It is hot, crowded and noisy at Jantar-Mantar, and the young Gujarati dalit leader Jignesh Mewani appears uncomfortable sitting on the steps of the historic old building at 7, Jantar Mantar Road — the erstwhile Congress office before it shifted to 24, Akbar Road. The building now houses the central office of the Janata Dal (United), among others. Dressed casually, Mewani sports a stubble and thick glasses, which give him a scholarly look — he is currently writing a biography of Gujarati poet Dariz, and it should be out by next year.
It is not just the heat and dust that bother him. He also has a back condition that requires him to sit upright, so he decides to move to a nearby upmarket café.
Championing the cause of the dalit working class and peasantry, Mewani is popular among the activist crowd that assembles routinely at Jantar Mantar. He is accosted several times for selfies and autographs and he obliges smilingly. Both the large events at the protest site that day are dear to Mewani — a demonstration against the lynching of Muslims on the suspicion of illegal cattle trade and beef consumption, and a pro-reservation rally.
At the café he orders a grilled chicken sandwich and a cappuccino, and proceeds to share it with a fellow activist — a member of a left-wing student group. He then holds forth on why the Left is still the only force that can bring about structural change in Indian society, and insists that he does not subscribe to the bitter criticism directed at Indian Marxists by dalit radicals. “I find the approach of such groups destructive,” he says.
He, too, attracts flak from dalit radicals for his openly Marxist leanings and influences while being critical of Ambedkarism. Mewani believes that Ambedkarism is not really an ideology in the same sense as Marxism, since it is “not a complete system of thought”. He has also joined hands with left-wing student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid in their campaign for a law against lynchings.
In his mid-30s now, Mewani started his career as a journalist almost a decade ago. He worked in Mumbai for a few years with a small Gujarati periodical. He was always conscious of caste-based discrimination, but the lack of opportunity to make real and substantive change led him to activism, he says. “Anyone who is born a dalit knows what is discrimination.”
Belonging to the chamar caste, his grandfather worked at his small tannery in their ancestral village. Mewani’s father, however, worked in the municipal corporation in Ahmedabad and also took up odd jobs to support the family. Mewani recalls his father standing guard outside their colony on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, to prevent a mob of upper-castes from attacking the dalit residents during the anti-reservation riots in the mid-’90s. For the first time in his life, Mewani felt fear because of his dalit identity, although he had always felt humiliated when he filled government scholarship forms in front of his schoolmates, he says.
He owes his training in activism to two people: the late Mukul Sinha, a communist who worked for the marginalised sections of Gujarati society and was perceived to be at loggerheads with the then chief minister Narendra Modi; and Chunni Bhai Vaid, a Gandhian. “I have worked with two great men, a communist and a Gandhian. You may call me an amalgamation of contradictions,” he says.
Mewani adds that he is not enamoured of Gandhi’s ideas as the late leader believed in the varna system. “Gandhi thought that caste and untouchability should be treated separately, wishing only for the removal of the latter, though he revised his views later in life,” he argues.
He is all praise for Vaid. “Even at the age of 95, he took on corporate giants, trudging through villages on foot. He was passionate about the cause of the downtrodden. But he did not believe in structural change. I admired and respected his patience, participated in the struggles he conducted, but did not consume much Gandhism from him. My position was closer to the Left. Dalits always had problems with Gandhism,” he says.
Mewani first rose to prominence when he led the Una agitation last year — hundreds of dalits refused to skin cattle in protest against lynchings by cow vigilantes in this Gujarat town. Now he has taken up the issue of land reforms in a big way.
“Gandhiji talks about Gram Swaraj, or giving all power to the village panchayat. But people hegemonising the village panchayat are casteist. If power is given to them, life would become worse for us. This social structure cannot be dismantled without land reforms. Caste impacts economy as well, as it has a role to play in the relations between the means of production,” he says. He exhorts dalits to leave behind caste-based occupations that degrade them. As part of this movement, his social group — Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch — has been active in taking back land that was ‘promised’ to the State’s dalits and which they allegedly never received, except on paper.
Asked why he plants the blue flag of Ambedkarism on the land his organisation has reclaimed, he justifies it as a ‘strategy’. “The red is implied in the policy of taking back land and redistributing it. I don’t want to offend the sentiments of anyone,” he signs off before leaving for a meeting of activists in Nizamuddin.
( Aletta Andre and Abhimanyu Kumar are journalists based in Delhi)