Maya tames Tikait: A victory for Dalit power?

STAR CAST(E): CNN-IBN panel debates the caste cauldron and the Maya-Tikait face-off.

            

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Keywords: Dalits, Mayawati

But OBCs are unhappy and feel that ever since the BSP government came up in mid-90s, only the Dalits benefited, thereby intensifying the confrontation.

“It is not just from the point of view of caste. OBCs in the countryside and Jats own land whereas the Dalits are landless labour. So there’s a certain dependency relationship and Dalits are now trying to move out of that,” she explained.

Slamming the victim?

Tikait’s apology shows how the caste situation of western UP has changed since the 90s - when it would have been unthinkable and unimaginable that a Jat leader – a patriarch – could apologise to a Dalit woman for using the kind of words that he did.

In a way, it is a tremendous mark of progress, yet certain political parties such as the Congress feel that Mayawati has overreacted and tried to make it an emotive issue.

Manish Tiwari defended his party and asked that the Congress’s reaction be seen in its context.

Stating that the Congress considered Tikait’s remarks “abominable” and “reprehensible”, and roundly condemns them, Tiwari pointed out that Indian society, since 1950, has been based on the rule of law.

“You’ve put a legal superstructure in place which has progressively tried to end different forms of discrimination. So it is expected from people who are in power to behave within the paradigm of that rule of law,” he reasoned.

Tiwari added that the Prevention of Atrocities on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act very clearly mandated that any offence registered would be investigated and chargesheeted within 30 days.

“It is not that we were defending Mahinder Singh Tikait. What he said was completely indefensible. What we were saying is that there was no need for the kind of overreaction that she (Mayawati) displayed,” he pointed out.

Chandrabhan Prasad leapt at that and censured Tiwari’s statement.

“Tiwari is saying this is all rubbish because he has not undergone the kind of humiliation that a chamaar or a paasi or a khattiar or a bhangi go through! Congress in this entire episode has become thoughtless!” he fumed.

He slammed Sriprakash Jaiswal’s reaction and said that he was Home Minister yet he endorsed Tikait’s statement.

Tiwari clarified Jaiswal’s stance.

“On the contrary, he condemned what Mahinder Singh Tikait had said. All that he had said was that in a society based on the rule of law, let the law take its own course, let there not be overreaction because certain people happen to be in office. That’s the only point he made,” he said.