43 years ago, a bunch of fiery writers and ideologues founded the Dalit Panthers movement in Mumbai, agitating for Dalit rights. The party did not last but its influence can still be seen today.
Chaitanya Tamhane’s debut movie, ‘Court’, casts the spotlight on the life of a Dalit poet whose firebrand verses lands him in a maze of legal cases and his travails in the course of his prosecution.
Tamhane’s characterisation of the beleaguered poet, located in the charged atmosphere of contemporary caste politics and hierarchical society has been acclaimed internationally. The real success story of the 116-minute-long film is its message that regardless of the outcome of the court case in which the poet is entangled in, the social structures that marginalise a Dalit remain unchanged.
The main protagonist of the film Narayan Kamble is placed in the tumultuous politics that began with a few young Marathi writers staking claim over the Dalit reformist movement that began this day 43 years ago in Maharashtra. Following the footsteps of the American Black Panthers, two Dalit writers, Namdeo Dhasal and J V Pawar, founded the Dalit Panthers who eschewed their hitherto pacifist struggle to launch what they called a just fight for their rights.
Senior journalist Kumar Ketkar, who followed the Dalit movement as a journalist, described the Panthers as a bunch of “angry, frustrated and directionless young minds.” Speaking to The Quint, Pawar, who is now close to 70, recalled how the Dalit Panthers’ insipid fight with the pen graduated to the sword.
“It was a necessity at that time because we were fighting for the right to live in dignity which Jyotirao Phule had called for and Bheem Rao Ambedkar had vehemently demanded,” Pawar said, adding that “denial of social equality and heaps of unjust practices were the driving force of the Panthers’ politics.”
While the Panthers, took their battle against the Congress’ so-called secular government, which was in alliance with the Ambedkar-founded Republican Party of India, their real confrontation was against the Shiv Sena which, soon after its establishment by Bal Thackeray in 1966 triggered a wave of propaganda and violent protests against South Indians. The Sena, proclaiming itself to be the protectors and standard-bearers of Mumbai’s Maharashtrians, had arrived on the social-political stage.
In the social ferment that followed, the Sena quickly proceeded to attain political supremacy while the Panthers, claiming to be non-political outfit fighting for the just rights of the Dalits, began splintering and disintegrating. The problem for the Panthers was internal to the organisation: multiple leaders, their ego coming in the way of the outfit’s social and political goals. Dhasal quit, branching out to join the Communist Party of India in 1974.
Although the Panthers failed to survive, they left behind a rich legacy in the form of Dalit literature that represents the consequences of the caste system that had pushed the “untouchables” to the social periphery. Dhasal’s ‘Golpitha’ and ‘Andhale Shatak’ (Century of Blindness), which sought to break the hegemony of the brahmanical Marathi literature, won him the Sahitya Akademi Award and Padma Shri.
The final blow to the Dalit Panthers was delivered in February this year when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation demolished the Siddharth Vihar Boys’ Hostel where the first seeds of the challenge to the prevailing social order were sown.
And soon, BDD (Bombay Development Department) Chawl, where several of the Panthers and Ambedkarites lived, will be pulled down for redevelopment. Even as the last vestiges of the Dalit Panthers’ disappear, all that is left of their legacy is their literature. Will it be spared should the Shiv Sena decide to return to its violent ways?
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