Opinion

Struggle: the identity of Dalit people

- Santoshi Bishwakarma

The Nepalese People’s War (PW) is an important turning point in the history of the Nepalese Communist movement. Actually, a new era began after its initiation. There has never been such mass awareness and the participation of the people. Never have so many tribes, communities, castes, dalits, gender, region and the marginalized ever come into power.

The PW has brought so many changes in the lives of all people in the country. They all have started honourable lives in the society where before they used to be treated without any respect or dignity.  Before the PW, the life of dalit people was miserable and poor. Dalits had to spend their lives in awful conditions despite the fact that they possess skill, efficiency, art and professionalism. Dalit women had to bear torture and harassment in the society.

The Aryan rulers ruled over the Indian sub-continent with the help of the superstitious beliefs invented and founded by Manu as the tools of repression. Kings and the Emperors were considered were considered to be sent to rule on Earth from heaven by God.

The feudal kings and the great kings declared themselves the incarnation of Gods on the Earth. They lived a very luxurious life and the people spent their lives as slaves. The kings and their helpers ran the supreme state powers. The people were forced to live stateless, property-less and right-less. According to the caste division, dalits were put in the hierarchy of the lowest caste. It means that they had to serve all the people of the upper castes.

The long practice of this type of discrimination erected a high boundary between the man-made different castes of human beings in the Indian sub-continent. Deception, intrigue, cheating and dishonesty became the religion of the high Brahmin caste, and to obey and follow the ruling class, to be weak and dependent, to be slaves was the religion of the poor Dalit people.

All the oppressed people, including Dalits, were taught to accept exploitation and repression as their fate because of sins committed in a previous life. Until the PW was initiated, the identity of the Dalit caste was backward, illiterate.  To liberate themselves from repression and exploitation, dalits need to break the fetters of feudalism.

The historical participation and representation of the Dalit people in the leadership in all the sectors of the PW brought a drastic change in the life of the Dalit people and the traditional conception of the people. As the people broke the “norms and values” of the feudal tradition, they changed their way of thinking. They took the initiative to decide their own fate and became the captain of their path forwards.

Since the initiation of all the people’s movements and especially from the beginning of the Peoples War, Dalit people participated in the struggle of death and life to achieve liberty and the equality. Along with learning the scientific socialist ideology during the PW, Dalit women dwelling in those remote villages like Kotbada of Kalikot district seized rifles from the armed police by fighting with their bare hands.

Only the organized power of the people can ‘drop the emperor from the horse’. As people of the remote villages realized this, they were ready to sacrifice members of their own family and their property. Many of them have lost their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and many of their relatives. Most Nepalese families are martyrs families. They fought a historical fight in the war. The women carried their children on their back and gun in their hands. Really, it was the fight for liberty and equality. In the context of the PW in Nepal, we cannot separate liberty and equality from each other. They are closely related.

The motive power of the history is people. After the ending of feudal regime from Nepal, the oppressed class, marginalized and the ethnic groups have sent their representatives to the Constituent Assembly. The Maoist party has said that a nation cannot be a nation until and unless the exploited, the carrier forces of the civilization, are given full democratic rights to create a stronger national unity. According to this concept, we can build a beautiful garden of the different flowers in the 21st century only after the implementation of the dream of liberty and the equality.

Adopting and following these ideas, the Dalit people have sent their representatives to the Constituent Assembly. The representatives of all types of the oppressed people and the marginalized are now trying their best to write the constitution in favour of those people to build a new Nepal.