Their sole intention has been to frustrate the probe ordered by the Supreme Court. The BJP leaders are aware of the truth which is why they do not want to take any chance. Already large scale desertion has started taking place. The BJP leadership is scared of the scenario when it would acquire momentum. The only plan the party leadership is to present Narendra Modi as the victim of the scheming of the opposition. The saffron propagate that Modi is the real friend of the dalits and he is doing his best to work for them.

The BJP leaders nurse the hope that the Dalits in spite of desertion of the party by senior dalit minister and MLAs in Uttar Pradesh, continue to repose their trust in Modi. The party must strive to get back their support. This can be achieved by projecting Modi as the victim. The message has to be sent amongst the Dalits that like them Modi has also been victim of the OBCs and farmers. As a changed strategy the BJP is focussing on the Dalits, instead of concentrating on the OBC.

The BJP leadership has been pursuing the Goebblesian strategy. Keep on reiterating the lie hundred times to make the people believe it as truth. Incidentally two of the chief ministers even went upto alleging the involvement of “Khalistanis”, one chief minister even called for the arrest of the Punjab CM. These Chief Ministers are confident that their campaign will create pressure on the members of the enquiry team, who are mostly serving government officials.

The most important question that crops up in the wake of Swami Prasad Maurya’s exit from BJP is what prompted him to take a drastic step. No doubt this has stepped the heat and opened up new alignments, ahead of a hard-fought poll, but the reply tom the primary question is still awaited. No doubt his exit underlines that BJP would lose the election. Even the image of messiah of Modi would not salvage the situation, but more than it, the issue of intensification of torture and killings in future has been primary reason for compelling them to quit. The BJP government led by Yogi Adityanath has made it publically clear that Dalits have to mend.

In fact a report by the state RSS to the central leaders points out that the Dalits can not be trusted at all. They are most unreliable. The Jatavs and other dalit sections are shifting away from the BJP and even from the traditional dalit parties. The candid example is of Maywati. In this election she may manage to win some seats, but cannot hope to retain her base. The dalits are gradually turning against the Hindus. The shifting of the base has also forced the dalit leaders of their future but more than that it has been attitude of the BJP leadership that made them find a place in the SP,

Caste has always been a major factor in states of UP and Bihar, This is not the first time that Dalits and backwards are being invocated for electoral gains in the UP poll matrix. The dalits are also scared of the design of the RSS to subsume Dalits as an overarching Hindu identity.

Since the 1990s, Mandal and Mandir were used as the ideological element in Hindi heartland politics. If Mandal mobilisation was used by Lalau Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Mayawati, Nitish Kumar to bring caste identities to the fore and enabled political parties that spoke for the empowerment of Dalits and backward castes to win office, the BJP used the Mandal as the instrument to deal with the hierarchies and cleavages within Hindu society and presented itself as the custodian of Hindu interests. BJP knew that merely projecting the upper caste Hindus would not be sufficient to strengthen the agenda of nationalism. It needed a huge population of Dalits and harijans.

The Dalits were killed and tortured even before Modi era began, but he never opened his mouth and cautioned the BJP vigilantes and mercenaries. Every time his silence was questioned, he remained silent. The Dalit leaders who quit the BJP alleged “They have not done any work in the last five years, and there have been scams everywhere. You can see the teacher recruitment scam… How many backwards should have been given jobs… The BJP is a party for the forward (castes), and not those who come from the backward and exploited communities. Along with me, there will be at least 100 MLAs. Every day, there will be an injection.”

Emergence of Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi as the new but strong voice of Dalits has brought about a major change in the perception of the Dalits of the northern India. They nurse the feeling that Dalits ought not play a subservient role. They must confront the elite politicians as Channi had done in the case of allegation of security lapse of Modi. He stood up not only to Modi but also showed his might to Navjit Singh Sidhu and Sunil Jhakhar, both of them nursing the ambition of replacing Channi as the chief minister. (IPA Service)