To restore the shattered faith of the members of Scheduled caste (SC) community and make an attempt to woo them in view of the next elections of the State Assemblies and the Parliament, Congress National Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is now openly advocating that “Congress should create leadership space in Dalit community”. Recently, Rahul Gandhi, while speaking at a programme on National Awareness for Scheduled Castes Empowerment held at New Delhi, accused BSP supremo Mayawati of not allowing any Scheduled Caste leader to rise in UP adding that there is a bigopportunity for the Congress to create leadership space in the community and the party should ensure that Dalit leadership is created in all fields claiming that Dalits were originally with the party but were weaned away by BSP and that efforts should be made to bring them back to their "original home".
It is true that for many years after independence, the Scheduled castes across the country, remained staunch supporters and voters of the Congress but with the passage of time majority of them started shifting their political loyalty to other parties after feeling that they were merely used for vote bank politics and even tallest SC leaders in the Congress were not deemed fit for prestigious posts despite of their being most senior, most capable with large public standing.Rahul Gandhi’s allegation against Mayawati of not allowing any Scheduled Caste leader to rise in UP may be based on ground feedback made available to him by his party leaders and local activists but before making such allegations, he himself must have gone through the past record of his own party to check whether it has allowed any Dalit leader to rise. Being National Vice-President of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi should. atleast try to find out the contribution of Dalit leaders towards strengthening Congress and also the treatment it meted out to them when there came the occasions of their rising up.
Rahul must go through a book titled “24 Akbar Lane” by journalist Rasheed Kidwai, which reveals how, in 1998, senior Congressmen played dirty and bent every rule to evict a constitutionally elected senior Dalit leader Sitaram Kesri from his post as Congress president and install Sonia Gandhi in his place. Almost all the top Congress leaders were part of the ‘Kesri hatao’ campaign.
It is also a humble advise to Rahul Gandhi to spare time and read biography of former Union Minister Jagjivan Ram, which has claimed that the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used the Dalit leader as a "bali ka bakra" (scapegoat) during Emergency in an attempt to remove any possible challenge to her leadership. This biography in Hindi, titled Babu Jagjivan Ram: Ek Jivani, has been penned by writer Mangalmurti and was released by Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal in the presence of Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.According to the biography, while Jagjivan Ram was used by the Congress and the government for his popularity and competence, he was never given any position of eminence because the "prime minister's chair in Congress’ eyes was deemed to be the birthright of uchchavargiya (high-class) leaders only".
"Along with Indiraji, Jagjivan Ram was the most senior and competent leader, who was the most eligible for the post of prime minister also... The biggest threat was from none other than Jagjivan Ram and therefore, he was considered the biggest scapegoat to move the resolution on Emergency," says the biography.
Hence, no one, Scheduled Castes in particular, will agree to the charges of Rahul Gandhi that some other political party or its Dalit leaders are the sole cause of manipulating Congress’ supporters to shift their political loyalty away from it. In fact, it is the past record of the Congress party itself which has made the Scheduled Castes to reconsider their decades old loyalty and teach it a lesson for insulting Dalit leaders.If Rahul Gandhi is not aware of these realities, he must apologize for the manner in which the Dalit leaders were treated in the past and, if he is well aware of all, for God sake he should stop luring the Dalits again in view of the elections in near future.