‘Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste’ by Ajaz Ashraf: Laying bare Maharashtra’s deep-rooted caste fault lines

Debashish Mukerji

By now, it is manifestly clear that the Bhima Koregaon case, unfolding since 2018, is an indelible blot on India’s democratic record. Thirteen men and three women — most of them activists who had devoted their lives to fighting for Dalits or Adivasi rights, many in their 60s with one, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, aged over 80 — were accused of not only inciting the caste clash at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018, but also, at the behest of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), plotting to destabilise the government.

Charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which makes getting early bail impossible, they remained incarcerated for years, with Swamy eventually passing away in jail on July 5, 2021. Of the remaining 15, nine are still in custody.

Undoubtedly, all 16 were ‘habitual dissenters’ with far-Left views, which increasingly appears to have been the sole reason for the State hounding them. Above all, some of the subsequent revelations about the extent to which law enforcement agencies allegedly went to incriminate them — planting fake emails in their mailboxes, slipping incriminating files as malware into their laptops, and more — are absolutely chilling.

Two books recalling these shameful developments have been published this year — ‘The Incarcerations’ by Alpa Shah, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics, and ‘Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste’ by veteran journalist Ajaz Ashraf. Both are staggeringly well researched; however, while they do inevitably cover much common ground — using interviews with the same people, even quoting from the works of the same experts (such as Paul Brass and Christophe Jaffrelot) — their focuses are somewhat different.

While Shah narrates the riveting back stories of the 16 in exhaustive detail, the first half of Ashraf’s book looks closely at a relatively less examined aspect — the fault lines of Maharashtra’s caste politics lying at the root of the Bhima Koregaon clash.

There is also a distinct difference in tone — while Shah makes her sympathy for the incarcerated and strong antipathy towards the Modi government apparent, Ashraf is much more objective, minutely sifting through the evidence relating to each controversial development or contested historical detail, and drawing careful conclusions.

Bhima Koregaon, a village lying 30 km northeast of Pune, was the site of a battle between a small British force and a much larger Peshwa army on January 1, 1818, in which the latter was defeated. Since the British force comprised largely the Scheduled Caste group of Mahars — considered ‘untouchables’ at the time — the Mahars, from the early 20th century onwards, began regarding it as their community’s victory over the Brahmin Peshwas, during whose rule they had been particularly oppressed, and celebrating it with a procession on every New Year day to the ‘victory pillar’ the British had erected there.

“The history of the 1818 battle was recovered and re-imagined in the fight for equality a century or so later,” writes Ashraf. “It became a trope for the fighting prowess of the Dalits.” He acknowledges that framing the victory of British colonialists over an Indian ruler as one of Mahars over Peshwas is a stretch, a convenient myth, but notes that “myths serve as a psychological salve for overcoming the traumatic past for the purpose of negotiating the present”.

Not surprisingly, this annual celebration was always an eyesore for both the Brahmins of Maharashtra and the dominant caste of Marathas, who have been thoroughly co-opted into the Brahminical order. But in recent years, as Ashraf shows, especially after the BJP captured power in both the Centre and the state in 2014, the Brahmin-Maratha urge to reassert their dominance over Dalits has grown stronger, vividly revealed in the effort to obliterate from official history the role played by a Mahar named Govind Gopal in providing Shivaji’s son Shambhaji, who was captured and killed by Aurangzeb, an honourable cremation.

Minutely analysing Maharashtra’s fractious caste history, including in his ambit Shivaji’s coronation, Peshwa rule, British rule, the anti-Brahmin movement of the 19th century and various reformist efforts, Ashraf shows how the Bhima Koregaon celebration was headed for a flashpoint anyway. This was finally reached on January 1, 2018, with one person being killed and 48 injured as rival groups of Marathas and Mahars clashed.

The government, however, chose to blame it entirely on the Elgar Parishad, a meeting held just the day before, in which more than 250 pro-Dalit civil society groups participated, which it claimed was orchestrated by the Maoists to inflame sentiments against the upper castes and BJP rule. It conveniently overlooked the role of local Hindutva exponents like Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide in stirring up feelings against the celebrations.

That the BJP is anti-Muslim is a given; consolidating a Hindu vote bank by targeting Muslims is practically its raison d’etre. From its paranoid response in the Bhima Koregaon case, it appears — as Ashraf too implies — that it is inherently anti-Dalit as well.