In a shocking incident that has been buried under the carpet by the mainstream media, Muslim youth attacked a Dalit colony in the Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh over a minor dispute. The shocking incident took place in Bakhra village of Azamgarh district. 10 Dalits were seriously injured in the dastardly attacked. The Muslim youth went on a rampage and anyone who came in their way was beaten black and blue. Even the basti was attacked fiercely by the Muslim youth. The village was tense and police force from several police stations have been deployed in the village.
A youth belonging to the community that attacked the Dalits had an argument with Aman’s son Ram Achal Rama living in the Dalit settlement. After a while, people of the particular community came out attacking the Dalit settlement with sticks.
The mainstream media, which had gone into a hyperactive mode after the Dadri-Akhlaq incident and had even carefully converted the killing of a youth called Junaid over seat sharing into a hate crime by extremist Hindus, is now silent over how Dalits were attacked by Muslim youth. The elitist media which was instrumental in creating the entire intolerance myth has failed to see any element of intolerance in this particular incident. The same media has been reporting every minor feud or crime against Dalits, even where the incident was purely a result of personal altercation. The media has tried to create an illusion that Dalits are under attack from the upper caste Hindus. This has been done in order to portray the Modi government as an anti Dalit government. This explains why the mainstream media decided to brush this incident under the carpet. Had the incident been reported it would have derailed the carefully crafted hysteria that Dalits are being targeted by upper caste Hindus. Reporting an attack on Dalits by Muslim youth would have damaged political arithmetic and equations for the pseudo-seculars.
Despite all the attempts by the opposition-mainstream media combine to portray BJP as anti-Dalit, Dalits have voted extensively for the BJP due to which the BJP has been able to emerge victorious in back to back elections. Parties which were entirely dependent on appeasing Dalits and promoting a divide in the Hindu society have therefore, suffered telling blows. In the past two years, the trend of Dalits supporting the BJP has only intensified. While the mainstream media and opposition tried to portray BJP as an oppressor of Dalits, there has been a movement of Dalits voting for the BJP in large numbers.
This incident is going to dent opposition’s dream of forming a Muslim-Dalit vote bank in order to counter BJP’s rise. In fact, it has been an age old pseudo-secular strategy to break away Dalits from the Hindu community and form a Muslim-Dalit combine. It has been seen as an impeccable winning combination. RPI(A)’s infamous 1962 election pitch “Jatav-Muslim bhai bhai, Hindu kaum kaha see aayi” (Jatavs and Muslims are like brothers, where did the Hindu community come from) shows how Dalits have been routinely used by pseudo-seculars for political purposes. However, Dalits have already realised how they have been taken for a ride by the pseudo-seculars. Now, with such incidents of Muslims attacking the Dalits, the opposition’s ambitions of forging a Dalit-Muslim coalition is not going to materialise. This explains why no one is talking about this cowardly attack on the Dalit basti.