Seema Gautam: A Voice of Dalit Resistance in Yogi’s Gorakhpur

Gautam’s movement for landless and poor Dalits has come at a huge cost.

A big poster depicting a number of Bahujan icons hangs across the wall behind Seema Gautam. There are portraits of Savitri Bai Phule, Phoolan Devi, Kanshiram and BR Ambedkar. Also spread on the wall are the Preamble, and the list of fundamental rights and duties enshrined in the Indian constitution, values that Gautam considers her guiding light as a Dalit activist fighting for the rights of the marginalised. “I fight for those from the community who are seeking justice,” says the 32-year-old.

That was in August, two months before Gautam and her colleague Shravan Kumar Nirala were booked by the police in Gorakhpur and Maharajganj for spreading false rumours about loan waivers and inciting women from self-help groups to stop repaying group loans. While Nirala was arrested and is in jail, Gautam is running from pillar to post looking for legal help, during the course of which she met me in the national capital last week.

    She says she was falsely implicated in the case after she pointed out the exploitation of poor, illiterate women by micro-financing agents and companies. She believes the administration lodged the two criminal cases against her as an act of vindictiveness due to her dogged pursuit of justice for the poor and the Dalits.

Gautam is the president of the Ambedkar Jan Morcha, a Dalit rights outfit based in the eastern UP city and has been leading a fight to secure land for landless Dalits. She hails from the Chamar caste, one of the most marginalised Dalit communities and the largest Dalit sub-group in Uttar Pradesh.

Gautam’s movement for landless and poor Dalits has come at a huge cost.

Gautam is the president of the Ambedkar Jan Morcha.

Born in a village in Maharajganj, located between Nepal and Gorakhpur, she came to Gorakhpur, one of the major urban centres of Purvanchal, in 2011, after her father’s death. “My childhood was really difficult. I was born in a village that had nothing to do with education, especially for a girl child. It was almost a tradition that girls would not be given education, only boys would go to school but I was interested in education.”

Gautam says she was penalised for bringing to attention how these microfinancing companies were harassing poor rural women to repay their loans after charging them interest rates much higher than originally published. “When it comes to recovery of these loans, these people even break locks, take their ration and gas cylinders and harass them for not repaying the sum. I only raised my voice against this,” says Gautam in her defence.

Gautam’s movement for landless and poor Dalits has come at a huge cost.

Shravan Kumar Nirala was arrested by the police.

Her movement for landless and poor Dalits has come at a huge cost. Gorakhpur, the eastern UP city, is the political borough of Yogi Adityanath, the current chief minister of UP, bringing her in the crosshairs of the state administration. The UP CM is also the head priest of the Gorakhnath Temple

    Gautam’s experience is a testament to how difficult it is for a Dalit woman activist to function in Gorakhpur, where the space for dissent has shrunk dramatically ever since Adityanath took over the reins of the state in 2017.

Since its formation in 2019, the AJM, a little outfit formed by a bunch of disgruntled Ambedkarites formerly associated with the Bahujan Samaj Party, has been fighting for landless Dalits as well as victims of caste oppression and sexual violence. Gautam and her colleagues shot into the limelight last October when the AJM rallied hundreds of poor Dalit women to gather outside the divisional commissioner’s office in Gorakhpur with a singular demand: that one acre of land be granted to each landless Dalit family in the state.

The demonstration, which included some fiery speeches, concluded peacefully but that did not deter the administration from unleashing its forces. The AJM’s leaders, other Dalit activists and even some independent journalists were criminally charged and arrested for attempt to murder and vandalism amongst other offences. This was despite the fact that no violence was reported at the event.

    Gautam says the crackdown against her outfit–first for the land rights movement and now for raising questions against microfinancing companies–was an attempt by the Adityanath regime to tarnish their image and nip their movement in the bud itself for empowering poor Dalits and propelling land rights into political discourse.

Gautam’s house has been raided several times by the police and the three FIRs lodged against her are a constant reminder of the perils of being a vocal Dalit woman activist under the present-day dispensation. Incidentally, it was on the premises of the Gorakhpur commissionerate years ago that Gautam, fighting for justice after her mother was murdered in a personal dispute over property, met Nirala. That was the turning point in her life which eventually brought her into social activism.

Gautam’s movement for landless and poor Dalits has come at a huge cost.

Nirala and Gautam on the ground in Gorakhpur.

“I went begging from door to door, requesting police officers to help me get justice. I expressed the threat that my siblings could be killed, but I was harassed by the system dominated by upper caste men. It was then that I decided that things that have happened with me should not happen with any other women and if I help them fight their battle for justice, my life would be meaningful,” says Gautam.

“Land is the most important instrument for the emancipation of the oppressed class. One needs land to even apply for a government flat. This fight for our land is not just for Dalits but for the landless workers from every class and community. It is not just a dream of our organisation but also of Baba Saheb, Kanshiram, and Periyar.”

For Gautam, having land means self-reliance. “Owning a land would mean many things. One can grow their own vegetables and sell the same in the market. Women who work on others’ land and get sexually assaulted will no longer have to suffer at the hands of the feudal landlords. The father who sells his land for her daughter’s wedding and drowns in financial loans and kills himself will not die anymore,” she explains.

Gautam’s movement for landless and poor Dalits has come at a huge cost.

Women at an AJM protest.

Although the government acknowledged that the AJM’s demand for land rights was constitutional, it tried to project their movement as a Dalit-centric demonstration. Gautam points out that while the administration criminalised their peaceful dharna, just a few weeks later, Adityanath, addressing a Dalit gathering in Aligarh, said 1.25 crore families in the state would be granted ownership rights of leased land. “The administration will not do anything to uproot impoverished and marginalised individuals from the SC/ST communities,” Adityanath said then, according to a newspaper report.

    While Gautam rues the criminalisation of her movement, she feels her sustained call for land rights for Dalits has finally become a talking point. “Since the demands that we make are constitutional, the Yogi government could not question its validity but through our arrests, they ensure that the public does not hear our voice.”

There are incidents of personal discrimination as well that she has had to encounter as a Dalit woman. Gautam has had to leave multiple jobs in Gorakhpur due to caste-based discrimination and harassment. On many occasions, she claims, she was denied a job or rented room because of her identity. “They would create such circumstances that I had to leave or they would ask me to leave. It’s a curse to be a woman but a greater curse to be a Dalit woman,” she says.

But Gautam insists her fight is not against any particular caste but against a system. “These are things I have faced since childhood. Now if I ask for my rights, I am not asking from any particular caste. I have no enmity with a particular caste. I am asking for it from the government. I am holding the state accountable. It doesn’t matter if the government is Brahmin or Thakur or Dalit,” she says.

Gautam also has political ambitions. In 2023, she contested the election for Gorakhpur Mayor simply because no Dalit had fought for the seat till now.

    “I fought it to make a point,” she said. In 2022, she contested the Assembly election from Gorakhpur Urban seat against Yogi Adityanath.“It was said that an independent candidate and especially a Dalit woman cannot stand against Yogi. Only a ‘dabang’ can fight elections. This exactly was the notion that I wanted to challenge.”

Her nomination, however, was rejected. She feels it was done under administrative pressure. “This only made me resolute about my work and identity as a Dalit woman. I am fighting for and on behalf of so many other women,” she says.

Gautam is inspired by Phoolan Devi, and by her courage and determination. “Phoolan Devi in an interview said that she would want to be reborn as an animal or bird rather than a woman. Lata Mangeshkar also did not want to be reborn as herself, such is the apathy of being a woman in a patriarchal society.”

The Dalit activist is critical of mainstream Dalit-based parties and other political parties, accusing them of merely appropriating and exploiting Ambedkar’s name for votes to gain power.

    “People from our community share not only an ideological but also an emotional connection with Dr Ambedkar and they are being betrayed by these parties who just use the name as a brand, a selling point for their own vested interests to come in power. The issues of the Dalit community since the time of Kanshiram remain as they were. Kanshiram’s slogan was Aarakshan se lenge SP, DM, vote se lenge CM PM.”

Acknowledging that no organised Dalit movement has taken off in UP in the last two decades, and with the decline of the BSP, the future of the Dalit movement looks grim. “Though there are some scattered individuals and organisations, they do not dare to give it a form of a movement because they fear a crackdown by the state like the one that we have been facing.”

She also feels that the AJM is fighting a lonely battle. Other Ambedkarite organisations drown themselves in talks of identity but the AJM wants to focus on issues faced by the oppressed communities, she tells me. “For this reason, they don’t support us and, thus, this is a lonely battle.”

Courtesy:The Quint

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