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“Land is the most important means for the liberation of the oppressed class. Land is also required to apply for a government flat. This fight for our land is not just for Dalits, but for landless workers of every class and community. This is the dream not only of our organization but also of Baba Saheb, Kanshi Ram and Periyar.”
For Gautam, having land means self-reliance. “Owning land would mean many things. Anyone can grow their own vegetables and sell them in the market. Women who work on other people’s land and are victims of sexual harassment will no longer have to suffer at the hands of feudal landlords. The father who sells his land to finance his daughter’s marriage and gets into financial debt and commits suicide will no longer die,” she explains.
Although the government acknowledged that AJM’s demand for land rights was constitutional, it tried to present their movement as a Dalit-centric protest. Gautam says that while the administration declared their peaceful protest a crime, just a few weeks later, Adityanath, while addressing a Dalit meeting in Aligarh, said that 1.25 crore families in the state would be given ownership rights of leased land. According to a newspaper report, Adityanath then said, “The administration will do nothing to uproot the poor and marginalized people of the SC/ST communities.”
There are also incidents of personal discrimination that she has faced as a Dalit woman. Gautam had to leave several jobs in Gorakhpur due to caste-based discrimination and harassment. She claims that on several occasions she was denied a job or rented a room because of her identity. “They will create such situations that I will have to leave or they will ask me to leave. Being a woman is a curse but being a Dalit woman is an even bigger curse,” she says.
But Gautam insists that his fight is not against any particular caste but against a system. “These are things I have faced since childhood. Now if I am demanding my rights then I am not demanding it from any particular caste. I have no enmity with any particular caste. I am demanding this from the government. I am holding the state accountable. It doesn’t matter whether the government is Brahmin or Thakur or Dalit,” she says.
Gautam also has political ambitions. In 2023, he contested the Gorakhpur Mayor election only because till now no Dalit had contested from this seat.
However, his nomination was rejected. He believes that this has been done under administrative pressure. “It made me determined towards my work and identity as a Dalit woman. I am fighting for and on behalf of many other women,” she says.
Gautam is inspired by Phoolan Devi and her courage and determination. “Phoolan Devi had said in an interview that she would like to be reborn as an animal or bird instead of a woman. Lata Mangeshkar also did not want to be reborn in her form, such is the indifference of being a woman in a patriarchal society.”
Dalit activists criticize mainstream Dalit-based parties and other political parties, accusing them of merely appropriating and exploiting Ambedkar’s name for votes to gain power.
Recognizing that there has been no organized Dalit movement in UP in the last two decades, and with the decline of the BSP, the future of the Dalit movement looks bleak. “Although there are some scattered individuals and organizations, they do not dare to give it the shape of a movement because they fear the kind of action by the state that we are facing.”
They also feel that AJM is fighting a lonely battle. She tells me that other Ambedkarite organizations get bogged down in identity conversations but AJM wants to focus on the issues faced by oppressed communities. “For this reason, they do not support us and thus, it is a lonely fight.”
(Vartika Mani is a lawyer and human rights activist based in New Delhi. This is an opinion. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint Neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
