The Bharat Bandh organized on Monday in protest against the recent SC ruling which diluted immediate arrest provision of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA Act) saw violence in many parts of the country, leaving at least 8 people dead and damaging both public and private property.

On March 20, the Supreme Court ruled that a public servant can only be arrested under the SC/ST Act after approval of the appointing authority. A non-public servant can be arrested after approval by a senior superintendent of police. SC also allowed for anticipatory bail in such cases.

Background

The genesis of the SC ruling lay in a case under SC/ST Act filed by Bhaskar Karbhari Gaikwad, the storekeeper at the Government College of Pharmacy, Karad, Maharashtra, against remarks made in his Annual Confidential Report (ACR) by his superiors Satish Bhise and Kishor Burade.

Bhise and Burade (not SC, but most likely from OBC communities) wrote that Gaikwad was inefficient in work and his conduct was not proper. Gaikwad lodged a case in 2006 against Bhise and Burade under the SC/ST Act charging them of making the comments because of his caste and not performance at work. Police sought permission for prosecution (this appears to have been for some other IPC charge as no sanction was needed at that time for prosecution under PoA Act) from then Maharashtra Director of Technical Education -Subhash Kashinath Mahajan – who refused the sanction as he believed the adverse remarks in Gaikwad’s ACR were genuine and not made due to case bias.

In 2016, Gaikwad lodged another FIR against Mahajan for illegally dealing with the matter of sanction. So Mahajan approached the Bombay High Court (HC) seeking quashing of the complaint against him. The HC quashed the plea following which Mahajan approached the Supreme Court. 

Today, the Central Government moved a review petition in SC seeking a recall of its 20 March judgment – SC declined to stay its earlier order but has listed the Centre’s review petition after 10 days for detailed hearing.

Propaganda over the Issue

Dalits are genuinely agitated over the SC ruling which they see as a dilution of the SC/ST Act, while the SC claimed that it was not against the Act but only wanted to safeguard interest of innocents from being arrested.

But a lot of propaganda is happening under cover of the genuine Dalit angst, and a lot of the violence which took place on Monday appears to be planned and organized. This is not surprising, going by the experience of the recent Koregaon-Bhima violence where elements like controversial Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani were heard inciting people to indulge in ‘street battles’.

The vicious propaganda being carried out over the recent SC/ST ruling falls in 3 categories –

1.) BJP is behind the dilution of the Act – This propaganda is being spread by likes of Rahul Gandhi who are accusing the Modi Government of snatching away Dalit rights and who just tweeted “To keep the Dalits at the lowest level of the Indian society is in the DNA of BJP/RSS.” This blatant lie distorts the fact that it is SC which has changed the immediate arrest provision of the SC/ST Act based on an appeal filed by a private person, and that the Central Government has just filed a review petition asking for that provision to be restored.

Moreover, it is the present Government which in 2016 strengthened the SC/ST PoA (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, by introducing major amendments such as addition of new offences of atrocities, rationalization of payment of relief amount, establishment of exclusive special courts, etc.

2.) Casteist, pro-Modi judiciary is responsible – This propaganda is not being stated outright by major leaders of political parties as yet, but it is spreading like wildfire on social media and on op-ed pages of liberal media outlets. Specifically, Judge UU Lalit is being targeted for being a Brahmin judge and for his alleged ‘closeness’ to Amit Shah. Sample some of the posts which are appearing on social media  –

The above Facebook posts are openly branding this SC judgement as 1.) A ‘Brahmin conspiracy’, as both CJI Dipak Mishra and Justice UU Lalit as Brahmins. 2.) Claiming that as a lawyer, UU Lalit had represented Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin encounter case, so he was elected as an SC judge as a quid-pro-quo.

The truth is that judges are appointed by a collegium system and Government just has the right to accept or reject a name suggested by the collegium of judges. UU Lalit’s name was proposed by a collegium led by CJI RM Lodha, no friend of Modi – as demonstrated by his publicly rebuking the Modi Government on more than one occasion. Also, several media reports have confirmed that UU Lalit never appeared for Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin case – it was Ram Jethmalani who represented Shah. This appears to be another rumour floated by the secular brigade in 2014 at the time of UU Lalit’s appointment as an SC judge. Current CJI Dipak Mishra has been declared as a Modi-stooge by the secular cabal, but they fall silent when asked to explain why the CJI doesn’t accept NJAC passed by Modi Government?

It is noteworthy that the secular propagandists are not saying anything about Judge Adarsh Goel, who was a part of the 2-judge bench that gave the ruling, presumably because Judge Goel is a non-Brahmin and thus spared the invective currently being hurled at Judge Lalit.

If you thought this poisonous propaganda is restricted only to certain dark corners of the internet, think again. MSM is also full of similar opeds, albeit in more eloquent language – here is a FirstPost piece by one Saurav Datta, whose profile says that he teaches media law & jurisprudence, saying that “Judiciary is steeped in caste-based prejudice, and condones atrocities.” Indian Express has published “Caste-blind justice” by Anisha George, assistant editor at the far-left EPW newsmagazine, which says there is a ‘seeming tolerance in Hindu society for dehumanising violence against Dalits’.

Many of the new Dalit groups on the horizon have links with Islamist organizations. Jigensh Mewani received funding for his election campaign from the radical PFI outfit, linked to several terror attacks and also under investigation for organized illegal conversion of Hindu & Christian women in Kerala.

Those who followed the events leading up to the Bhima-Koregaon violence in Maharashtra know the kind of inflammatory speeches made by urban Naxals like Sudhir Dhavale, Umar Khalid etc at the Yalgaar Parishad & other events. There is a concerted effort to link the genuine issues faced by Dalits, to the Muslim victimhood agenda.

The secular propagandists of this narrative want the common citizen to overlook the fact that most of the SC rulings against Hindu festivals in recent times have been passed by Hindu judges such as Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan banning Diwali crackers in NCR, or Justice A R Dave and Justice L Nageswara Rao ruling against Dahi Handi. Or for that matter, two Hindu judges -Anant S Dave and G R Udhwani – of Gujrata High Court commuted death sentence of those responsible for Godhra train burning.

Was the higher judiciary not ‘casteist, Hindu bigots’ when it passed such judgements?

3.) Paint Brahmins as villains

The core of the anti-Hindu strategy adopted by secularists of all hues is to divide Hindu society into various factions and play one off against the other. But one section is the evergreen villain – the Brahmin.

An OBC Leader Om Prakash Rajbhar from UP has supported the SC ruling – the same leader was occupying prime media space when he was complaining recently that the BJP led Government in UP had not done much for backwards, but his stance supporting the said dilution of the SC/ST PoA Act is not being as widely reported – as that won’t be helpful in creating the narrative that this is a ‘Brahmin  conspiracy’ against Dalits. Even the Maratha silent protests seen in Maharashtra, which many claim were the handiwork of Sharad Pawar, had one of its main demands as complete abolition of the PoA act.

The reality is that the Dalit struggle today is mostly due to exploitative land relations with the landed OBC classes represented by casteist outfits like SP, RJD, NCP etc. ‘Gandhian, Socialist and Communist constructs, which presented themselves as liberators of Dalits, have now come under direct scrutiny and challenge by new Dalit leaders and thinkers’, as Dalit scholar Abhinav Prakash writes in this Swarajyamag article . Yet these same casteist political outfits and their secular overlords of Congress, which are dynastic and dens of corruption and inefficiency to boot, are presented as champions of the oppressed by our seculars and preferred over the more nationalist agenda of BJP/RSS.

Keep the caste pot boiling….for ever

As Hindu society urbanizes and we move towards more market-based opportunities coupled with  efficient welfare programs, we are losing the feudalist structures which plague rural / less developed regions. Yet, the secular elite insists that even the modern caste-agnostic Hindu youth is contributing to casteism as he/she is forgetting his intrinsic caste-privilege! So unless you remain forever apologetic and learn to self-hate based on the secular understanding of caste discrimination as the bedrock of Hindu Dharma, you are a casteist. The caste of a ‘Brahmin’ judge is irrelevant when he is delivering judgements that the secular cabal agrees with, but the moment he steps out of line – he is to be mocked & condemned as the stereotypical upper caste oppressor.

The selective cherrypicking and targeting of judiciary and trying to distort facts to suit their anti-Hindu (masked as anti-BJP/RSS) agenda is a well-honed tactic of the secular brigade who will only rest when Hindu Dharma is eradicated from this country – if a few lakh Hindus have to be sacrificed in that endeavor, so be it. This Breaking India gang will stop at nothing.

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