At the receiving end of high-handedness

Julio Ribeiro

NOT much was known about Sarwan Ram Darapuri when this Indian Police Service officer hailing from Punjab was serving in Uttar Pradesh. After retirement, he took up cudgels for the Scheduled Caste community, to which he belongs. Recently, at the age of 79, he led a demonstration of Dalits to the office of the Revenue Commissioner, Gorakhpur division, and was arrested on the serious charge of attempt to murder.

The demand for land to poor Dalits is part of the election scenario unfolding before us as 2024 approaches. If this demand crystallises and spreads, it will open another front for Modi.

Gorakhpur is the happy hunting ground of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Neither the revenue nor the police authorities of Gorakhpur were going to soft-pedal any defiance by the opponents of the fiery CM. Any weakness shown on such occasions would not augur well for the officials. So, they went overboard and exaggerated the facts of the offence that could be pinned on the agitators.

The participants in the demonstration were, as was to be expected, somewhat unruly. There were scuffles with the staff that manned the Revenue Commissioner’s office and some of the officials were reportedly pushed around or even manhandled. But the injuries appear to have been suitably exaggerated to make them eligible for an attempt-to-murder rap! Police officials must have had Yogi’s image in their mind and thought it advisable to report “effective action taken”, despite the fact that one of the principal ‘offenders’ was a former colleague belonging to the highest echelons of the police establishment.

Poor Darapuri! I had not heard of him while he was in service. I learn now that he suffers from Parkinson’s disease. His only intention of joining, even leading, the demonstrators was to cement his bonds with his own community. He may also have had aspirations of becoming a Dalit leader, but at 79 and with the baggage of a debilitating disease, that aspiration may not have been attainable.

The interesting part of the story is the demand that the agitators have raised with the Yogi government. They have demanded one acre of land for each Dalit family in the area. Ownership of land has always been a status symbol. The upper castes in our country have always flaunted their supremacy over the OBCs and the Scheduled Castes through the fact of ownership of land. In my own ancestral state of Goa, the Portuguese conquerors are reported to have induced conversions through the lure of retention of land ownership. The Brahmins, who converted to Christianity, and the Kshatriyas (known locally as Chardos) were the big landowners. They were told that they would retain ownership if they converted, and many of them did.

Socialism was the flavour of the Nehruvian era. The land ceiling laws were passed, though their implementation was lopsided. West Bengal was the state where land ceiling laws were taken up seriously for implementation. In my adopted state of Maharashtra, where my father’s side of the family had settled nearly 200 years ago, I was told by my friend, Joseph ‘Bain’ D’Souza, a former Chief Secretary, that he voluntarily relinquished a sizeable portion of his ancestral landholdings to conform to the new ceilings.

Bain belonged to the ‘East Indian’ community — local Maharashtrians converted to Christianity by the Portuguese around the same time 450 years ago when the Hindus in Goa, like my own ancestors, were converted. His family was one of the bigger landowners. Bain was a stickler for the law and the rules. He must have been one of the first to comply. His elder son, a doctor, has spent his adult life looking after the medical needs of the tribal people in the interiors of Chhattisgarh.

I don’t know how far the implementation of the Land Ceiling Act in UP has advanced. I only know that the demand by Darapuri and his followers will revolutionise the entire political spectrum in this state if it becomes more strident, persistent and all-encompassing. It is a demand that, if conceded, will displease BJP’s voters but has the capacity to give a strong fillip to the status of Dalits in Indian society.

The RSS leadership has been very vocal in welcoming Dalits into the Hindu fold, but most upper-caste Hindus still adhere to the old Brahminical order, with the result that the Dalits continue to feel the pain of discrimination and deprivation. In the villages, their houses are built on the outskirts and the work they do is still of the menial variety. They form the bulk of the landless labourers who work the lands of the owners.

Darapuri’s initiative is bound to change the social order, if it succeeds. But it’s doubtful if it will ever succeed. The vested interests, who have the maximum clout with the government, are bound to resist. His arrest, along with that of 10 others who also find themselves in jail, is a clear sign that the authorities intend to cook his goose at the first whiff of trouble.

The police have planted an attempt-to-murder charge on him and his associates. It was never their intention to murder or even do any bodily harm. Next day’s newspapers did not report any such mayhem, only the storming of the Commissioner’s office and the scattering of files on the tables. But the agitators had to be taught a lesson of the type the CM would approve of.

Darapuri and his friends should be happy if the bulldozer is not used to demolish their houses. In Yogi’s jurisdiction, and now increasingly in other BJP-ruled states like Haryana and Madhya Pradesh, the houses of those accused of rioting and destroying public property are identified for retaliatory destruction by the state. No judicial orders are obtained for such overt punishment. It is Yogi’s law!

The demand for land to poor Dalits is part of the election scenario unfolding before us as 2024 approaches. Darapuri, who had also been arrested during the anti-CAA protests in December 2019, and his friends have asked Dalits not to vote for any party that does not agree to part with one acre of land to every Dalit household. If this demand crystallises and spreads, it will open another front for Modi to face in his quest for a third term as the Prime Minister.

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