. But such moves had not in any way benefited the minorities or Dalits.
Mr. Kanhaiya was here to address the reception accorded to the Long March organised jointly by the AIYF and AISF as part of a campaign for “education, employment and election reforms.” The march is being taken out from Kanyakumari to the National Martyr’s Memorial at Hussainiwala in Punjab where Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were cremated
Mr. Kanhaiya said that Ram Nath Kovind or Meira Kumar, both from the Dalit community, becoming the next President of the country was not going to mitigate the plight of the Dalits. At a time when atrocities against the Dalits in the country were on the rise with covert and overt support of the ruling BJP, fielding Mr. Kovind could only be seen as an move that lacked any kind of love or sincerity to the Dalits.
Cosmetic steps
Such cosmetic exercises would not help the Dalits because these were mere vote trap exercises and therefore would not serve to transform society to achieve social democracy as desired by Dalits and other oppressed sections, he said.
Mr. Kumar, former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students Union, said that though there had been strong moves ever since the Narendra Modi government came to power to demolish the prestige that JNU occupied in the educational sector both nationwide and globally, the students of JNU at large had not in any way diluted the struggle to hold aloft the identity of the institution. But the political support that the JNU students needed at this juncture was unfortunately not strong because of a weak opposition at the Centre. He said that issues such as Rohith Vemula and Najeeb Ahmed were still alive for the students but sadly there was no political resolve to settle these. It was also a fact that these issues were now not getting channelised in the desired manner, he said.
