Big victory of land rights movement in Gujarat: Dalit community hoisted blue flag along with tricolor after getting 200 acres of land

MLA Jignesh Mevani said Dalit-Ambedkarite organizations will have to focus on economic and materialistic aspects

Geetha Sunil Pillai

Kutch, Gujarat – After 41 years of long struggle and wait, the Dalit community of Gujarat finally got back their land. On Independence Day, 15 August, 200 acres of land was handed over to the Dalit community in Bela and Nanda villages of Rapar tehsil of Kutch district. On this occasion, blue flag and tricolor were hoisted there which is a symbol of this historic victory.

In the last eight years, ‘Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch’ (RDAM) has got about 2500 acres of land in Gujarat, whose market value is about Rs 600 crore, freed from the possession of casteist forces and given to the Dalits.

Vadagam MLA Jignesh Mevani is at the forefront in the fight for the rights of Dalits in Gujarat. After the Una incident, he started a campaign to organize the Dalit community and get them their rights. After the atrocities in Una in 2016, Mevani organized an ‘Azadi Koonch’ from Mehsana to Dhanera in Banaskantha district, which culminated in the possession of 12 acres of land for four Dalit families of Lawara village.

In an exclusive interview with The Mooknayak, Mevani said that the aim of RDAM’s land rights movement is to get 5 acres of land to landless Dalits. There are about 20 thousand acres of such land across the country which is under illegal occupation after being allotted to tribals/Dalits, due to which the deprived community has not been able to get its rights..

He said, “Apart from Gujarat, no other state is making such an effort to free land from illegal occupation. We should not be limited only to caste discrimination and reservation. Along with the fight for self-respect, the Dalit Ambedkarite movement should focus on economic rights and equal distribution of resources.” Mevani said that at present, except Gujarat, no one is talking about the land rights of Dalits and Adivasis or resource-less families of backward classes in any other state. Dalit-Ambedkarite organizations have become limited to self-respect, reservation and jobs, whereas the socialism described in our Constitution requires that resources should also be distributed equally. The time has come, now we have to focus on economic and materialistic aspects.

Mevani says that with this intention, the Land Ceiling Act was implemented. The work of allotment of land to landless SC/ST families started across the country in 1950, but this work remained limited to papers in most places. Casteist feudal forces have kept their hold on the allotted lands and people of Dalit and deprived communities are still deprived of their rights.

Mevani organized ‘Azadi Koonch’ from Mehsana to Dhanera in Banaskantha district, which concluded with four Dalit families of Lawara village getting possession of 12 acres of land. 5 acres of land movement for Dalits in Gujarat

The struggle for land rights of Dalits in Gujarat is not new. Like other states of the country, thousands of acres of land was allotted to Dalits in Gujarat too, but casteist forces had kept hold of these lands.

From 2009 to 2012, Mevani collected information about thousands of acres of land which were illegally occupied by anti-social elements even after being allotted. A Public Interest Litigation was filed by him on this which ran from 2012 to 2016. Due to his efforts, thousands of acres of land were reclaimed from feudal forces, whose market value is crores of rupees. After that, the Una incident changed the direction of the movement.

The video of the beating of four Dalit youths by the police in Una went viral, which created anger among the people. On July 11, 2017, four Dalit youths were stripped naked, tied to a car and beaten publicly for hours in front of the Una police station on the charge of allegedly skinning a cow.

Due to different incidents in different parts of the state, anger was growing in the Dalit community. Some examples are… A Dalit man and his non-Dalit wife were murdered in Rajula, while a Dalit boy was burnt alive in another village – it was the Una incident that forced Dalits to protest publicly for the first time in history in India.

The Una incident gave a new turn to the movement

After the Una incident, Mevani started a campaign to organise the Dalit community and get them their rights. Mevani organised an ‘Azadi Koonch’ from Mehsana to Dhanera in Banaskantha district, which culminated in four Dalit families of Lawara village getting possession of 12 acres of land. The Una Dalit Atyachaar Samiti, started on a very low budget, transformed into the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch (RDAM) after the yatra ended.

Mevani and his colleagues have sought justice for Dalits through court battles. The Una incident gave a new turn to their movement, and now RDAM is also focusing on material issues like land ownership. They believe that land ownership is the key indicator of caste status, and the most direct path to equality for Dalits is to demand the land that should rightfully belong to them.

Moving beyond atrocities, RDAM is now including material issues like land ownership in its list of demands. If land ownership is a key indicator of caste status, then the most direct path to equality for Dalits is to demand the land that should rightfully belong to them. The demand is that every landless Dalit should get 5 acres of land.

RDAM, led by Jignesh Mevani, is also actively working on the cases of Dalits who have been allotted land on paper but are yet to be given physical possession of the land. By 2017, Mevani and RDAM’s efforts started bearing fruit. Jignesh Mevani contested the assembly elections in December 2017 and became the MLA of Vadgam constituency, while the RDAM team continued their land rights movement.

It has been successful in pressurising the Gujarat government to start the land mapping process to hand over 220 bighas of land to 115 Dalit families in Sarodha village of Ahmedabad district.

Mevani said efforts are on in other parts of Gujarat to unite various Dalit sub-castes into a powerful political force by running land ownership campaigns and create a common platform for marginalised groups.

Apart from this, similar efforts have been launched for Rapar and Surendranagar. The campaign has received considerable support and success in districts like Amreli, Bhavnagar, Surendranagar, Ahmedabad, Mehsana, Kutch etc.

Courtesy : Hindi News