A dalit woman, whose dwelling drew media attention when it was visited by Congress vice- president Rahul Gandhi in 2008, has once again become the centre of a minor political tussle in Amethi with the Samajwadi Party now entering into the fray.
After AAP leader Kumar Vishwas’ unexpected visit to the house of Sunita Kori earlier this month, it is SP cabinet minister Gaytri Prasad Prajapati who has now visited the same dwelling and handed over a cheque of Rs. 1.85 lakh to Sunita.
The amount was purportedly allotted from the Lohia Awaas Yojna for Sunita to rebuild her house.
Mr. Prajapati and his visit to the Dalit house have further fuelled speculations that SP could field candidates from the Gandhi bastions of Rae Bareli and Amethi in the general elections. Significantly, Unchahar (Rae Bareli) MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey was also elevated to the post of a cabinet minister recently. In the 2004 and 2009 general elections, the SP did not field nominees in Raebareli and Amethi, represented by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Mr. Gandhi respectively. The AAP’s Mr. Vishwas has made it clear that he would challenge Mr. Gandhi from Amethi this time.
The AAP criticized the development saying that the SP was trying to “buy” the Dalit woman. “It is odd that the SP realized that her house was broken only after we raised the issue.” said Hanuman Singh, AAP
convener in Amethi. The party on Monday constituted a state-level coordination committee and opened a secretariat in UP for the Lok Sabha poll preparations, said its spokesperson Sanjay Singh, who also held meetings in Amethi’s Jagdishpura municipality area and Musafirkhana tehsil.
Mr. Vishwas’ visit to Sunita’s house earlier this month has already triggered a series of visits by AAP workers to Sunita’s house. They have assured her help in constructing a roof for her hut. Sunita expressed “gratitude” for the help extended by the AAP.
Sunita’s hut in Sangrampur village was burned down in March, 2012. The following day Mr. Prajapati visited her and laid the foundation stone for a new hut but the construction work was delayed following some dispute.
Analysts argue that wooing Dalits in the two constituencies will have little impact in the general elections.
However, at the State level it might be part of a trend where non-BSP parties are wooing the non-Jatav Dalit castes. The non-BSP parties, especially the Congress has been over the years trying to woo the non-Jatav Dalits in the State. The Jatavs, who make up the major chunk of the Dalit population in UP (60 percent), align with the BSP, whose supremo Mayawati herself is a Jatav.
The Koris are the fourth most populous Scheduled Caste in UP (around 6 percent), after the Jatavs, Pasi and the Dhobi. They have traditionally been weavers and rank slightly better than most other Dalit castes on economic and educational parameters. They are distributed in the Bundelkhand region, in southern UP.
In his book ‘ Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics ,’ political-socio analyst Badri Narayan Tiwari notes that in recent times the BSP has attempted to take advantage of the popular image of Jhalkaribhai, a Kori woman soldier in Rani Laxmibhai's army, projecting her as one of the symbols of Dalit pride and honour.
