RSS scouts for its own Dalit figures

RSS leaders said that they have been working among the Dalits for years.

NEW DELHI: Unknown till a few months ago, the late Rohit Vemula, Kanhaiya Kumar and Jignesh Mevani have now emerged as the faces of the Dalit cause on the national front.

They led their own agitations, but their cause converged and with that, they made common enemies—the BJP and the Sangh. To counter the trend, the RSS, which is running its own programmes for Dalit integration, is considering promoting leaders from the community with a “nationalistic” outlook.

The identification of these Dalit thought leaders is likely to be from the non-political platform so that they have greater acceptance among the people. A discussion on the issue will gain traction once the BJP and the RSS leaders meet.

Sources said both the BJP and the RSS were strategising on ways to counter the opposition’s “misinformation” campaign on Dalits. “Some leaders in the Sangh believe that leaders from the Dalit community should be developed who could provide an alternative discourse from the Left dominance,” a source said.

Sources added that Vemula (who died in January 2015), Kumar, and Mevani are supported by the Left and Liberal groups, who always paint the RSS in a bad light. Hence, there was a need to create set of our own leaders among the Dalits. They will help channelise the angst in the community, which has been stirred up due to recent violent incidents involving gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes), sources said.

To buttress the point, the source cited Dalit figures such as Milind Kamble, a Pune-based entrepreneur who set up Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and was an ABVP activist. Last year, the chamber organised a function on B R Ambedkar’s views in Delhi which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Kamble has emerged as a dominant voice among the community due to his business model and his message of creating jobs, instead of asking for them.

The BJP in April nominated Narendra Jadhav, a scholar who has written on Ambedkar, to the Rajya Sabha. Jadhav was a member of the Planning Commission during the UPA regime, and was also a member of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council. He was earlier the chief guest at a function to launch a Sangh-linked magazine’s special issue on Ambedkar.

RSS leaders said that they have been working among the Dalits for years, and they have been successful in building trust among the members of the community. The Sangh, however, appeared concerned as new leaders are mostly “supported” by the Left intellectuals. They fear it could create a wedge between the community and the Sangh’s outreach.

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