New Delhi:
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has held his party’s policies responsible for the rise and strengthening of parties associated with the Dalit vote bank. Though he did not name any party in this context, his target was seen to be parties like Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP.
At a meeting of the Congress Scheduled Castes Department at the party headquarters on Monday, Gandhi said had the Congress taken the right steps for Dalits in the 1980s and ’90s, neither would caste-based regional parties have emerged, nor would the Dalit community have turned towards them.
Delivering a message of change, he asserted that Dalits will now play a pivotal role within the Congress party.
Sources present at the meeting revealed that Gandhi praised Bahujan Samaj Pary founder Kanshi Ram, noting that he succeeded in uniting the Dalit community and instilling a sense of self-confidence in them.
At the meeting, Gandhi also remarked that the BJP is, on one hand, seeking to dismantle regional parties, on the other, it is stripping Dalits of their rights.
Atrocities against Dalits are on the rise, he said, affirming that his party will champion the cause of Dalit rights, and that Dalits would occupy a central position within the party structure. The Congress, he added, will fulfill the dreams of Baba Saheb Ambedkar.
A year ago, Gandhi had publicly acknowledged that the Congress had neglected the Other Backward Classes; he had even offered an apology for this oversight at the time. Now, he has articulated a remarkably similar sentiment regarding the Dalit community.
His comments are being seen as an attempt to establish a deeper foothold within the Dalit and backward communities.
During the recent Lok Sabha elections, Gandhi held rallies while holding a copy of the Constitution in his hand, asserting that the Constitution was under threat under the NDA government.
It is widely believed that both the Congress and the INDIA alliance reaped electoral benefits among the Dalit community as a result of this campaign.
Furthermore, Gandhi had vociferously demanded a caste census – an issue crucial for the OBC category. Collectively, these initiatives contributed to a doubling of the Congress party’s seat tally in the Lok Sabha.
With the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in mind, Gandhi
appears to be intensifying his outreach for the Dalit and backward classes.
Last week, in his parliamentary constituency of Raebareli, he unveiled a statue of Veera Pasi – a freedom fighter from the Dalit community – and addressed a Bahujan Sabha.
A day earlier, Rajendra Pal Gautam, the Chairman of the Congress party’s Scheduled Castes Department, had made an unsuccessful attempt to meet Mayawati by visiting her residence in Lucknow.
The extent to which Gandhi’s strategy – involving an acknowledgment of his party’s past missteps regarding Dalits and a move to assign them a central role within the party – will prove successful will only become clear during the next year’s elections in Uttar Pradesh.
