Dalit protesters ‘embrace’ Buddhism in Jind

Vishal Joshi

Tribune News Service

Kurukshetra, August 15

A group of Dalits in Jind city on the Independence Day claimed to have converted to Buddhism as their demands were not fulfilled despite protesting for the past 188 days.

Monks from the Buddhist Society of India were present on the occasion to fulfil the rituals and documentation of religious conversion. 

Though they got conversion forms filled by the volunteers today, they refused to give a number of those who embraced Buddhism.

Dinesh Khapad, leader of the protesters, alleged that socially oppressed castes had been marginalised in Haryana and made a victim of politics.

He blamed the BJP for being “anti-Dalit”.

Khapad alleged the RSS and its affiliating outfits react to the atrocities on Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries but remained mute spectators, when Dalits were harassed and abused in the BJP-ruled states in India.

On June 4 this year, a group of more than 100 Dalits under Khapad had claimed to have embraced Buddhism in Delhi.

“We have been demanding a CBI probe into the alleged suicide of my uncle Ishwar Singh and the alleged rape-murder of a Dalit girl from Jhansa in Kurukshetra. Also, the widow of a Dalit CRPF jawan, Satish Kumar from Jind’s Chhatar village, was subjected to humiliation by the state government by not giving her a regular job. No public place has been named after the late CRPF soldier who was killed in Kathua in 2015,” he said.

Khapad’s uncle Ishwar Singh was a contractual employee of Confed at Jind. 

On January 19 last year, Ishwar committed suicide by hanging himself at his house. The police had found a two-page note from his possession in which the deceased had accused three persons — the then Jind DFSC Ashok Rawat, the then Julana SHO sub-inspector Ram Niwas and a government contractor— of forcing him to commit suicide.

“The authorities are shielding the accused. The police have also failed to file a chargesheet in the abetment of suicide case,” claimed Khapad, a complainant in the Ishwar suicide case.

Meanwhile, the monk Bhikkhu Sagar, who oversaw the conversion, told reporters that Buddhist organisations from China, Myanmar and other countries would soon come out in the support of those who embraced Buddhism today.

Jind Deputy Commissioner Amit Khatri said the widow of the CRPF jawan was illiterate and she had joined the ad hoc job in the Asset Management Cell in Jind. But she stopped attending the duty for unsaid reasons, he said.

The DC said the panchayat of Chhatar village had yet to pass a resolution for naming a public place after the CRPF jawan from their village.

Rural Development and Agriculture Minister Om Prakash Dhankar, who was in Jind for Independence Day function, said a decision to change religion for demands was unfortunate.

He urged the protesting Dalits to approach the state and district authorities for redressal of their demands and to raise objections.