[Reader-list] Bathani Tola and the Cartoon Controversy

[asit das]

 Bathani Tola and the Cartoon Controversy

Vol - XLVII No. 22, June 02, 2012, economic and political weekely | Anand
Teltumbde <http://www.epw.in/authors/anand-teltumbde>

Why has there been such a silence from dalit leaders over the Bathani Tola
judgment acquitting all those accused of killing 21 dalits? At the same
time, what explains their loud protests over the Ambedkar cartoons in the
textbooks? Has the elevation of Ambedkar as an icon relegated the dalit
leadership to a politics of empty symbolism? Is the issue of a lack of
accountability in the judicial system towards dalits not more important
than the hollow iconisation of Ambedkar?

Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj at gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist
with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.


Bathani Tola 1996. After 14 years the case was decided by the Ara Sessions
Court in May 2010 convicting 23 of the accused; three were awarded the
death penalty and 20 with life imprisonment.

The verdict was challenged and the division bench of the Patna High Court
delivered its verdict on 16 April 2012, reversing the judgment and
acquitting all the accused. The judgment stunned every sensitive Indian who
knew the ghastliness of the massacre of 21 dalits in this hamlet in Sahar
block of Bhojpur district of the then unified Bihar state on 11 April 1996.
It did evoke angry reactions but mostly from family members of the victims
at Bhojpur, Gaya, Aurangabad and Arwal, all within 60 km of Patna.

In a ritualistic manner the Nitish Kumar government, accused of disbanding
the Justice Amir Das Commission that was instituted by the then Rabri Devi
government (March 1998) to investigate the political backing for the
notorious Ranvir Sena, issued a statement that the government would
challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court. With that, the massive act of
rubbing salt into the wounds of the poor was pushed under the carpet. No
television debate, not much media concern or highbrow analysis either!

Another controversy broke out over a cartoon that was drawn 63 years ago by
a noted cartoonist of yesteryears, Shankar Pillai of *Shankar’s Weekly*,
which showed Babasaheb Ambedkar sitting on the Constitution depicted by a
shell, mounted over a snail and Jawaharlal Nehru with a raised whip behind,
all in the public gaze. The cartoon was a part of a Class XI Political
Science textbook since 2006 and hence there was something fishy about it
being noticed by politicians only now. As the grammar of electoral politics
mandates, Kapil Sibal, the union minister for human resource development,
with extraordinary sensitivity apologised and asked the National Council of
Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the creator of these textbooks,
to withdraw the cartoon immediately. However, the controversy escalated and
culminated in the ransacking of the office of Suhas Palshikar of Pune
University by some Republican Panther activists who hogged the headlines
and prime time on all the television channels.

Notwithstanding the content, at the most basic level these two instances
throw up an important question about the attitude of dalits: Why are they
moved only by emotional issues and keep ignoring the material issues that
impinge upon their existence?

*The Ambedkar Icon*

The entire dalit emotional charge is concentrated in the Ambedkar icon.
Given the monumental contribution of Ambedkar to the dalit cause, it is
natural that he is considered as their emancipator, a messiah. Further,
given the state of the dalit masses, it is also natural that he is
iconised. Ambedkar’s icon replaced their gods and symbolised their
self-esteem, honour and prestige. It became their beacon, a rallying point
to carry on with their emancipatory struggles. As it did all this, it
became susceptible to manipulation by vested interests. The fi rst such
manipulation came from within, by a section of college-educated urban
dalits who painted it with shades that suited their self-interests. The
icon was shorn of Ambedkar’s vision of radical transformation of India
expressed, for instance, in *States and Minorities* and he was portrayed as
a caste-based reservationist, constitutionalist, an anti-materialist and
mind-centric Buddhist. When electoral politics became increasingly
competitive with the rise of the regional parties of the middle castes, the
political class realised the importance of the dalit vote bank and used
this icon to infl uence dalits.

Suddenly, Ambedkar, who faced ignorance from the mainstream all through his
life, became its darling. It began erecting his statues, naming roads and
institutions after him and paying eulogies to him. It went on further
strengthening this icon in increasingly distorted ways that would distance
dalits from reality.

Once entrenched in the psychology of the dalit masses, it became a matter
of competitive display of devotion in order to appeal to them. As dalit
politics became rent-seeking from the mainstream political parties, many
charlatans rushed in as leaders, feigning deep devotion to the Ambedkar
icon to claim the support of dalits. The louder one shouted allegiance to
Ambedkar, the bigger the leader one became. The more irrationality
displayed in devotion to Ambedkar, the better the Ambedkarite. The real
Ambedkar was forgotten in this process – Ambedkar, the iconoclast, the
painstaking truth seeker, the fearless fighter for the cause of the
oppressed, and the universalist dreaming of the world sans exploitation and
humbug. It was forgotten that he struggled to solve the existential
problems of dalits. Even his decision to renounce Hinduism and embrace some
other religion had actually emanated from the need to counter the
vulnerability of dalits in villages if one goes by his original explanation
in *Mukti kon Pathe* (“Which way the deliverance”) which basically is about
their atrocity-prone existence. And of course, he lamented at the fag end
of his life that whatever he did just benefited the urban dalits and he
could not do much for the rural folks.

*The Cartoon Controversy*

It is this iconisation that is behind the cartoon controversy. Without
going into whether such a cartoon was necessary to be included in the
textbook, given the proclivity of society to negatively interpret it, the
fact remains that it was there for the last six years. If it had not caused
any problem until now, it was unlikely to do so in the future. One need not
accept the explanation provided by Palshikar, one of the advisors to the
NCERT, that the cartoon was meant to enliven interest in young minds
insofar as it presented a piece of the past before them, and was complex
enough to yield various interpretations. But that in no way warrants
ransacking his office. It is sad that it was the activists of the Republican
Panthers – the radical non-parliamentary outfi t that has forced the
overzealous state to incarcerate its members (Shantanu Kamble, Sudhir
Dhawale and many others) for their revolutionary profession – who attacked
Palshikar. It only shows how deeply internalised the Ambedkar icon is among
dalits that it overwhelms even their revolutionary politics.

The controversy was raked up by Mayawati in Parliament, who badly needs to
reconsolidate her core constituency of dalits in the wake of the fi ssures
that showed up in the last assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, in order to
be prepared for the general elections any time before 2014. It has been the
core stratagem of her party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, to make creative use
of icons to build and maintain its constituency. Not to be left behind, all
other dalit leaders, particularly the more unscrupulous ones like Ramdas
Athawale (who has established an alliance with the anti-Ambedkar Shiv Sena
and Bharatiya Janata Party combine) and Thol Thirumavalavan (the
leader of *Viduthalai
Chiruthaigal* (dalit panthers) of Tamil Nadu, who switches from the Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)to All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to DMK
with ease as per the electoral prospects), raised their angry voices. As if
there are no issues other than the Ambedkar icon (and of course
reservations) to vent their anger!

The increasing misery of the vast majority of dalits in the absence of
quality education, falling job opportunities (reservations arguably cater
to only a minuscule section and that too the relatively welloff among
them), declining public health and general contraction of the democratic
spaces are all of no issue to them. Such is the power of the Ambedkar icon
that for dalits Mayawati spending Rs 86 crore to renovate her residence or
Athawale building a palatial house in a prime location in Mumbai have
become non-issues. Even the rising incidents of atrocities which dishonour
their women every day and devour their lives have become non-issues!

*Dalit Blood, No Issue*

The acquittal of all the 23 Ranvir Sena men who butchered 21 dalits in
Bathani Tola therefore does not become an issue for the dalit leadership
today. Bathani Tola is not a unique case; it only reinforces the pattern
formed by many such judgments in other atrocity cases. For example, the
Karamchedu (Andhra Pradesh) case went exactly the same way as the High
Court of Andhra Pradesh acquitted all the 50 accused. It was only in the
Supreme Court, after 23 long years, that one accused was awarded life
imprisonment and 30 others were given varying amounts of punishment upto
three years. In Khairlanji (Maharashtra), in the wake of a public uproar,
the special district court had awarded death to six and life imprisonment
to two, which was foolishly celebrated by some dalits leaders who forgot
the fact that 35 culprits were already discharged and the court had taken
away the very ground for harsher punishment by observing that there was no
conspiracy, no sexual violence, and no caste angle. In the infamous
Laxmanpur-Bathe (Bihar) carnage by the Ranvir Sena, the verdict of the
lower court came after almost 13 years, sentencing 16 people to death, 10
others with life imprisonment and a Rs 50,000 fine, while acquitting 19 for
lack of evidence. The pattern indicates that the lower courts, under public
pressure, award harsh punishments, the high courts mostly invalidate them
and if they are persisted with, the Supreme Court upholds parts of it. The
long legal battle, which no ordinary dalit can afford, effectively takes
away any justice from the fi nal judgment.

Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Mukul Wasnik recently (17
April 2012) expressed concern over the dismal conviction rate (just 3% to
8%) in such atrocity cases. This exposes how the atrocity cases, which are
admitted with extreme reluctance by the police, are deliberately weakened
in the investigation or invalidated by non-compliance of rules, mishandled
by the prosecution in the courts, and at times perversely adjudged by the
courts themselves under political pressure.

In the Bathani Tola case the court rejected the evidence of the
eyewitnesses on the weird argument that they could not have been present at
the scene. If they had really been there, the court observed, they would
have all been killed.

What lies at the root of this malady is the total lack of accountability in
such a legal process. Is that not an issue for dalits to agitate against?