Despite a continuing corrupt political system, elections in UP suggest times are changing in India. Reports on election returns indicate some Dalits chose to vote against their lower-caste champion Mayawati to protest her corruption and extravagance, and there is reason to believe such shifts away from purely caste-based voting may run deeper than this election in this state one year before.
We see that change is taking a radical form in UP: a neo Dalit revolution.
In villages and cities across UP, people are now rising up against the caste system and joining a new Dalit movement, a revolution not restricted to Untouchables, but open to all opposed to the caste system.
Without eliminating caste in this country, how are you going to eliminate corruption in the society? It is the most corrupt system in the world.
Increasingly, activists from higher castes, have been going into villages to wash Dalits' feet, eat with them, and raise awareness of political and social issues in hopes of erasing caste divisions and decades of marginalization (largely uncovered by the Indian press). Even over our lifetime, we have already seen a great deal of change.
When I was a kid… in an upper caste family, I never saw Dalits coming to our marriages or to eat with us, but now it's happening all the time. At the same time, the lower-caste poor are working to transform and empower themselves through modernization. The younger generation is now increasingly relying on the Internet to stay informed and build communication networks.
Dalits in rural villages and urban slums have used radio, television, and SMS text messaging to learn about and discuss events beyond the immediate locale; some have used SMS networks to broadcast news of local human rights abuses to activists. Dalits have changed themselves very dramatically.
This new, inclusive, and unified Dalit revolution represents the best hope for the future of Indian democracy. It is the force that's going to change the feudal system of India and help India join the real global democracy.
After decades of politics rooted in caste divisions, the foundations of Indian democracy are shifting. In the aftermath of the recent state elections, leaders of several major parties in UP have acknowledged that the caste system has been the root of rampant discrimination and corruption in India, and increasingly, the political consensus is that its divisions must be ended.
Many a time, untouchability in India and slavery in Europe are compared with the presumption that untouchability is tolerable or less harmful than slavery. It is true that neither slavery nor untouchability is a free social order, but as Ambedkar maintained, "If a distinction is to be made" and undoubtedly there is the distinction between the two, "the test whether the education, virtue, happiness, culture and wealth is possible within slavery or within untouchability."
Ambedkar further argued that "judged by this test it is beyond controversy that slavery is a hundred times better than untouchability. In slavery, there is room for education, virtue; Southern Part of Every Village is South Africa happiness, culture or wealth. In untouchability, there is none.
Untouchability has none of the advantages of an un-free social order such as slavery.
It has all disadvantages of a free social order. Rajendra Tiwari, the village head of Belwa village does not plan to open any school for the Musahars he engages as bonded labourers in his brick kiln factory. Even the BRC coordinator in his report stated that many children were present in the brickfields and this ghetto was marginalised due to politically biased enmity.
In this context, on 8 August 2003, the children held a Child Parliament in front of the district headquarters and demanded a school in their area. On 26 August 2003, observed as tehsil diwas (day), 250 children walked 5 km from the Sant Kabir Jan Mitra Kendra to Pindra tehsil and submitted their demand to the Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of Pindra. The SDM misbehaved with the children and ordered a lathi-charge on the children and the villagers. I was detained under Section 151 and released after four hours while the other three activists were charged under Sections 107/16 for the legal proceedings.
The dream of marginalized people to educate their children was fulfilled, albeit to some extent, with the inauguration of a school by elementary education officer Pradeep Kumar Pandey on 2 August 2009 with the exceptional contribution of Reshma Devi, a local resident of Belwa village. She donated her own land and Jan Mitra Nyas (JMN)/PVCHR bore the expenses for its registration.
The inaugural session was witnessed by the key staff of People's vigilance committee on human rights (PVCHR), Loreine B de la Cruz (Lou), chairperson of Balay in the Philippines and Frauke Bergmann, interns from Germany and many teachers from the nearby government school and people of the village.
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