Hitting out at Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan for advocating a rethink of reservation, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Monday said the remark reflected a “parochial anti-Dalit” and “Manuwadi” mentality.
While addressing officials of local bodies at an event on smart cities in Ahmedabad on Saturday, Ms. Mahajan had wondered why a review had not happened even after so many years after Independence.
Ms. Mahajan also quoted B.R. Ambedkar to justify her point. Though she later clarified that her remark was not a verdict for or against reservation, coming months after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat expressed similar views, it triggered sharp responses.
Ms. Mayawati said the Speaker’s remarks added fuel to the controversy over the death due to “casteist oppression” of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula. The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said the true meaning of a “review” of reservation by the RSS was to bring an end to it.
In this country and society where caste identities are forged at birth and surface in every sphere and at every level, removing the reservation policy would be equal to promoting “injustice, oppression and exploitation,” Ms. Mayawati said. If discrimination has been perpetrated on the basis of caste, the solution for it also must be based on caste, Ms. Mayawati argued.
Dr. Ambedkar would say that stray cases of inter-caste dining and marriage would not bring an end to the caste system, which Ms. Mayawati equated with “mental illness.”
Mr. Bhagwat’s call for a review of reservation during the Bihar elections had led to heavy electoral damage for the BJP. Now, it remains to be seen if and how Ms. Mayawati decides to mobilise support over Rohith’s suicide, as she is trying to stitch together a mass base beyond her core Dalit constituency to win power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.
With the Assembly session starting later this week, the BSP is expected to raise issues related to atrocities against Dalit students in the State. The party had also sent a delegation led by Veer Singh, BSP Rajya Sabha member, to the University of Hyderabad to meet the family of the deceased scholar.
However, the fact-finding report has not been made public. “If even after his death, Rohith Vemula does not get justice, then it would be understood that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emotional remarks on the Dalit scholar were mere ‘theatrics’ and his tears “crocodile tears,” Ms. Mayawati said.
