Dalits attacked after Asmita Yatra

Members of the Dalit community who had congregated in Una, where the 7-day Asmita Yatra concluded on Monday, were attacked by miscreants.

The tension spilled over to other villages, following which a large mob came out on to the highways, blocking them and vandalising public properties.

“There were widespread attacks on Dalits by these so-called gau rakshaks in nearby villages. The situation went out of control and several were wounded in the violence. This could have been avoided had the police acted in time,” said Jignesh Mevani. He said the community was firm in its stance that the Gujarat government provide 5 acres of land to marginalised Dalit families.

At the conclusion of the rally, which saw thousands of Dalits undertake a 340-km padayatra from Ahmedabad to Una, several leaders of the community had converged at the village in southern Gujarat, warning of a rail roko from September 16 if the government failed to initiated land allocation process.

On Tuesday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was in town during his visit to Sarangpur in Bhavnagar district to pay his tribute to the Swaminarayan guru Pramukh Swami Maharaj, also alleged that the State government was indulging in anti-Dalit activities.

The rally was attended by the victims of the Una flogging incident of July 11, JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and Radhika Vemula, mother of Hyderabad Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, who had committed suicide earlier this year.

Kanhaiya, on the other hand, attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi by questioning his ‘Gujarat Model’. “After I visited Gujarat, I came to know how the country has been fooled in the name of Gujarat model of development. Those, following the Sangh and Manuwadi ideologies are scared of democracy,” he had said in his address to the rally.

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