The Indian Resistance

 All over the world multinational companies and transnational corporations behind the garb of parliamentary legitimacy are engaged in naked plunder of natural and human resources. Ithas become the responsibility of every person to resist the dictatorship of the capitalist class and work towards the establishment of an egalitarian society. In India, there has been a constant struggle by the exploited (Dalits, Adivasis) against the dominant ruling class/castes. It is a struggle between rich and poor; high caste and low caste. It is the struggle to expose the myth of an Indian nation.

The term 'Dalit' refers to lower-caste communities, also called the 'untouchables.' The Dalit Panthers were inspired by the US Black Panther Party. The Dalit Panthers like the Naxalites confronted state repression, upper-castes private armies, and ruling class goons. But this militancy of the Dalit Panthers did not last long as the leadership fell prey to the ruling class co-option and containment.  By 1979, the Dalit Panthers group splintered different factions each led by self-styled autocratic leaders.  For the Dalit Panthers:

“The struggle for the emancipation of the dalits needs a complete revolution. Partial change is impossible. We do not want it either. We want a complete and total revolutionary change. Even if we want to move out of the present state of social degradation alone, we will have to exercise our power in economic, political, cultural fields as well. We will not be satisfied easily now. We do not want a little place in the brahmin alley. We want to rule the whole country. We are not looking at persons but at a system. Change of heart, liberal education etc. will not end our state of exploitation. When we gather a revolutionary mass, rouse the people, out of the struggle of this giant mass will come the tidal wave of revolutions. Legalistic appeals, requests, demands for concessions, elections, satyagraha – out of these, society will never change. Our ideas of social revolution and rebellion will be too strong for such paper-made vehicles of protest.” (Dalit Panthers manifesto)

The task at hand requires that people facing oppression instead of closeting themselves in caste categories, and thereby alienating themselves from each other, begin to unite together and work to ensure that there be equality for all – a fight geared towards ending the reign of capitalism, which thrives on these divisions, co-opting and absorbing all oppositional voices. Dalits becoming capitalists for individual gains, garnering benefits at their own individual levels, and thus, in effect, they becoming a part of the oppressive structure are a case in point.

Adapted from here

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/26/rage-against-the-establishment-naxalbari-and-dalit-panthers-movement/