Dalits to intensify stir in Gujarat if demand not met

As thousands of Dalits gathered in Una on the occasion of the country’s 70th Independence Day where Prime Minister Narendra Modi also came under fire, their leaders sought freedom from atrocities and discrimination, amid chants of ‘Jai Bhim’. The tricolor was jointly unfurled by Radhika Vemula, mother of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula who had committed suicide in Hyderabad and Balu Sarvaiya, father of one of the victims of Una Dalit flogging incident, in the presence of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar. The week-long rally which started from Ahmedabad by Una Dalit Atachiyar Ladat Samiti (UDALS), culminated in Una, the place where a few Dalits where brutally beaten by cow vigilantes for skinning a dead cow last month sparking outrage.

“You take cow’s tail, give us land,” Jignesh Mavani, a lawyer-turned politician who established the UDALS and led the march, told the huge gathering. 

Targeting Modi, Mavani said, “The sheer scale of protests had forced him to speak out on the issue. Modi did not speak a word when three youths were killed in police firing in Thangadh town in 2012, another incident of Dalit atrocity,” Kanhaiya said the hype of Gujarat Model of development has been punctured by Dalits of the state.