After the Dadri lynching episode, the Dalit attack in Haryana sparked a fresh bout of acrimonious exchanges between rival parties today with Rahul Gandhi alleging it was the result of the “attitude” shared by the Prime Minister, BJP and RSS that if somebody is weak, he can be “crushed”.
Significantly, BJP ally and Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, a Dalit leader, sought to pin the responsibility on the Haryana government for the death of two children of a Dalit family who were burnt alive in Sonped village of the state during the attack allegedly by upper caste people.
Law and order is totally state government’s accountability... though the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have constitutional protection, this issue is completely state government’s responsibility.
— Ram Vilas Paswan, Leader, Lok Janashakti Party
Bihar’s Grand Alliance leaders – Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD President Lalu Prasad – targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the attack and asked where the people who claimed to bring their party to power and ensured everything would be fine were.
Reacting to the dig by Nitish and Lalu, BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, a former deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, charged the two leaders with shedding ‘fake tears’ over the incident, apparently with an eye on the sizeable votes of Dalits in the Bihar assembly polls.
Not one to let go of an opportunity, the Congress pitched in as well.
This is an attitude shared by the Prime Minister, Chief Minister of the state and the entire BJP and RSS. The attitude is if somebody is weak, he can be crushed.
— Rahul Gandhi, Vice President, Congress
RJD supremo Lalu Yadav tweeted,
I had demanded that the anti-Dalit books by Modi and Guru Golwalkar be burned but in their rule, Dalits themselves are being burned. Along with scrapping reservation, in the rule of BJP and RSS, Dalits who are beneficiaries of reservation are being set on fire.
— Lalu Prasad Yadav, Leader, RJD
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also hit out at the NDA government over the incident.
While 58 dalits were massacred in Laxmanpur Bathe village in Arwal district, 21 others were killed in another massacre in Bathani Tola village in Bhojpur district and 34 in Miyapur village in Aurangabad district during the RJD’s 15 years’ rule in Bihar, Sushil Modi said.
The Laxmanpur Bathe massacre in December 1997 had horrified the country so much so that the then President (K.R. Narayan) had described it as a ‘national shame’.
— Sushil Modi, Leader, BJP
(With inputs from PTI.)
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